By Melanie Nathan, August 26, 2013.
Through the Winter Olympics, the world is endorsing Putin’s homophobic and anti-gay regime by coming to the #GulagOlympics at Sochi. The Russian Orthodox Church stands at the front line of the Putin anti-gay machine, encouraging and endorsing laws that persecute, proclaiming an ideal that gay can be ‘prayed away.’ And visibly empowered, vigilante gangs hound teens, while Russian LGBT leadership may be confused as to how to be real leaders, given the complexity of the issues, and all this is combined with what may be perceived as Western meddling.
What needs attention is the elephant in the room. What needs to stop is the the state-sponsored homophobia, inspired by new anti-gay propaganda laws with anti-gay vigilante groups continuing to abuse through the use of the Russian Facebook-style social network where they lure 16-18 year old victims using fake personal ads. Videos have appeared of young teens hoping to meet others, aged 16-17 year old guy (the age of consent in Russia is 16, not 18). These teens continue to walk into traps.
The gang members beat them up, and after torture conduct forced outings on camera for the entire world to see. This is the same infamous Neo-Nazi group inspired by Maxim Martsinkevich, leader of so-called “Occupy Pedophilia.” It now seems like they have changed their tactics and are much more careful covering their faces than when they first started doing this. Many of us took screenshots and Russian authorities have all the evidence they need to make arrests. But they will not and these thugs are in essence as good as employed by Putin to do his dirty work.
One can easily find their identities by following their profiles and postings on the social network and no one connected to Russia can divorce themselves from responsibility – not for as long as they remain silent.
(- https://vk.com/padik97?w=wall158486337_1619 – https://vk.com/okkupay_pedofilyay38okk_pedo38 – https://vk.com/club57382548 – https://vk.com/id220918061 – https://vk.com/irkompani – https://vk.com/miheich – https://vk.com/padik97?w=wall158486337_1682 )
As Spectrum Human Rights Alliance notes,
“As usual, Putin’s law enforcement is not interested in prosecuting or stopping this group. Young people are suffering and their lives are ruined.”
Now does the self-proclaimed leader of LGBT Russia, Nikolai Alekseev know which side to choose or is a side about to chose to him? Yet again? And no one is talking about the elephant in the room. Is he under pressure from the Putin Government? Did he switch sides? Is he to be trusted? At one moment Putin seems to be waging a phoney PR campaign on Russian State TV endeavoring to reassure the World, that gays in Russia have a great life and are all safe. And he may well be using the likes of Nikolai Alekseev to convey his message. And then in the next moment a complete shift! One only has to have followed the past few weeks of weird postings by Alekseev, who seemed for some days to have been a greater voice for Putin and a lesser voice for LGBT Russia.
One more recent example of the current confusing messages:-
Less then 15 hours ago Alekseev was trying to assure Western media that “he feels absolutely safe as a gay person on the streets of Moscow”, broadcasting anti-Western messages from Putin’s TV screens and on Facebook:
Now suddenly he is seen on social media screaming for help after the (alleged) Russian SWAT team raided his apartment and broke the door ..
Of great interest on the topic is this post by Spectrum Human Rights Alliance, posted Aug 25, 2013,:
“Rapidly growing worldwide wave of protests against Russian anti-gay laws and calls to boycott 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi is making Kremlin occupants visibly uncomfortable and shaky. Putin’s macho image can not possibly suffer a failure such as empty stadiums in Sochi. It was only a matter of time for him to pull a bag of old but proven KGB style methods and go after those LGBT figures who are most often appear in the public eye.
In a perfect sync as if during the ballet at Bolshoi theatre, known to the West but albeit self-proclaimed Russian LGBT leaders suddenly started to make pro-Kremlin statements often on state owned and operated TV channels such as infamous NTV and RT. While the Western media is scrambling and trying to find new, and hopefully, objective voices among Russian LGBT community the average Russian gay is just shrugging the shoulders listening to the speeches given by Nikolay Alekseyev who claims that the topic of LGBT discrimination in Russia is highly exaggerated and makes multiple anti-Western statements. Other LGBT organizations express an opinion on Facebook that further Western sanctions would lead to the Russian LGBT community isolation and possibly to the Cold War era relationship with the West. Equally puzzling change of tune has been detected in the recent statements made by Anton Krasovsky who is lamenting about a wave of boycotts for Russian products. Oddly enough, all of these public figures claim to have “activists on the ground” who allegedly share and support their opinion. Considering the fact that Russian LGBT community is plagued by constant internal squabbles fights for Western funding and total disorganization, one can claim to have a great organization and a constant feed of information from the imaginary activists on the ground.
This time we should give it to Putin. His PR and KGB resources played the whole thing quite well. Talking about damage control … The entire media circus with known to the West public LGBT figures embracing Putin’s regime on his own TV channels and denouncing Western human rights initiatives is just like killing two birds with one stone. LGBT community inside Russia will lose its voice for a certain period of time before actual leaders emerge and hopefully the West would cut off financial assistance to the compromised LGBT organizations in Russia.What can we do in this situation and how can we help to the ordinary people in Russia? One has to realize that Putin is a front for a certain circle of Russian elite who has substantial investments in Western countries where their children and grandchildren live. The last thing they would want is to lose an ability to travel and make further investments. Boycotts and targeted visa bans coupled with economic sanctions would cause them to remove Putin from power without any efforts from abroad. It is clear that we have to rally up more people and work with US Congress on enlarging Magnitsky’s list, boycott Russian products, ban export of software and hardware to Russia, boycott Russian Olympic Games and move them to Canada.”
“Investigators from Russia’s Investigative Committee have visited Alekseyev at his place of residence to carry out a search sanctioned by a court,” an unnamed Committee representative said Tuesday.
Alekseev had previously reported the search via Twitter. The head of the children’s issues committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament, Yelena Mizulina, and her first deputy Olga Batalina had previously complained to the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office that Alexeyev had posted offensive remarks about them on Twitter, in comments about Russia’s recent introduction of a ban on “gay propaganda” to minors.”
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