If being a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person is dangerous anywhere, it’s in Russia, where savage attacks against the LGBT community are being carried out by men claiming they do it for the public trust and to protect children, according to a new video report released by Human Rights Watch on Tuesday.
The footage was compiled from videos of attacks that the assailants have posted online.
According to HRW, victims are often attacked in public or lured into meeting someone for a date then abducted and held captive, “like a toy they can play with,” expressed an LGBT activist featured in the video. A sadistic clip from the video partially shows a man being forced to sodomize himself at gunpoint with a bottle.
“Victims told me that police is not interested in investigating anti-LGBT attacks because some police officials feel that gay people deserve it because of their sexual orientation,” Tanya Cooper, a Moscow-based Human Rights Watch researcher, told MintPress few days before the games. “Some government officials have called LGBT people “perverts” and conflated homosexuality with pedophilia. All this sends a very dangerous message to the Russian public, telling Russian people that violence against LGBT people is normal.”
Cooper said recent comments meant to downplay the problem by Russian President Vladimir Putin actually made the climate worse for the LGBT community when he connected homosexuality with pedophilia by speaking indirectly to homosexual people, “One can feel calm and at ease. Just leave kids alone, please.”
“Messages like this are exactly what groups like Occupy Pedophilia use as a pretext to attack and harass gay people in Russia,” Cooper continued. “They take it as a ‘green light’ to go ahead, and they feel a total sense of impunity for their crimes, to the degree that many don’t even try to hide their faces when they film the attacks.”
She said everyone who plans to go to Sochi — whether they are athletes, government officials, or guests — should use the opportunity to show their support for Russia’s LGBT community and call on the Russian government to protect LGBT people and repeal the federal anti-LGBT “propaganda law.”
“It’s important to show to Russian people that in many countries LGBT people are accomplished and accepted members of those countries’ societies, and they should enjoy the same human right rights as others in Russia,” Copper noted.
A separate letter written by a collective of 40 leading human rights and LGBT groups was published last week on HRW’s website.
In it, they say corporate sponsors of the Sochi Winter Olympics should act now to urge Russia to halt the rising tide of discrimination, harassment, and threats against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The joint letter is addressed to the 10 top sponsors of the Sochi Games — Atos, Coca Cola, Dow Chemical, General Electric, McDonald’s, Omega, Panasonic, Procter & Gamble, Samsung and Visa.
“Corporate sponsors are failing to stand up for Olympic values, which they proudly claim to be the core of the Olympic brand,” Andre Banks, executive director and co-founder at All Out, said in the letter. “The IOC (International Olympic Committee) has confirmed that the Olympic Charter’s Principle 6 includes protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation. While the Russian government may be considering amendments to the anti-gay law, sponsors still don’t have a good reason to remain silent while gays and lesbians in Russia suffer.”
YouTube video released by Human Rights Watch titled: Russia: Gay Men Beaten on Camera