Russia’s suppression of gays

Russia likes to portray itself as an international leader, but in the field of human rights it’s running at the back of the pack.

Whether you’re looking at the political opposition, journalists or ethnic minorities, the country’s record is the same: dismal.

The only thing you can say about that record is it’s consistent. Russia has proven time and again that it’s an equal-opportunity oppressor.
Its latest rights-bashing target is gays. And, unfortunately, it’s exported some of its officially sanctioned anti-gay proclivities to neighbors like Armenia.

{mosads}Lesbian, gay, transsexual and bisexual people — LGBTs, in today’s parlance — have long been a target of discrimination, harassment and physical attacks in Russia.

This has included government refusals to issue permits for gay-pride parades in cities across Russia.

In many instances law enforcement has condoned physical attacks against gays by declining to bring the attackers to justice. But until a couple of years ago, discrimination against gays wasn’t institutionalized.    

That changed when President Vladimir Putin signed legislation known as the gay-propaganda law on June 30, 2013.

The law’s proponents say it protects children by outlawing the promotion of “non-traditional sexual relations.”

Anyone who violates the statute by exposing minors to information about gay lifestyles faces a fine. The fine is a hefty $30,000 for an organization — as opposed to an individual — that runs afoul of the law.

In addition, the legislation imposes a nationwide ban on gay-pride parades.

Predictably, the law’s passage sparked international protest from the gay community, human-rights organizations and many governments.
Opponents said the real objective of the statute was not to prevent gays from talking about their lifestyle but to vilify and bring scorn on them as decadent and repugnant.

They also said the provision banning the promotion of non-traditional sexual relations used such vague language that authorities could bring charges under the legislation on a whim simply to harass gays.

Russia responded to the global criticism by digging in, refusing to entertain the idea of repealing the statute.

“It bears remembering that this legislation has nothing to do with discrimination against sexual minorities, which, as any other discrimination, is absolutely prohibited by the Constitution of the Russian Federation,” asserted Konstantin Dolgov, the Foreign Ministry’s Commissioner for Human Rights.

“The amendments have been adopted solely for the sake of protecting children, who can be too young to objectively and critically assess the information forced upon them, which might do harm to their psyche and imbed distorted perceptions concerning human relations.”

A few weeks after Russia enacted the law, Armenian lawmakers introduced a similar one in August of 2013.

Armenia, which depends on Russia for its energy and has Russian troops on its soil, may have introduced the legislation at Moscow’s suggestion. Or the bill’s sponsors may have acted on their own, thinking it would please Russia.

Regardless, the condemnation of the legislation inside and outside Armenia was so ferocious and came so quickly that the bill was scrapped.  
For several months the Russian law threatened to make a shambles of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a project the country had not only staked billions of dollars on, but also its national pride.

Gay-rights and human-rights organizations in Russia and abroad threatened to mount a campaign to convince athletes and spectators to boycott the Olympics because of the gay-propaganda law.

Clumsy Russian officials exacerbated the fiasco by saying that the country would enforce its laws on those coming to the Olympics, including the gay-propaganda statute.

“No one is forbidding an athlete with non-traditional sexual orientation from coming to Sochi, but if he goes onto the street and starts propagandizing it, then of course he will be held accountable,” Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko declared.

To calm the waters, other Russian leaders finally had to make the embarrassing announcement that the country would not enforce the law during the Games.

“The Olympics is a major international event,” said Igor Ananskikh, head of a parliamentary committee on physical training, sports and youth. “Our task is to be as politically correct and tolerant as we can be. That’s why we made the decision not to raise this issue during the Games.”

Almost two years after the law was passed, the international furor has ebbed, but the global outrage and resentment remain.

One of the lessons Moscow learned from the debacle is that even its political lapdogs like Armenia can’t embrace legislation that attracts such global condemnation.

Russia isn’t heeding the lessons by changing its human-rights posture, however — and that’s a tragedy not only for it as a civilization but for the world at large.
 
Sahakyan is a human rights activist based in Armenia.