Russia’s ‘gay propaganda’ law has led to a huge rise in anti-LGBT attacks
St. Petersburg Pride
Hate crimes against LGBT people have doubled since Russia created a law banning gay “propaganda”.
The 2013 legislation, which prohibits “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships” towards minors, has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights.
The European judges found that the law “reinforced stigma and prejudice and encouraged homophobia”.
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The law also bans people from sharing “distorted ideas about the equal social value of traditional and non-traditional sexual relationships”.
It has been widely abused by Vladimir Putin’s government to clamp down on the LGBT rights movement as a whole.
And now the ECHR has been backed up by statistics, with researchers finding that anti-LGBT hate crimes have doubled.
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The Centre for Independent Social Research analysed 250 crimes – 200 of which were murders – and concluded that homophobic attacks had surged, according to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Most victims were gay men.
The amount of sentences for crimes against LGBT people has increased too, from 18 in 2010 to 65 in 2015.
Svetlana Zakharova, a board member at the Russian LGBT Network, said people inclined to attack sexual and gender minorities “have become more aggressive and less fearful.
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She explained: “It seems to them that, to some extent, the government supports their actions.
“Many perpetrators openly talk about their crimes as noble deeds,” she added, terrifyingly.
Her group has performed actual heroic deeds this year, having saved at least 40 Chechens from the gay purge being committed in the region.
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The activists set up a helpline for gay men in Chechnya, then found the gay men and helped them escape the region before they were killed in the purge.
And in August, Russian LGBT Network campaigner Anna Grabetskaya was detained by police at the St Petersburg Pride march.
She was holding a sign that read “I love my wife” and had a rainbow flag wrapped around her.
Russian President Vladimir Putin with Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon, who has also overseen anti-LGBT operations (Getty)
Russia came second-bottom in Europe’s latest LGBT rights rankings – to Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan is guilty of instituting its own LGBT purge, detaining and torturing at least 100 gay and trans people to force them to give up other LGBT people.
