A VALENCIA court has sentenced a man to 32 months in prison for a hate crime after he published an article on a far-right website using ‘offensive’ language to claim that the monkeypox virus originated in the LGTB+ community.
The judges also imposed a ten month ban on standing for political office and a six year bar on working within the fields of education and sport.
The unnamed offender can lodge an appeal against the verdict and sentence at the Valencia Supreme Court.
During his trial, the man denied being the author of an article entitled ‘El Chueca Virus-22’ published on May 23, 2022 that appeared on the official website of the far-right group España 2000.
That’s despite the fact he admitted to running the website.
He also reproduced the feature on social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook by publishing a link to it.
The court ruled that he attributed the origin of monkeypox to LGTB+ people, ‘using offensive and humiliating expressions, aimed at spreading contempt, hostility and animosity towards them’.
Among the phrases used were some like: “And it seems that there is no doubt that the transmission is carried out not because of being gay, but because of carrying out perverse sodomy in places like saunas with indiscriminate fornication between fag—s.”
Amidst an array of insults, he said that gay sexual behaviour was a ‘public health problem’ and a ‘scourge’ that’s even ‘spreading to schools’.
The Valencia judges in the ruling said that the defendant admitted that the article was not a one-off and ‘they had been publishing this type of article for about two years, which makes the fact even more deserving of criminal reproach’.
