"My freedom defends yours" - pro-gay banner in Moscow leads to verbal abuse and arrest

Last edited Mon Oct 13, 2014, 03:28 PM - Edit history (1)

Kirill Kalugin was attacked and arrested when he tried to protest peacefully during Paratrooper's Day in St. Petersburg.

In Kirill Kalugin’s case, he was surrounded by around half a dozen towering foes – muscle-bound men dressed in Russian paratrooper regalia, who locked elbows and cornered him as they hurled verbal abuse and shoved him around. They made it clear they didn’t like him or his message. You see, Kirill is gay. But, because of a law passed in June 2013, he’s not supposed to feel free to mention it in public. Or do anything, really, that might violate the incredibly vague offence of “promoting homosexuality”.

So, when he braved Palace Square on 2 August 2013 – during the annual paratroopers’ day celebrations – and unfurled a rainbow flag with the words “This is propagating tolerance” painted across the front, he knew he was likely to be putting himself in harm’s way.

Police separated Kirill from his attackers. But then they arrested him. Unfazed, Kirill returned to the same square on 2 August this year, with another rainbow flag bearing the message “My freedom defends yours”. Again, he was promptly arrested.

The June 2013 law – which is aimed at “protecting” children from “harmful influences” – breezed through the Duma, with only one lawmaker abstaining from voting. “Propaganda of homosexuality” has no legal definition. “‘Propaganda of homosexuality’ isn’t a thing, so it’s very hard to know what it means. If you are gay and open about it, basically that’s considered ‘propaganda’,” Polina Andrianova, director of the St. Petersburg-based LGBT group “Coming Out”, told Amnesty International.

http://www.amnesty.org./en/news/my-freedom-defends-yours-propaganda-and-truth-about-homophobia-russia-2014-10-11