UK Foreign Office condemns ‘deplorable’ homophobic tweets from Russian embassy
A Foreign and Commonwealth Office minister has condemned tweets from the Russian Embassy in London.
Russia last month attempted to provoke the West on LGBT rights – a tactic repeatedly employed by President Vladimir Putin in the past.
The Russian Embassy in London tweeted a picture of a giant Russian bear posing over the top of a concentration camp full of piggy banks, adorned with a Pride flag, stars, and a Eurozone sign.
It bears a resemblance to the ‘Arbeit macht frei’ sign that hung above Auschwitz and other concentration camps.
The tweet reads: “If Russia is in decline, why worry? Maybe, real worry is West’s decline and that we manage things better?”
Labour’s Mark Gapes raised the issue in Parliament in a discussion on LGBT rights.
He said: “In recent days, tweets have been put out by the Russian Foreign Ministry and repeated by Russia’s embassy in this country that are disparaging and derogatory towards gay people—part of a pattern of behaviour by Putin.
“How confident is the Minister that other countries in Europe are not being influenced by the Putin propaganda that is on our Freeview channels every day and put out through the internet and social media?”
Gay FCO minister Sir Alan Duncan responded: “When a country’s official apparatus adopts such attitudes and uses social media, it takes behaviour to utterly unacceptable new heights.
“We of course condemn any kind of attacks on gay people, but when they are perpetrated by a country and deliberately, it is even more deplorable than the many other ways in which we see such opinions expressed.”
