The Fear of Being Gay in Russia

As noted before on this blog, Vladimir Putin is emulating the tactics of Adolph Hitler and has used the pretext of "protecting ethnic Russians" to justify invading Crimea and interfering with Ukraine's internal affairs just as Hitler did with respect to Poland and Czechoslovakia.  In addition, as Hitler did to the Jews, Putin has unleashed hatred toward gays in an effort to (i) play upon existing bigotry and (ii) satisfy the Russian Orthodox and earn its fealty.  Meanwhile, life in Russia for gays has become down right frightening.  A piece in Politico looks at the ugly situation and the dangers that LGBT Russians increasingly face as well as the exodus of some from Russia seeking asylum.  Here are highlights:

[In 2006] Russia saw its first regional anti-gay law passed in Ryazan, 200 miles east of Moscow. It was the first official sign that the Russian authorities would resist the LGBT movement—a resistance that has grown and become increasingly violent as LGBT activism has grown over the last decade.

That violence hit Dmitry Chizhevsky in November 2013 when he attended a weekly meeting for the LGBT community and friends called the Rainbow Tea Party in Saint Petersburg. “It was a place to socialize, drink some tea and play some games,” Chizhevsky says. It wasn’t a political event, and Chizhevsky wasn’t much for protests. . . . . “I saw two guys next to the door wearing masks,” Chizhevsky recalls. “After that I heard shots. The first one hit my eye. They yelled, ‘Where will you run, faggot?’ and one hit me several times with a baseball bat. Then the attackers ran away. One of the small balls [from a pneumatic pistol] stayed behind my eye.” The police ran a rather lackluster investigation and no one was ever arrested.

He became an unsolved statistic—just one of a growing number in Russia’s LGBT community who’ve been attacked or harassed in what has become an unprecedented crackdown.

In a country that increasingly punishes the “other” and where violence against select groups and individuals is often tolerated—and even encouraged—by the state, there’s become no greater target than being LGBT. A community that was just beginning to organize found itself under assault, the target of a deep-seated Russian homophobia that had now been embedded in law.

And for Chizhevsky, although he thought about staying in his native land, the price of being gay in Russia was ultimately just too high. Like more and more gays and lesbians over the last two years, Chizhevsky had had enough of Russia, a place where his sexual orientation alone seemed to make him an enemy of the state.

In July 2014, a little more than six months after the attack, Chizhevsky arrived in New York. . . . He was one of many Russian gays and lesbians to make that trek. U.S. asylum applications from Russians rose 15 percent overall in 2014, when there were 969 new cases. The U.S. government does not release the reasons people seek asylum, but asylum seekers like Chizhevsky say the spike is at least in part a result of the crackdown on the LGBT community.

“This is happening across the country and LGBT programs are being closed systematically,” Vinnitchenko says. “Our friends are in fear of persecution. The LGBT community here is in a kind of moral panic.” 

The shooting of Chizhevsky is one of dozens of attacks that have occurred in Russia in the last few years, and especially since President Vladimir Putin signed the federal anti-gay propaganda law in 2013. 

At the end of 2014, Human Rights Watch documented a growing number of beatings, harassment and kidnappings by vigilantes on the subway, in the street, and at clubs. Out of 78 victims of homophobic and transphobic violence interviewed in the investigation, 22 were afraid to report the attack to authorities.

The public health consequences of these laws have been brutal, according to Beloglazov. “When people are hiding, they move around from place to place and gravitate toward secret relationships,” he says. “They are afraid of seeking medical assistance.”

Russia and Eastern Europe are among the few regions in the world in which the AIDS/HIV epidemic is worsening, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The number of deaths from AIDS increased in 2013 by more than 22,000,” Dr. Vadim Pokhrovsky of the Russian Federal AIDS Center told Politico. “There are at least 200 new HIV infections every day.”

Freedom of speech is shrinking in Russia. It began with gays, but now it is the whole opposition.”

People will ask at times how Hitler and the Nazis came to power - Putin is showing us step by step how it can still happen.