If you haven’t seen the video of Lilit Martirosyan, Armenia’s first registered transgender woman, speaking in front of the Armenian Parliament, then it’s worth a watch.
Martirosyan, who in 2015 became the first Armenian to gain a passport under a new name, spoke out about discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community in Armenia in the speech on April 5th.
‘I stand for tortured, raped, burnt, stabbed, killed, banished, discriminated, poor and unemployed transgender people of Armenia,’ she said.
‘I call upon you to carry out reforms and policies to achieve gender equality, and to ensure human rights for everyone.’
Two weeks after her speech, which was widely shared on social media, Armenian MPs, among others, have reportedly been calling for Martirosyan to ‘burned alive’ and ‘killed’, according to a Guardian report.
‘This was the first time in Armenia when a transgender woman spoke from a high podium… of violence against transgender people,’ Martirosyan told the Guardian, in response to the backlash following her speech.
‘[A] transphobic man with a knife came to the national assembly to announce that he would kill me and that others like me must be killed, too … I have received many messages via Facebook and email from various people telling that they will find and kill me.’
Both the UN office in Armenia and the EU have condemned these threats, with the latter releasing a statement that read; ‘hate speech, including death threats directed at Ms Lilit Martirosyan, her colleagues and the LGBTI community as a whole … amount to discrimination prohibited under the European convention on human rights and fundamental freedoms, to which Armenia is party, and which is reflected in the constitution of Armenia.’