Arco Iris files complaint over anti-LGBT campaign

Andalucia's 'Arco Iris' LGBT federation has filed a complaint against right-wing group 'HazteOir'. Image: Federación Arco Iris
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• Andalucian LGBT federation cites anti-LGBT leaflets at schools nationwide
• Ultra-right group ‘Hazte Oir’ attack on anti-homophobia laws across Spain

Andalucia’s Arco Iris (‘Rainbow’) federation of LGBT organisations has filed a legal complaint with the office of Spain’s Fiscalia General (‘attorney general’) calling for investigation of a far-right organization on the grounds of potential hate crimes for its distribution of 100,000 copies of an anti-LGBT leaflet in nearly two-thirds of Spain’s 27,812 schools nationwide.

The 41-page leaflet, directed at parents and entitled ‘Do you know what they want to teach your child at school? The laws of sexual indoctrination’ (¿Sabes lo que quieren enseñarle a tu hijo en el colegio? Las leyes de adoctrinamiento sexual), feature a cover picture of two children offering a fascist salute to an LGBT rainbow flag painted on a wall. The leaflet directly criticizes the growing number of anti-discrimination and anti-homophobia legislation passed in recent months in a number of autonomous Spanish regions, including Madrid, Catalonia, Extremadura, Murcia, the Balearic Islands, Navarre, the Basque Country, Galicia, Andalucia and the Canary Islands.

On Nov. 22nd, the ultra-right group Hazte Oir began a campaign to distribute the leaflets to parents at 16,500 schools nationwide, many of them Catholic church schools receiving federal government subsidies. A well-known ultra-right group in Spain with ties to international right-wing Catholic organisations, Hazte Oir has been singled out as organizer of right-wing protests that helped topple former Socialist prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and has also been active in organizing campaigns against Spain’s anti-austerity party Podemos.

► Read More in Spanish at El Diario, 20minutos and Diagonal Periódico …

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