Translated material
Torn Rainbow
After long discussions and public discussions, on Tuesday, June 11, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted law 6.13.1 on the “Prohibition of propaganda of homosexuality among minors” simultaneously in the second and third readings. This law is part of the actively developing state trend in the fight against dissent. The authorities are looking for opportunities to consolidate with the least educated and archaically minded part of the population in the “fight against evil,” which in theory should be associated with the “wrong” people.
On the morning of June 11 in Moscow, a small picket against the homophobic law took place near the State Duma building, which could have ended in the beating of the picketers by “Orthodox activists” who came to obstruct the protest and support the law being adopted. As a result, only the picket participants were detained; not a single person who attacked them was brought to justice. The police explained this by saying that there were too many aggressive “Orthodox believers.”
The story of legislative persecution of persons of non-traditional sexual orientation will obviously not end with law 6.13.1. The Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children, Elena Borisovna Mizulina, is preparing a draft concept of family policy, which, among other things, includes new ideas for isolating children from LGBT people. In particular, we are talking about limiting their ability to adopt children, as well as taking away their children - both adopted and, probably, blood ones.
This whole campaign is taking place not only in the capital; homophobic sentiments are also being cultivated in other Russian cities. In this regard, we bring to the attention of readers of the Sakharov Center blog a dialogue (http://gogol.tv/video/655#playAll) between Voronezh human rights activist Alexei Kozlov and Moscow human rights activist Natalya Yudina, recorded as part of the Talking Heads project in January. The reason for the conversation was a picket of LGBT activists that had been agreed upon but disrupted by local neo-fascists.
Yudina: . Human rights activists have repeatedly tried to collect some information about discrimination against sexual minorities, but, as far as I know, these attempts did not produce significant results, and the LGBT communities themselves also tried to monitor, but there is very little information. In particular, this is due to the fact that the community is closed, and people, fearing to reveal their sexual orientation, as a rule, do not make contact with law enforcement agencies.
And if some LGBT representatives decide to declare their sexual orientation, this usually leads to negative results. As was the case, for example, with Novaya Gazeta journalist Elena Kostyuchenko, who made a statement, accompanied by her photograph, “Why am I going to the gay pride parade.” And as a result, she suffered, and she was identified precisely from the photograph. Naturally, all this leads to people trying not to shine. And such cases as in Voronezh are out of the ordinary: If this became known to the public, if it got into the media, then this is truly an egregious case.
Kozlov: I was the technical supervisor of the first monitoring of manifestations of homophobia, which was done by the Moscow Helsinki Group together with the LGBT network. Monitoring did not produce results. Precisely because the community is closed, and there are not so many LGBT activists, and there are virtually no specialized organizations monitoring situations with gays. There are several regional organizations, quite strong, that are engaged in this in the regions, and in other regions there are, as they can be called, activist groups that themselves do not really understand what is happening in the region.
As for Voronezh and the situation that developed around the picket, there are three main aspects: the first is related to the fact that Voronezh is, after all, a xenophobic city, and it periodically recalls this glory, starting with the murders of foreign students that took place in 2005, 2006 and 2007. These are not just individual thugs, this is the atmosphere as a whole in the region. The second point is related to the fact that the ultra-right immediately reacted to the information about the approval of the picket against the homophobic law, who clearly formulated their position: “We want to disrupt the picket.” And they began to organize for this. That is, there was a clear goal that united football hooligans, Nazi skinheads, Orthodox Christians, and nationalists - in general, everyone. And the third point, the most important one, is the connivance of the authorities. No steps were taken, either in response to calls to disrupt the agreed event, or in connection with threats to the organizers and participants. No preventive measures were taken, although law enforcement agencies had enough information.
Dozens of nationalists gathered in one of the squares of the city of Voronezh half an hour before the picket, gave instructions there, and then went in groups to the picket site. The police officers watched this and did nothing. It is clear that such a picture clearly provoked homophobic people into violent actions.
At the very beginning of the picket, the most determined homophobes tore up posters from the picketers, broke the flag pole, trampled on the flag, knocked the organizers and some of the participants to the ground, began to beat them... And only at that moment did law enforcement agencies try to intervene, called riot police, who arrived and stood up a cordon, but this cordon did not save anyone, because it separated the main crowd of picketers, while groups of young people walked completely freely, bypassing the cordon, going behind the pickets standing almost on the roadway.
And in general, nothing was done to reduce the intensity, this crowd stood and began to throw snowballs and bottles again, this time because of the riot police, throwing at the remaining picketers. The organizers and participants left the venue.
Yudina: Yes, indeed, Voronezh in 2008-2006 was in the top three for xenophobic attacks, and indeed the degree of such violence and the situation in the city was very high. And I must say that since then the situation has improved, if we take the statistics for all Russian cities as a whole, and Voronezh occupies approximately the same place as all the others. This means that the Voronezh police forces managed to cope with the most obvious thugs. As far as I remember, in 2008 the leader of the local NSO Rumyantsev was convicted, but, nevertheless, the level of domestic xenophobic violence is not going away.
Kozlov: One of the inspirers of the recent actions was Mr. Koroteev, who was also convicted under Article 282. He had already been released, and he was just instructing the guys in the square. They do not calm down and continue their activity. And I agree that measures were taken, but the atmosphere did not change. Some people just became more careful.
Yudina: It doesn’t seem very important to emphasize the theme of the attitude of the authorities, who not only do not prevent violence against the LGBT community, but even encourage it. The result is a chain reaction, the state is enacting laws that provoke opposition from LGBT activists, who are forced to go out to protest against such initiatives, and this, in turn, leads to the activation of the far right. In 2012, at least 12 people suffered from homophobic attacks. It is known for sure that this is an attack by nationalists. At a time when in 2011 we recorded three such attacks.
Kozlov: In the Voronezh case, the Central Internal Affairs Directorate immediately issued a press release stating that no violations had been recorded, it even had the excellent wording “The picket organizers did not receive support from the residents, so the picket was stopped ahead of schedule.” But no violations were recorded. The attack on the organizer of the picket occurred before the start of the picket and the attacker was detained. Now it is officially recognized that one person has been detained, but the Central Internal Affairs Directorate did not stop there. There was a glitch on their website there, and they published a statement six times saying that there were no violations. The news feed of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate on January 21 consisted of only this publication. And they didn’t stop there, and released another wonderful press release, in which they write that they received gratitude from the citizens of the city of Voronezh, namely from the People’s Council organization and the United Division organization for the effective holding of the event.
Yudina: Yes, yes, I saw this letter. It said “who fulfilled their professional duty to protect public order and for “decent behavior at the picket.”
Kozlov: From my point of view, this is already beyond good and evil. I understand the tactic when they don’t want to admit the violation, but say that they received gratitude and... and the Nazis also let it slip. Previously, they said that they “just came to picket,” and it so happened that from a picket against the law it turned into a picket against gays and lesbians. And now, right in the comments in the media, they say: “yes, we disrupted the picket, yes, we are going to do this in the future.” And the Central Internal Affairs Directorate is glad that it receives gratitude from these comrades. The conversation about contacting the police looks funny against this background.
Yudina: As for the reaction of the authorities, this is a rather painful question, because in Moscow, I remember, in 2008 gay pride parades were generally prohibited...
Kozlov: Well, this was the official position of the head of the region, everything is clear here. We do not yet have an official position as the head of the region. But at the moment, gentlemen, the nationalists are busy finding out the identities of human rights defenders and LGBT activists who were present at the picket...
Yudina: And they post it all on the Internet on the appropriate resources and with appropriate comments and calls. Stories and home addresses. Whether this will lead to active action is still unclear. But they are aggressive people... If you dream, the state could well demonstrate its position by including sexual orientation along with gender in the relevant articles of the codes as an aggravating circumstance. But it is clear that in the current situation this is, unfortunately, unrealistic. I remember that initiatives were put forward to register LGBT representatives as at least a social group; one can debate what a social group is, but even this was rejected. This is very sad.
Kozlov: We have formulated a certain body of official and legal claims to what happened, including incitement of hatred and hostility towards a social group.
Yudina: Yes , but in our country anyone is considered a social group, even representatives of law enforcement agencies, but not LGBT people.
Kozlov: There was a precedent for recognizing LGBT people as not quite a social group, but a vulnerable group. This was formulated in one of the court decisions. We hope that some steps will be taken. Because the worst thing here is impunity.
Yudina: We touched a little on a topic that, in general, should also be discussed - support for the Russian Orthodox Church.
Kozlov: I saw priests who blessed the rioters during the dispersal of the second gay pride, photographs, videos all confirm this.
Yudina: I don’t know how it is with this in Voronezh, maybe they really don’t directly bless violence, but nevertheless, ideological support from the church, if we talk about the leader of the “Russian” movement Demushkin - he was blessed for the “Russian March” , at least.