Police carried out several raids on LGBTQ clubs in Moscow on Friday night and early Saturday morning (02/12), according to local press.
“The operations were carried out in Moscow since 10pm on Friday (local time), reported the Telegram channel called Ostorozhno Moskva (Be careful Moscow, in free translation).
According to the channel, the police arrived at these establishments and asked for the identity documents of the patrons. The people were released after their identifications were photographed.
Furthermore, according to witnesses cited by Ostorozhno Moskva, the police raided several saunas claiming they were looking for drugs.
“Everything is done under the guise of a regular anti-drug operation. No violations were detected, but they ruined people’s leisure time. In the sauna they behaved disrespectfully, forcing people to lie on their backs on the floor,” the Telegram channel reported.
According to the Sota portal, police raided three facilities in the center of Moscow, also under the pretext of an anti-drug operation.
“In the middle of the party, the music stopped, and the police invaded the corridors. There were also foreign citizens at the party. When leaving, they photographed their passports without authorization. This is a well-known scheme, this is how similar clubs were closed in Saint Petersburg”, commented a witness quoted by Sota.
LGBT movement as “extremism”
This Thursday, Russia’s Supreme Court banned the LGBTQ movement, which it considered “extremist”, in a decision that triggered a wave of outrage among the country’s sexual minorities.
The measure prohibits both LGBTQ advertising and advertising, as well as “generating interest and encouraging adherence” to the movement.
Homosexual activists and jurists contested that, according to the Constitution, Russia is a secular state and accused the Kremlin of wanting to “control” the consciences of Russians, while at the same time inculcating “‘traditional’ family values, supposedly incompatible with the movement activities.”
On Friday night, St. Petersburg’s Central Station, one of the city’s oldest gay clubs, announced it was closing due to the previous day’s decision.
Since 2022, Russia has already passed a law to ban what it called “LGBTQ propaganda” among adults – acts that promote “non-traditional sexual relations” – and the carrying out of gender reassignment treatments and medical interventions, as well as gender reassignment. in official documents, in addition to also prohibiting the adoption of children by LGBTQ people.
costume agenda
In November, before the United Nations Human Rights Council, Russia asserted that it protects the rights of LGBTQ people, arguing that “restricting public demonstrations in favor of non-traditional sexual relationships or preferences” is not censorship.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to campaign for another six-year term in March, is trying to maintain his domestic popularity by investing in an agenda of customs to the detriment of liberal values, which he associates with the West.
In a speech last year, he said the West had adopted “somewhat strange fashions, like dozens of genders and gay parades,” but that he had no right to impose them on other countries.
Determined to transform his country into a moral reserve against Western relativism, Putin recently assured that homosexuals “are also part of society”, but criticized the obsession with equality for sexual minorities.
md/le (EFE, AFP)