29 Dec Things are getting worse for LGBT people in Russia
Russia’s controversial law against gay propaganda has become a “license to harm” for Russian homophobes, who have expanded to target closeted gays, a new study says.
“License to Harm” is the title of a new report on gay rights in Russia, which was presented by Human Rights Watch in Moscow this week.
The study examined 78 cases of attacks on LGBT people across 16 cities in Russia since 2012. The list includes verbal harassment and rights violations such as firings over sexual orientation, but physical violence dominated.
The abuse detailed in the report went beyond beatings: Documented cases include a gay person who was forced to sodomise himself with a bottle by homophobic attackers, and a gay woman who was stripped naked and abandoned in a forest ? after her big toenails were torn out with pliers.
Most victims said anti-gay violence had intensified since the law against “gay propaganda” was passed in 2013.
Formally, the law is limited to minors, with anyone found guilty of informing them that LGBT relations are “of equal social worth with traditional relations” facing fines.
Yet, homophobes across the nation have taken it as carte blanche to conduct a hate campaign, Human Rights Watch representatives said at the study’s presentation in Moscow.
“Pressure increased on LGBT [people] and defenders of their rights,” said the group’s Russia researcher, Tanya Cooper. “It’s a campaign of harassment and intimidation.”
Before the law, homophobes focused on open activists staging or attending LGBT festivals or gay pride rallies, said Ksenia Kirichenko of Vykhod (“Coming Out”), a group providing legal aid to LGBT people.
But now they also target people who try to keep their sexual identity hidden, Kirichenko told The Moscow Times at the study’s presentation.
A case in point was the firing of a closeted lesbian teacher in a school for disabled children in St. Petersburg earlier this year. The woman was forcibly outed by an anti-gay activist and promptly fired for “moral misconduct,” the first such case in Russia.
Authorities, meanwhile, have gone out of their way to downplay any spike in violence against LGBT people. Prosecutors and security services refuse to track statistics for homophobic attacks or register them as hate crimes.
Source: Q News