In Tula, security forces and unknown masked men beat up participants of the Amore Party about “love, openness and sexuality”

Police officers, Center “E” and unknown persons wearing masks and without identification marks disrupted the Amore Party event in Tula and beat its participants. about this with reference to one of the victims writes OVD-Info also reports about the incident. , and the telegram channel “Caution, News”

The party took place at the Typography cultural center on the evening of February 17. According to the human rights project, security forces and masked men who called themselves participants in the war in Ukraine broke into the building and forced everyone present to lie on the floor, after which they began asking their names and ages, and taking photographs of them.

One of the party visitors told OVD-Info that during the check, security forces grabbed him by the hair and forced him to sing the Tula anthem. “Thank God, I fucking know the Tula anthem, because I grew up here,” the victim added. According to him, force was also used against other participants in the event.

Later, he and several other people, as the human rights project writes, were taken to a separate back room and beaten. Several other participants in the event were taken to the fire escape and forced to do squats. According to the interlocutor of OVD-Info, in the end the security forces selected several guys, presumably the most “feminine” in appearance, and took them to the police to draw up reports on “LGBT propaganda” (Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code). Participants in the event were also threatened that they would be sent to war in Ukraine.

“Caution, News” published a video that allegedly captured the moment when one of the Amore Party members was beaten . In the video, a man in civilian clothes punches and kicks a man lying in the snow and calls him “shit.” The victim is later told to stand up and is then stabbed in the head again. Several people in bulletproof vests and helmets, as well as unknown people in civilian clothes, are watching what is happening.

In another video , also published by the Telegram channel, a man standing near the cultural center is seen being pushed inside the building by unknown men in civilian clothes and balaclavas. At the same time, he says that “not from there”; in response, he was told to shut up. Shouts of “everyone down” can also be heard in the video.

According to Beware, News, the security forces were looking for “employees of government agencies, LGBT supporters, Navalnists, opponents of the SVO and the regime.” Some visitors were asked if they had participated in the 2021 protests and if they knew the location of the memorial to the victims of political repression. One of the girls at Typography, in a conversation with a security officer, said that she was a virgin. As the telegram channel writes, this “really captivated him.”

Updated at 1:30 p.m. Information has been added about who the security forces were looking for and other details of what happened.