Georgian Trans Model Murdered After Parliament Passes ‘Anti-LGBTQ+’ Law | Georgia

A well-known Georgian transgender model has been murdered, local officials said, a day after the government passed a law that would have drastically curtailed the rights of LGBTQ+ people in the country.

The Georgian Interior Ministry said Kesaria Abramidze, 37, was allegedly stabbed to death in her apartment in a Tbilisi suburb on Wednesday.

Georgian media later reported that a man had been arrested in connection with the crime.

Abramidze was one of the country’s first openly transgender public figures. Her death follows controversial legislation on “family values ​​and the protection of minors” that allows officials to ban Pride events and censor films and books.

The law, which was approved in the third and final reading by Georgia’s parliament on Tuesday, includes bans on same-sex marriages and gender-affirming treatments and is expected to be a new bone of contention between Georgia and the EU as the country seeks to join the bloc.

Critics argue that the bill, originally introduced by the ruling Georgian Dream party over the summer, mirrors laws passed in neighboring Russia, where authorities have implemented a series of repressive anti-LGBTQ+ measures over the past decade.

Although the motive behind Abramidze’s murder remains unclear, her death was quickly seen by Georgian civil society as part of a state campaign against minorities in the country.

Under the increasingly anti-liberal Georgian Dream party, there has been a rise in violence against LGBTQ+ people in the country.

Last year, hundreds of gay rights opponents stormed an LGBTQ+ festival in Tbilisi, forcing the event to be canceled. This year, tens of thousands of people marched in the capital to promote “traditional family values” at an event attended by the ruling party and the deeply conservative and influential Orthodox Church.

“There is a direct link between the use of hate speech in politics and hate crimes,” the Social Justice Center, a Tbilisi-based human rights organization, said in a statement responding to the killing.

“It has been almost a year since the Georgian Dream government aggressively used homo-/bi-/transphobic language and cultivated it with mass propaganda,” it added.

On Wednesday, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, called on the Georgian government to withdraw the “family values” law, warning that it would harm Georgia’s chances of joining the bloc. The legislation would “increase discrimination and stigmatization,” he said on X.

After Abramidze’s death, Michael Roth, the Social Democratic Party chairman of the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee in Germany, reiterated that call. “Those who sow hatred will reap violence. Kesaria Abramidze was murdered just one day after the Georgian parliament passed the anti-LGBTI law,” Roth wrote on X.

The law comes just five weeks before parliamentary elections, which are widely seen as a test of whether Georgia, once one of the most pro-Western former Soviet states, will now drift toward Russia.

The country’s pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, whose functions are largely ceremonial, is expected to veto the law before it comes into effect. However, Georgian Dream and its allies have enough seats in parliament to override her veto.

Earlier this year, the Georgian Dream also passed the divisive “foreign influence” law, which Western critics say is authoritarian and Russian-inspired and has thwarted the country’s EU aspirations.

Meanwhile, tributes are pouring in for Abramidze, who represented Georgia at Miss Trans Star International in 2018 and has more than 500,000 followers on Instagram.

“Kesaria was iconic! Provocative, wise, incredibly brave! A pioneer for Georgia’s trans rights,” Maia Otarashvili, a Georgian political scientist, wrote on X.

Zourabichvili said the murder should be a “wake-up call” for Georgian society.

“A horrible murder! The death of this beautiful young woman… must not be in vain!” the president wrote on Facebook.