▲Left photo: Mindia Gabadze/Publika; right photo via Tabula.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has attended the funeral of Kesaria Abramidze, a trans media personality and model who was murdered last week.
Abramidze was laid to rest at a ceremony in Tbilisi on Sunday. She was also commemorated in Antwerp, a Belgian city that is home to a number of queer refugees and asylum seekers from Georgia.
The Georgian Orthodox Church refused to provide burial services for Abramidze due to her transgender identity.
Abramidze’s former partner, 26-year-old Beka Jaiani has been arrested and charged with her murder. According to the investigation, Jaiani stabbed Abramidze 28 times with a knife in her flat. He was apprehended a day later and has denied the charges through his lawyer.
However, the Prosecutor’s Office has stated that he had admitted to being allowed into Abramidze’s apartment on 18 September, the day of the murder, after agreeing to her posting photos of the two on social media.
Communications revealed by a friend of the victim have suggested that Jaiani was opposed to making their relationship public, but that he also refused to accept that they broke up.
Jaiani has been charged with premeditated murder with particular cruelty ‘based on gender’. If convicted, he could face up to 16 years or life imprisonment.
Abramidze was a widely recognised and outspoken figure who was perhaps the most prominent personality from Georgia’s queer community. She came to prominence in the Georgian media over a decade ago.
After fleeing a not-so-promising academic career and a disastrous attempt at being a bisexual activist, Shota is now a grumpy staff writer covering Georgia-related topics at OC Media. He focuses on nationalism, far-right movements, gender, and queer issues, with an eye on Eastern and Central Europe.
The high-profile murder of trans media personality and model Kesaria Abramidze has led to an outpouring of grief and anger in Georgia, with many linking her murder to the ruling party’s transphobic rhetoric and legislation.
Hours after the initial news broke on Wednesday evening, the Interior Ministry confirmed 37-year-old Abramidze was killed after receiving multiple knife wounds following an altercation in her home in Didi Dighomi.
They also confirmed that they had detained a primary susp
Azerbaijan has sentenced a French citizen to three years in prison for spray painting a Baku metro car, as diplomatic relations between Baku and Paris remain tense.
On 10 September, the Narimanov District Court in Baku sentenced Théo Clerc to three years in prison for painting the train carriage at the Baku metro depot. Australian citizen Paul Han and New Zealand citizen Ismael De-Saint Quentin were fined ₼6,800 ($4,000) each for the same charge.
The harsh sentencing of Clerc compared to
Images have appeared online purportedly showing patients being abused at an Ingush care home for people with intellectual disabilities.
Images shared by Russian Telegram channel Baza [WARNING: DISTURBING IMAGERY] showed naked patients shackled to benches and to the wall in an empty tiled room. Also shown in the images were metal bowls from which the patients eat from using their hands.
The facility in Psedakh, a village in northwestern Ingushetia, caters to people who are unable to care
Three men armed with hand grenades have been arrested and charged with terrorism for attempting to break into a police station in Yerevan, throwing a hand grenade at the entrance.
The three men attempted to break into the Nor Nork Police Department in Yerevan on Sunday.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that they had ‘threatened to blow up the station with hand grenades’, and that one of them, identified only by his initials, threw a grenade at the entrance of the police station.
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