Rospotrebnadzor closed the St. Petersburg cafe Zoom, confusing it with the application for video communication. What does LGBT have to do with it?

On November 16, the Office of Rospotrebnadzor in St. Petersburg suspended the work of the popular city cafe Zoom on Gorokhova Street. According to the protocol-due to violations of the requirements of the coronavirus regime. According to the owners of the institution-due to an absurd error: employees of the department could take a cafe for the venue for the LGBT Festival “BOC ON BOK”, which this year passes in the online mode through the Zoom application.

Closed here and now

Interest in the cafe on Gorokhova, the inspection bodies began to be manifested from the end of October, then the first check came into the institution.

“Representatives of the law and order, starting from the district police officer and ending with the UBEP employee, said that they came in connection with the appeal of Mr. Milonov,” said Pavel Shteinluht, owner of Zoom Cafe. -Allegedly, we will have something connected with the festival “Brok O Bok”.

According to Paul, in ten days in the institution, a dozen visits of different representatives of the organs happened, which, however, did not find any violations: “We were examined, our social networks studied, and studied the hall. And our hall is a small, even tiny St. Petersburg cafe with buns, no mass events can be held there, even if you really want to. ” When it seemed that the checks came to the end, on November 13, “strange people” without masks came to the cafe. ” They made the same order for 500 rubles and did not respond to the requests of the cafe’s employees to observe the distance. Then armed police and employees of Rospotrebnadzor appeared - they blocked the exit and began to examine. Later, a police officer paid for one of the “strange visitors”.

“We were closed here and now, instantly,” says Steinluht. - Everyone was taken to the street, they did not allow them to pick up the products, to clean, turned off the light and brought them out, sealed the cash desk, sealed the front door. I cannot believe that all this is connected with violations of the requirements of Rospotrebnadzor, because

I know how the department checks and what are the consequences. They do not pass with the participation of ten police officers for sure. ”

As the basis for a visit on November 13, the department’s employees presented the appeal of the famous St. Petersburg “fighter with gays” Timur Bulatov, in which he demanded to check the cafe for a mass event. According to the activist, one of the visitors to Zoom Cafe was broadcasting the Bock Open Film Festival through a personal laptop.

“This is already absurd,” says Pavel Steinluht. -The cafe cannot be responsible for the fact that a person with a laptop leads some kind of broadcast from him. In addition, there is not a single document or photograph confirming that this was happening. At the same time, the festival itself is not prohibited in our country. And it is not extremist. There are people who treat him well, there are people who treat him badly - we do not treat him at all. ”

At the same time, according to Paul, the organizers of the “Bok O Bok” offered Zoom Cafe the information partnership, but did not receive an answer from the institution.

Milonov vs.
The day before the closure of the cafe, November 12, police officers and Rospotrebnadzor came with an unscheduled check of the Palma’s creative space, where the opening ceremony was held on the 13th LGBT-Kinofestival BOK ON BOK. This was the reason for the transfer of the event online, to the Zoom video conferences application. Later, on the air of the Rain TV channel, State Duma deputy Vitaliy Milonov stated that it was he tore off the opening ceremony.

The confrontation of Milonov and the festival "Boques O Bok" lasted not the first year. The organizers call the festival a cultural space in which homosexual, bisexual, transgender and Quir-blessings will be able to freely show and explore their identity, and the deputy will be propaganda paid by foreign investors.

““ Boac about the side ”is a bunch of perverts, a propaganda event, it is held at foreign funds,” Milonov explained to Novaya Gazeta. - Naturally, such a festival should not be held. This is not a cinema festival, but a festival of propaganda films calling to change Russian legislation. ”

Remove suspicions

For employees of Zoom Cafe, the situation is a catastrophe. Due to coronavirus restrictions in the institution, revenue has already fallen, I had to reduce shifts, and now the whole state has been left without work.

At the same time, what caused the increased attention to the work of the institution - still a mystery: when examined, the police referred to the appeal of Vitaly Milonov, but the deputy himself in a conversation with the “new” denies/ “Of course, I did not contact the police, it is not true,” he says. - The owner is lying. Apparently, he wants his omissions and close some jambs, for some reason involving my name. I don’t know about this cafe and certainly never wrote about him anywhere - it is not interesting. ”

In search of justice, Pavel Steinlukht turned to the Commissioner for the Protection of Entrepreneurs' Rights in St. Petersburg Alexander Abrosimov with a request to remove all absurd suspicions (they said that they were understanding the situation in the situation in the situation). In addition, the owners of Zoom Cafe are preparing an appeal to the prosecutor's office.

COMMENT

Alina Pchelintseva, spokeswoman for the festival "BOK ON BOK"

“We are very sorry that the Zoom cafe was injured. But this has become an extremely indicative situation: you must agree, confuse the cafe and the online platform-a new level of their desperate, but this also shows their level of awareness not only in LGBT questions.

This is not the first time that we are faced with such a homophobic reaction, but for the first time we feel such a distinct pressure of the authorities on our partners. In the conditions of pandemia, they came up with a new way. There is a saying: to whom is a war, and to whom the mother is native. Also here, pandemia and Rospotrebnadzor are used as a club to put pressure on us and others. ”

Ksenia Khabibulina