Amsterdam LGBTQIA+ community's own discrimination hotline flooded with reports
The Amsterdam LGBTQIA+ community’s own reporting point for discrimination, exclusion, and violence has been flooded with reports since its launch during Pride on Dam Square in the summer. “We have already received 300 percent more reports than the agencies received in a whole year last year,” one of the initiators told AT5.
The Diverse Agency, a talent agency for drag queens and others from the community, suggested that the rainbow community open its own reporting point, hoping that it would lower the threshold for reporting. RITA - report it always - launched this summer.
Not everyone was thrilled by the idea, but now the police, the municipality, and feiten.nl (formerly the Discrimination Hotline) fully support RITA, Gianna Tomyama, co-founder of The Diverse Agency, told AT5.
“A lot of people no longer trust the authorities,” said Tomyama’s colleague, Jerrald Justin. “RITA wants to be a link between our partners at the municipality, the police, companies, and authorities like discriminatie.nl. An independent link that is trusted in the community.”
RITA passes all the reports it receives on to discriminatie.nl, because the Amsterdam government uses these statistics when determining policy. If discrimination reports increase, it will have a political impact.
“Only 3 percent of people who experience discrimination report it. That’s not much. So I think RITA is very good because it is made by people from the community, so people trust it,” Debbie Koekkoek of feiten.nl told the broadcaster. The Amsterdam police called RITA an enrichment.
A spokesperson for the municipality of Amsterdam told AT5 that it was in talks with RITA about further cooperation. “Points of discussion are how to give RITA its own place in the playing field of involved partners and how the platform is received by the LGBTQIA+ community.”
