Russian Activist Charged Under “Gay Propaganda” Law
An LGBT activist risks becoming the first person convicted under Russia’s new anti-gay law after police charged him for holding a one-man protest against it.
Isakov, 24, is not the first person charged under the law, passed in late June, but stands a good change of being the first person convicted under it, his legal team said. Police in the northern city of Murmansk arrested four Dutch nationals making a film about discrimination faced by LGBT Russians in July, but a local judge decided not to pursue the charges. A Moscow court referred charges against six activists arrested for a protest outside a children’s library a few days later back to the police, citing irregularities.
Police filed the charges on the basis of a complaint from a teenager in the northern Arkhangelskaya province who had seen Isakov’s protest online. The teenager, Erik Fedoseyev, wrote that he had been forced to write the complaint by his father, who hates LGBT people because his ex-wife, Fedoseyev’s mother, had left the family to live with another woman when he was four. Intolerance and incomprehension lead many LGBT Russians to hide their orientation and start straight families.
The charges are only the latest consequence Isakov has faced for his protest. He told London’s The Times that four policemen beat him so badly after he left the protest that he had to walk on crutches for 10 days. When his injured knee allowed him to return to work at a local branch of Sberbank, the former Soviet banking behemoth, he learned that he had been abruptly fired.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/police-charge-russian-activist-under-gay-propaganda-law-for
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