Current Affairs

Video: St Petersburg protester punched in the face while police look on

Sep 06 2013
Written by Joseph McCormick

A video has surfaced online which appears to show one of the individual protesters from St Petrsburg yesterday, being violently hit in the face with a foam pie, while police officers take no action.

Around a dozen human rights activists conducted individual protests against Russian anti-gay laws in St Petersburg on the same day the G20 government leaders arrived in the city.

The activists spread themselves out along the city’s main thoroughfare because mass protests are sometimes banned, or often disrupted by police.

The video, which was posted yesterday by The National Cathedral of St Petersburg, which describes the protester Danya Grachev from the Straight Alliance for LGBT Equality, as a “foreign agent”, reports AmericaBlog.

Reports suggest that other protesters were also attacked during their peaceful, and individual protests, but that no arrests were made, other than on the protesters themselves.

Putin signed the controversial law in June banning the promotion of “non-traditional relationships” toward minors, a move that has been criticised as part of a broader crackdown on Russia’s gay community.

On Tuesday it was confirmed by the Foreign Office that David Cameron will raise the issue of the Russian law banning the promotion of “non-traditional relationships”, with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he travels to St Petersburg for the G20.

Out4Russia launched last week and allows users to lobby G20 governments into action against the Russian law.