Deniss Hanovs was attacked in early November 2021 as he and his partner were walking along the Kengarags market in the evening. Two aggressive men started calling Hanovs and his partner names, hit Hanovs on the back, made remarks of a sexual nature, and tried to assault him, but the victim took refuge in a flower stall. During the investigation of the incident, one of the assailants, whom the police managed to identify, admitted that his actions were motivated by his dislike of homosexual people and that he wanted to ensure that they did not show their sexual orientation anymore.
The police did not find any serious wrongdoing in the attack on Professor Hanovs.
On Thursday, July 18, the ECHR delivered its judgment in the case "Hanovs v. Latvia", finding violations of Articles 3 (prohibition of torture and cruel treatment) and 8 (right to privacy) of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in conjunction with Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination).
Judgment Hanovs v. Latvia - authorities' failure to prosecute homophobic hate crime.pdf
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Hanovs was represented in the case by Jekaterina Tumule, a lawyer at the Latvian Centre for Human Rights.
The court concluded that the attacker's homophobic motives were established during the police investigation. Although the victim was able to avoid bodily harm, such acts inherently violate human rights and rise to a level of seriousness that is linked to Article 3 of the Convention. Moreover, homophobic verbal attacks and threats of violence are considered sufficiently serious to violate the right to privacy under Article 8 of the Convention.
The administrative offense proceedings in the present case did not provide either just satisfaction for the applicant or an adequate penalty for the perpetrator, according to the court.
The Court stressed that impunity in hate crime cases poses a serious threat to the fundamental rights protected by the Convention. Failure to address such incidents could normalize hatred against LGBTI persons, reinforce intolerance and discrimination, and encourage the recurrence of such acts.
