The GLAS Foundation and partners are organizing a Commemoration March in memory of Mikhail Stoyanov

The GLAS Foundation and the Youth LGBT Organization ‘Deystvie’ are organizing a commemoration march marking the tenth anniversary of the brutal murder of Mikhail Stoyanov. The event will take place on September 20 (Thursday), from 6 pm to 6:30 pm, at Mikhail’s place of death at the Borisova Garden in Sofia. The assembly point is at the bus stop “Blvd. Peyo Yavorov “(on the side of the garden) at 5:30 pm.

With this commemoration, the organizers aim to put the focus once more on the need for a change in the Penal Code of the country which still does not recognize the victims of homophobic and transphobic crimes, nor does it send the perpetrators a message that sexual orientation and gender identity can not be the cause of an aggression against another human being.

The 25-year-old Mikhail Stoyanov was beaten to death in the Borisova garden by a group of young people who “cleared the park of gay men” on September 30, 2008. Just 10 years after the sinister murder, the perpetrators were sent to prison with reduced sentences following a decision of the Supreme Court of Cassation – in June 2018 they were sentenced to 10 and 4.5 years in prison.

The perpetrators were apprehended by chance two years after the murder of Misho, the first documented and widely publicized case of a homophobic offense in Bulgaria, which makes it of special importance both for the jurisprudence and LGBTI people in Bulgaria. The case-law is also an example of slow justice – it took 3 years for the prosecution to take the offenders to court. More information about the commemoration can be found in the Facebook event here.