![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crazyjaneIn the last few days I've listened to sports commentators talk about how going to Russia for the Winter Olympics will be okay, because the government has promised not to be nasty to any gay athletes. I've heard news pundits saying it's not as bad as 'gays' are making it out to be over there. And I've seen people on social media even defend Russia's homophobic laws, because if you believe their polls, 73% of their population don't want their kids to know that gays exist, and 3 out of 4 of them claim they don't even know any gay people, anyway.
It's sickening. Actually, it's beyond sickening. It's fucking unbelievable. Stephen Fry was slammed for writing to British PM David Cameron and actually begging him to boycott the Winter Olympics. He was accused of over-reacting. And a Russian Olympic pole vaulter sat down in front of the cameras to call another athlete 'disrespectful of our laws' ... for daring to wear rainbow nail polish.
A friend sent me these links.
Some talk about intimidation and torture, all targeting teen boys who are gay or bisexual; the groups use the social media site VK.com to lure the boys to remote spots, then bully and attack them, while videoing their efforts. A signature element of the attacks involves what the attackers call 'urine therapy' - pouring urine over their victims' heads or throwing it in their faces. Some of their victims have reportedly committed suicide.
One tells, in horrific detail, about the torture and murder of a young gay teen by a group of neo-Nazi skinheads.
"According to the assailants, they beat the victim with a bat for a few hours, cut him with a knife, stained him with paint, tore his anus with a pry bar and filled his anus with [builders expanding insulation] foam. The injuries apparently led to his death following the torture, said the bandits. The victim probably screamed and called for help, but since he did not know the Russian language well, nobody came to his aid. Also, neighbors in the building appeared to have aided the bandits in torturing the victim."
http://americablog.com/2013/08/russian-gay-kidnap-boy-torture-video.html
http://www.thegailygrind.com/2013/07/25/russian-neo-nazi-groups-tricking-and-torturing-gay-male-teenagers-the-blood-is-on-putin-hands/
https://sites.google.com/a/spectrumhr.org/www/hot-news-1/recentneonazivictimdiesanti-naziactivistsindanger
http://topinfopost.com/2013/08/07/gay-teenager-kidnapped-and-tortured-by-russian-neo-nazi-group
These groups say their aim is to stop paedophilia. Authorities have even praised them for 'fighting the sins of society'. They're thugs. Torturing, murdering thugs - and what they do is not only overlooked, but actively encouraged, by the thugs who wrote those laws, and the thugs who enforce them and slap the attackers on the back.
If this doesn't make you nauseous, outraged, devastated and horrified all at once, then nothing will.
Is it over-reacting? Fuck that. We shouldn't just be boycotting the bloody Olympics, we should put Russia under the same sanctions we did South Africa during the apartheid years. The murdering bastards should be locked up forever, and those who give them shelter should be locked up right alongside them.
An entire generation of queer young people is in danger - and people are pissing about because they want to get a few fucking medals. That's everyone from political leaders on down to the person in the street or the neighbour who doesn't like it if you have a rainbow sticker on your car.
Shame on them. Shame on all of them. Shame on all of us who don't at least add our voices to say this is nothing less than state-sanctioned torture and murder.
It's sickening. Actually, it's beyond sickening. It's fucking unbelievable. Stephen Fry was slammed for writing to British PM David Cameron and actually begging him to boycott the Winter Olympics. He was accused of over-reacting. And a Russian Olympic pole vaulter sat down in front of the cameras to call another athlete 'disrespectful of our laws' ... for daring to wear rainbow nail polish.
A friend sent me these links.
Some talk about intimidation and torture, all targeting teen boys who are gay or bisexual; the groups use the social media site VK.com to lure the boys to remote spots, then bully and attack them, while videoing their efforts. A signature element of the attacks involves what the attackers call 'urine therapy' - pouring urine over their victims' heads or throwing it in their faces. Some of their victims have reportedly committed suicide.
One tells, in horrific detail, about the torture and murder of a young gay teen by a group of neo-Nazi skinheads.
"According to the assailants, they beat the victim with a bat for a few hours, cut him with a knife, stained him with paint, tore his anus with a pry bar and filled his anus with [builders expanding insulation] foam. The injuries apparently led to his death following the torture, said the bandits. The victim probably screamed and called for help, but since he did not know the Russian language well, nobody came to his aid. Also, neighbors in the building appeared to have aided the bandits in torturing the victim."
http://americablog.com/2013/08/russian-gay-kidnap-boy-torture-video.html
http://www.thegailygrind.com/2013/07/25/russian-neo-nazi-groups-tricking-and-torturing-gay-male-teenagers-the-blood-is-on-putin-hands/
https://sites.google.com/a/spectrumhr.org/www/hot-news-1/recentneonazivictimdiesanti-naziactivistsindanger
http://topinfopost.com/2013/08/07/gay-teenager-kidnapped-and-tortured-by-russian-neo-nazi-group
These groups say their aim is to stop paedophilia. Authorities have even praised them for 'fighting the sins of society'. They're thugs. Torturing, murdering thugs - and what they do is not only overlooked, but actively encouraged, by the thugs who wrote those laws, and the thugs who enforce them and slap the attackers on the back.
If this doesn't make you nauseous, outraged, devastated and horrified all at once, then nothing will.
Is it over-reacting? Fuck that. We shouldn't just be boycotting the bloody Olympics, we should put Russia under the same sanctions we did South Africa during the apartheid years. The murdering bastards should be locked up forever, and those who give them shelter should be locked up right alongside them.
An entire generation of queer young people is in danger - and people are pissing about because they want to get a few fucking medals. That's everyone from political leaders on down to the person in the street or the neighbour who doesn't like it if you have a rainbow sticker on your car.
Shame on them. Shame on all of them. Shame on all of us who don't at least add our voices to say this is nothing less than state-sanctioned torture and murder.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-17 01:16 am (UTC)The problem with attempting to organise a boycott of these particular winter Olympics is going to be with obtaining the ideological "shove", if you will. I doubt any major government is going to stand behind a boycott (the US won't, because there's still a substantial fraction of the USA's population who believes that what's happening in Russia is a Right and Good thing, and Only What Those Perverts Deserve - the kinds of sweet, charming folks who are monetarily and ideologically supporting the Ugandan laws which make being homosexual a capital crime - and they're a substantial fraction of the portion of the USA's population which turns out to vote), so in a lot of ways it's going to be down to the individual athletes.
Thing is, most professional athletes tend toward either political apatheism (they don't know and they don't care; and at times they can put a lot of effort into not knowing and not caring) at best, or political conservatism at worst (the conservatism is understandable - they earn a lot of money very fast, at a very early stage in their lives, and there's no real guarantee they're going to be able to keep up the income to keep them in the style to which they become accustomed after their career ends). There are very few examples of athletes actually taking political action (particularly at the Olympics - those two athletes who performed the "black power" salute on the winner's podium at the Mexico City Olympics? They were formally reprimanded for it) and definitely very few examples of athletes being encouraged to do so. So it's probably going to be down to athletes speaking up and coming out as being non-heterosexual - something which is a professional risk for full-time sportspersons.
The boycott of South Africa was an international thing with a strong ideological "shove" behind it (mostly from the USA), and even there, "rebel" teams occasionally went across to play games, or the South African sporting teams were hosted for "rebel" tours now and again. What changed South Africa was decades of constant unrest, and internal attitudinal changes, not the sporting isolation of a fraction of their population (and isn't it interesting that most South African sporting teams are still majority lily white?).
All of the above going to say while I agree the Russian laws are barbaric, and the actions of certain Russian vigilante gangs are doubly so, I doubt sporting boycotts are going to be a strong argument one way or the other in eventually getting these laws repealed.