On 7 February, the Winter Olympics will begin in the Russian city of Sochi. The competition, which will be attended by athletes and sports fans from hundreds of countries across the world, will be overshadowed by the rise of homophobia and the persecution of LGBT people in Russia.
This repression has taken both legal forms, proscribing the rights of LGBT people to demonstrate and agitate for their rights, as well as informal, “popular” forms, such as the harassment and assault of individuals by violent gangs.
Homophobic laws are not new to Russia. Homosexuality was banned under the Stalinist USSR from 1932, and while the ban was formally lifted in 1993, providing information about LGBT issues has been illegal in many regions for some time.
The situation has markedly worsened in the last year. In June 2013, the Duma (parliament) voted through an amendment to Federal Law prohibiting the distribution of “information which propagandises a denial of traditional family values and non-traditional sexual relations.” Advocates of the law claim they are protecting children from homosexual “propaganda”. In reality they have made it illegal for LGBT people to campaign publicly for their rights, to protest against homophobia or even to discuss LGBT issues in the public sphere.
To organise a Gay Pride march, to hand out a leaflet or even to write a blog about LGBT rights could result in prosecution and a fine of up to one million rubles.
These legal restrictions reinforce a blanket of silence and fear beneath which violent attacks on LGBT individuals thrive. Emboldened by the government’s measures and the rise in homophobic popular feeling, violent gangs have begun to seek out, target and brutally attack people they suspect of being gay.
Just as national legislators justify legal restrictions in the name of protecting children and the sanctity of family, and by associating non-heterosexual relations with child abuse, so these gangs call themselves “Parents of Russia” and “Occupy Paedophilia”.
Their day-to-day activity consists of anonymously meeting LGBT people on gay dating websites, arranging meetings with them, then filming themselves savagely beating their victim.
Violently homophobic groups like this are present in many Russian cities, and the number of people assaulted and killed for their sexuality has sharply increased.
Russia is not the only country to have seen new waves of anti-LGBT repression.
In India, the Supreme Court recently ruled that a colonial-era anti-sodomy law was still legal, potentially paving the way for the criminalisation of India’s LGBT community. The law, introduced by the British in 1860, would render sexually active LGBT people “unapprehended felons”. Though the government claims it is seeking to overrule the law, the actions of the Supreme Court has appalled many Indians.
In Uganda, parliament passed a bill in December 2013 which makes homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment. The bill, if it gains the signature of Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, will significantly increase the criminalisation of Uganda’s already persecuted LGBT community, and even makes failure to report suspected homosexual acts an imprisonable offence.
As in Russia, “official” state homophobia works in tandem with populist anti-gay strands in civil society. Support for the law has been fostered by Ugandan newspapers and magazines, which also publish the names and addresses of public figures they allege to be gay. In 2010, one Ugandan magazine, Rolling Stone, published a list of a hundred people they claimed were LGBT, accompanied by their home addresses and a suggestion they be executed.
In Nigeria, too, and elsewhere, governments are using homophobic legislation as a means of scapegoating and whipping up hatred against LGBT minorities. They often do so in concert with religious and nationalist forces which blame anyone who deviates from the conservative family ideal for the problems of society.
In the coming weeks, when the eyes of the world will be on the Russian Olympics, socialists must demand freedom, dignity and equality for all people, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation.
