A well-known Georgian transgender model has been murdered, local officials said, a day after the government passed legislation that will impose sweeping curbs on LGBTQ+ rights in the country.
Georgia’s interior ministry said Kesaria Abramidze, 37, was believed to have been stabbed to death in her apartment in suburban Tbilisi 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 trans public figures. Her death follows controversial legislation on “family values and the protection of minors” that will allow officials to outlaw Pride events and censor films and books.
The law, which was approved by the Georgian parliament on Tuesday in its third and final reading, includes bans on same-sex marriages and gender-affirming treatments. It is expected to be another point of contention between Georgia and the EU as the country seeks to join the bloc.
Critics argue that the bill, initially introduced by the ruling Georgian Dream party in the summer, mirrors laws enacted in neighbouring 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 swiftly cast by Georgian civil society as part of a state campaign against minorities in the country.
Under the Georgian Dream party, which has taken an increasingly anti-liberal stance, the country has seen a rise in violence against LGBTQ+ people.
Last year, hundreds of opponents of gay rights stormed an LGBTQ+ festival in Tbilisi, forcing the event to be cancelled. This year, tens of thousands of people marched in the capital to promote “traditional family values” at an event attended by the ruling party amd the deeply conservative and influential Orthodox church.
“There is a direct correlation between the use of hate speech in politics and hate crimes,” the Social Justice Center, a Tbilisi-based human rights group, said in its statement reacting to the murder.
“It has been almost a year that the Georgian Dream government has been aggressively using homo/bi/transphobic language and cultivating it with mass propaganda means,” it added.
On Wednesday, Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, called on the Georgian government to withdraw the “family values” law, warning it would harm Georgia’s chances of joining the bloc. The legislation would “increase discrimination & stigmatisation”, he said on X.
After Abramidze’s death, Michael Roth, the Social Democratic party chair of the Bundestag foreign affairs committee in Germany, echoed that call. “Those who sow hatred will reap violence. Kesaria Abramidze was killed just one day after the Georgian parliament passed the anti-LGBTI law,” Roth wrote on X.
The introduction of the law comes just five weeks before parliamentary elections that many see as a litmus test of whether Georgia, once one of the most pro-western former Soviet states, will now drift towards Russia.
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The country’s pro-western president, Salome Zourabichvili, whose functions are mostly 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 pushed through the divisive “foreign influence” law, which western critics argue is authoritarian and Russian-inspired, and has derailed the country’s EU aspirations.
Meanwhile, tributes have started to pour in for Abramidze, who represented Georgia at Miss Trans Star International in 2018 and had more than 500,000 followers on Instagram.
“Kesaria was iconic! Provocative, wise, incredibly brave! A trailblazer 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 terrible murder! The death of this beautiful young woman … should not be in vain!” the president wrote on Facebook.