gay Berlin clubs bars sex from discodamaged

PASSENGER GOES OVERBOARD ON ATLANTIS GAY CRUISE

CCTV footage has revealed that a gay man who went missing on an Atlantis cruise fell from his balcony into the sea. Atlantis cruises off Mexico are huge week long parties and it's feared the man may have been the worse for wear.... The search for the man is on-going. More here...

MURDER IN MARIENDORF

Gay man Carsten Srock, who we reported missing five days ago, was murdered. Srock had been missing since doing a shift at Boiler Sauna on 1st January. A member of the public became suspicious and reported a 43 year old who lived in Markgrafenstrasse Mariendorf. The police visited and discovered him with self inflicted knife wounds and they found the corpse of Srock. The man has been arrested.

Bild newspaper reported today that the corpse had been chopped up. The police have not confirmed it.

GAY MAN MISSING

Police are appealing for witnesses who may know something of 37 year old Carsten Srock missing since New Year's day. Click the headline if you can help. Srock worked in a bank with a part time job at the Boiler sauna, where he worked until 10pm 1st Jan. After that, about 23:30, he drew a large amount of cash from the Sparkasse in Mehringdamm. He had told his boyfriend that he was meeting someone. The person is not known. Srock's mobile phone has been switched off since 2nd January.

LGBT DISCRIMINATION IN EUROPE

The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe has just published the largest ever study on homophobia, transphobia and LGBT discrimination in the 47 members of the Council of Europe. It identifies serious problems as well as improvements in the protection from discrimination for LGBT folk in all the countries. Most countries collect poor records which hinders progress. They say that in some member states the majority of the population still believe that homosexuality is illegal.

Near the beginning is a table showing when each country legalised sex between same sex couples. Apparently it's always been OK in Andorra, France was the first (1791) and Armenia came in belatedly only eight years ago.

Hate crime and incitement come under the spotlight. Most countries east of Luxembourg, including Germany, do not have any laws about incitement against the LGBT community and do not have homophobia as an aggravating factor in violent crime (light blue on map). They highlight the banning of Moscow gay pride: Muslim cleric from Nizhniy Novgorod says "homosexuals must be stoned to death" and others issue threats (not illegal in Russia), so Moscow authorities ban the event to 'protect' the LGBT community. European Court of Human Rights says they should have prosecuted the bigots. Duh!

Of LGBTers transgenders come out the worst treated. They suffer most discrimination, have less clear legal protection, are still often medicalised and, adding insult to injury, have most difficulty in obtaining health care.

Read the full 134 page report here which is where the map came from.

GAY PAIR ATTACKED IN SCHÖNHAUSER ALLEE

Police report that two men were attacked outside a super market on Schönhauser Alle in the early hours of Saturday morning because of their blatantly gay appearance. A gang of youths started by spitting at and abusing the pair then slapped them. One fell to the ground and had minor head injuries. The youths ran off before police arrived and the man was treated for his injuries in a nearby hospital.  

Click here for larger map.

DRUGS BUST IN OBERSCHÖNEWEIDE

Those dodgy Eastern folk are at it again. Police have discovered a speed factory in Oberschöneweide disguised with a genuine factory making medicinal chems. Some of the employees were importing precursor chemicals from as far away as India, selling some on to Poland and doing a bit of processing themselves. They had enough precursor to make one million grams of speed. Phew. One man was arrested.

HATE CRIME DOWN IN BERLIN

We'd noticed that there hadn't been a lot of anti-gay hate crime reported recently and the Berlin police have just confirmed the good news: In the first nine months of 2011, 67 reports of hate crime were made compared to 98 in the same period last year. The fall in violent crime was more dramatic: 41 in 2010 down to 22 in 2011.

If you are the victim of crime call 110 in emergency or check our REPORT A CRIME page. The Berlin police respond quickly and, as you would expect, are very efficient. Read more about Berlin hate crime on queer.de in German.

THREE YEARS FOR SPREADING HIV

A thirty five year old man was jailed for three years in Vienna after he infected two younger men with HIV. He had lied about his HIV status when they had unprotected sex. More in German on queer.de.

GAY HATERS BEWARE

Having lunch in More on Motz Strasse, Berlin's gay high street, today I couldn't help overhearing the young man at the next table saying how he had left somebody with a broken nose and ribs on the pavement. The speaker was a small sexy guy and I enquired further. He had been walking down Motz Strasse rather drunk of an early morning recently and was abused for being Jewish and gay by a homophobic youth. Our guy can't really remember how he did it - he doesn't do martial arts - but the upshot was that the abuser got the broken nose and ribs.

Of course we can't condone violence, but ....

FRESH MEAT - RUSSIAN STYLE

We're sure this isn't typical, but it's gruesome: A 21 year old in Murmansk, Russia picked up a man on a gay dating date site invited him home, stabbed him to death and ate him. Investigators said "the defendant wanted to try eating at least 10 people". "Nothing like this has happened in Murmansk for 20 years," they added :-(. 

Perhaps it's not so rare: Other cases were in Moscow in May this year and St. Petersburg in 2009 when the accused pair said they were "very hungry". More on Rianovosti.

BOUNTY KILLER TOUR CANCELLED

Bounty Killer's Zurich concert has been cancelled after the owners realised that he sings gay hate songs. His European tour has now been cancelled. Hurrah. He was due to perform at Calabash club Berlin next Friday as we reported here. Calabash have unrepentantly apologised to their customers :-(

HATE MUSIC IS A HATE CRIME

19 August Berlin club Calabash are offering a platform to Jamaican singer Interpret Bounty Killer (real name Rodney Price born 12.06.1972). Price is infamous for songs celebrating burning, drowning and killing gays. LSVD are leading a campaign to have him banned from Berlin and Germany, among other things, writing to the Berlin police president and the owners of calabash that allowing this man a platform is illegal under German law. More in German on Muskelkater blog here.

GAY FLAG AT NOLLENDORFPLATZ TORN DOWN

There was a lovely gay flag outside Nollendorfplatz U-Bahn to warm us up for the Strassenfest and CSD / gay pride. Five horrid youths ripped it down on Friday night. As they say on quuer.de, "At least the five stupid kids will enjoy more attention from the gay-les community." Read the whole story in German here.

CONNECTION AND TOMS AT IT AGAIN

Malcolm at Toms bar and Dean at Connection have both experienced discrimination in the last week. There have been frequent complaints here of people being turned away from Toms due to their (old) age and discrimination against Asians at Connection. But then some say that Connection is a haven for Asians and that's been my experience. If you want to report it to the police here's how. Having said that Berghain discriminate on grounds of looks attitude and other random factors, Fickstutenmarkt will refuse admission to dogs (you may submit photo in advance if you like) and most Schöneberg bars discriminate against the ladies... ROAR?

MORE HOMO HATE IN KREUZBERG

Last Tuesday at 23:50 a man was verbally harassed by youths in the entrance to his flat in Urbanstrasse, Kreuzberg because he was gay. A little later a cobble stone was thrown through his flat window, presumable by the same youths. The police said the crimes were homophobically motivated. This follows a homophobic attack in Oraninenstrasse nearby only last week. (See below)

GAY PAIR ATTACKED IN KREUZBERG

A gay couple were briefly attacked in Kreuzberg Thursday night / Friday morning. The were getting a pizza in Oranienstrasse when a man started to abuse them because they were gay. As they left the Pizzeria the man punched one of them in the head and ran off. The victim declined treatment. The police were called. More in German on queer.de.

GAY=PERVERT=MURDERER

Well that's the implication of an article on bild.de in their sensational reporting of a double murder at a south German gay cruising area a year ago. After 17 years marriage, Renate's husband Detlef was charged with the murders of Heiko (pic) and Friedrich. He's gay, he like sex toys, he's a murderer. Er, we're not all like that. Read the article in German here.

MDPV BATH SALTS BINGE ENDS IN GOAT TRAGEDY

News from The Charleston Gazette in the US.  "Police say an Alum Creek man high on bath salts (MDPV) killed his neighbor's pygmy goat and that neighbors found him in his bedroom, dressed in a bra and panties, next to the dead animal..."

Lisa Powers said she bought the goat on Friday as a gift to her 4-year-old grandson. They named the male goat Bailey after a female character on the Disney Channel television show "The Suite Life on Deck." "The baby just loved him," she said.

GAY MEMORIAL

Tomorrow 13 April at 13.30 a memorial plaque will be unveiled by Senator Dr. Ehrhart Körting and police president Dieter Glietsch at the police station in Moritzstrasse 10, Spandau. It commemorates the death of four gay policemen there on 24 April 1945 at the end of WWII. Officers Otto Jordan, Reinhold Höpfner, Willi Jenoch and Bautz were arrested, shot and buried at the barracks as it was that day. There is also an exhibition on persecution of gays in the Nazi period in Spandau town hall until April 21. It will tell their story.

BRAZIL: MURDERED IN COLD BLOOD

AllOut: on March 2nd a surveillance camera captured the brutal execution-style murder of Priscila, a 22-year old travesti/trans person in Brazil (Belo Horizonte). Now the country's only gay member of Parliament, Jean Wyllys, is receiving death threats. Brazil has one of the highest murder rates of LGBT people in the world. 

If you've got a moment please use it to ask Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to stand with members of her own party and publicly support the proposed Anti-Homophobia and Hate Crimes law.