Police Raid LGBTQ Bar and Sauna in Venezuela, Sparking Nationwide Protests

Cops raiding LGBTQ bars doesn’t often do positive things for the image of the police. After all, we do have an entire month dedicated to reminding us that, if you try to raid a gay bar just because it’s a gay bar, queer people will fight back. Apparently, some haven’t learned that lesson yet, as, according to Al-Jazeera, on July 23, police raided the Avalon Club bar and sauna in Valencia, Venezuela’s third largest city, arresting 33 men, and leading to demonstrations throughout the country.

A man named Luis tells Al-Jazeera that police rounded up all of the bar’s patrons in the locker rooms of the Avalon’s sauna, falsely claiming that it was a “routine inspection” and that the men were going to be “witnesses.” “That’s when I began to question what was happening,” Luis explains. “Because why are we going as witnesses? Witnesses to what?” Then the police confiscated Luis’ phone, at which point he realized that he was actually under arrest. “(The police) said I have the right to a phone call,” Luis says. “That’s when I started to feel disoriented, like, what’s happening? They didn’t even tell us we were arrested.”

Al-Jazeera also reports that being gay is not a crime in the South American country, and yet the men were still charged with “lewd conduct” and “sound pollution,” and that condoms and lubricant were used as evidence of these charges. It seems that a lot of people, rightfully, believe that that amounts to being arrested for being gay. Thirty of the men were released on “conditional parole” after 72 hours, while the owner and two massage specialists were held for 10 days.

Protests quickly broke out in Valencia and Caracas. #JusticiaParaLos33 (Justice for the 33) has been trending on social media. A petition on Allout.org addressed to the country’s Attorney General and President of the Supreme Court of Justice calls for charges to be dropped against all the men arrested, for repercussions for the officials and police involved in the arrests, and for the end of the policy of criminalizing LGBTQ people in the country. At the time of this writing, the petition has 11,926 signatures towards its goal of 20,000.