Le Figaro Bordeaux
After the insults, the threats.
Julien Colonna, manager of Coco Loko, an LGBT bar located in the city center of Bordeaux, a few minutes walk from the city hall, received a letter on February 16 containing homophobic insults punctuated with threats.
A letter which joins others, but whose aggressive content particularly shocked the manager and his employees.
The author of the letter
“advises”
the manager
“to change activities very quickly and especially customers before problems happen to [them]”
.
Threats taken seriously by Julien Colonna, who filed a complaint this Tuesday.
Coco Loko opened its doors eight years ago.
“We have never had any problems until now
,” recalls the manager, who claims to have been receiving
“mail and a lot of complaints for several months, particularly from a neighbor who asked to close a little earlier
. ”
On December 15, the entrance hall adjoining the bar was defaced, with the inscriptions
“PD”
in red on the Coco Loko mailbox and
“Clear the PD (sic)!!
Shame”
on the wall.
“If you find insults, it is because perhaps you deserve it
,” wrote the author of the threats in the letter of February 16.
“We don't want to see PD in this neighborhood anymore, you are depraved, if you don't understand this you will be in big trouble very soon, and believe me.”
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Violence against LGBT people on the rise
The inscriptions on the wall where the trash cans and mailboxes are located have been cleaned but the bar's mailbox is still covered with the homophobic tag and has been
“broken four times
,” laments Julien Colonna.
“I hope it will stop quickly
,” testifies the manager, after reading this text full of spelling mistakes, fearing that the author of this intimidation will take action.
In his letter, he mentions the attack committed in 2014 at Go West, a former gay bar.
Two hooded individuals attacked the manager and a customer before ransacking the establishment.
The manager of Coco Loko contacted the Stop Homophobia association, which announced that it supported the establishment in its efforts.
In Bordeaux, as everywhere in France, homophobic violence is on the rise.
In its annual report published in 2023, SOS Homophobia recorded a 28% increase in physical attacks.
During the 2022 pride march in Bordeaux, nine men - all former activists or sympathizers of Éric Zemmour's Generation Z movement - disrupted the festive gathering by displaying a sign on the eco-citizen house, while performing Nazi salutes and uttering homophobic slogans like
“death to the PD”
.
In May 2023, only one of them was finally convicted of insult based on sexual orientation.