Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 24 – On the basis of
both standing internal directives and the new Russian law against “homosexual
propaganda,” the FSB is targeting LGBTs even more aggressively than the KGB did
in Soviet times but to the same ends of discrediting opposition groups in the
eyes of the population and forcibly recruiting gays to report on the leaders of
such groups.
One FSB officer told yopolis.ru that
Soviet officials applied its anti-gay laws only rarely but that “the KGB
recruited agents from among homosexuals” to gather information about the
dissent movement by threatening them with criminal charges if they did not
cooperate (yopolis.ru/cityboom/occasion/11881).
Olga Gert, a LGBT activist, recalls
that practice. She says that KGB officers often “invited a homosexual for a
conversation and then proposed working for the authorities or being charged. “It
seems to me,” she says, “that today we are returning to Soviet times” in this
regard.
The situation has been getting worse
for several years and not just since the law on “homosexual propaganda” was passed,
according to the FSB officer with whom the news agency spoke. According to him,
that agency has data showing that LGBTs are “actively cooperating with
opposition figures” and actively involved in protest actions.
Natalya Tsymblaov of the
Heterosexual Alliance for LGBT Equality says that her group has much evidence
that the FSB is regularly inviting LGBT activists and rights activists for “conversations”
and seeking to use them as sources or agents. Her group recommends either not
going or not answering any questions.
But some have gone, and the
questions they have been asked show what the FSB is interested in and concerned
about. Mariya Kozlovskaya, a lawyer who works with LGBTs, says members of that
community are asked about “numbers, contacts with foreign foundations,
especially American and German, and about their financing.”
“It seems to us that they are
recruiting their agents in this milieu,” she continues. And judging from some
documents that she has seen, that process and raids against places where LGBT
people are known to congregate have been going on for some time and are going to
continue.
One of the documents to which Kozlovskaya
refers was prepared by the FSB Administration for Moscow and Moscow Oblast. In
its report on recent harassment of LGBT groups in Moscow and Murmansk, Yopolis.ru provides two large excerpts which say a lot
about official thinking concerning homosexuality.
“The dissemination of the ideas of
homosexualism and the use of narcotics are acquiring an ever larger character,”
the report says. According to operation
data, members of sexual minorities and also drug dependent citizens and members
of organied criminal groups involved with drug trafficking are actively being
used by the special services and organizations, including non-governmental one0
of foreign states with the goal of realizing projects of a destructive
direction.”
“In particular,” the report
continues, “in recent times has been noted the active participation of the
listed categories of persons in the carrying out of protest actions, including
on May 6, 2012 on Bolotnoye Square in Moscow, which were directed at harming
the interests of the Russian Federation. Quite often devotees of homosexualism
and drug users are used by destructive forces as organizers of illegal public
actions which have as their goal the destabilization of the political and
social-economic situation in the country.”
As the news
service points out, this report contains several very disturbing “ideas.”
First, it equates homosexuality and drug trafficking. Second, it links both to
the political opposition, a tie that officials can use against both
groups. And third, it ties LGBT
activists to Western governments and NGOs, thus opening another front against
them.
The arrest and then release of LGBT
activists in Murmansk on Monday and the OMON raise in Moscow on June 2 have
attracted a certain amount of media notice in the West, but this latest
testimony about what the FSB is doing shows that the Russian government’s
attack on LGBTs is broader and more insidious, even though it has remained
largely out of sight.
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