Madonna is sued in Russia for promotion of homosexuality. LGBT news from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia for the period 17/10—23/10/2016

In Belarus the trial of the accused of pedophilia began. In Russia Madonna is sued for supporting the rights of homosexuals. In Ukraine, the public demands to find and punish those responsible for the disruption of LGBT film screening. Highlights of LGBT news from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia in one article. Digest Gaypress.eu from October 17 — October 23, 2016.

Gaypress.eu, Volha Kashtsialian

 

In Minsk, the court initiated hearings of Vyacheslav Davidovich who is accused of pedophilia.  According to the investigation data, his victims were the children of orphanage. He faces up to 15 years of jail. Davidovich was the founder and chairman of the international charitable public organization «Help for Orphans». He is already serving a sentence of 4 years imprisonment for committing economic crime.

Minsk residents were asked what they would do if their children admit their homosexuality. The majority of respondents answered that they would come to terms with this and accept their child. The younger the age of the respondents, the more tolerant  they are. A similar survey was conducted in Moscow, where a significant percentage of respondents would try to change their child’s mind, considering homosexuality as a disease.

24-year-old lesbian from Grodno Victoria believes that homosexuals from her city do not have difficulties to find a partner or a place to party. The things with family and colleagues are much worse, as the overall picture for homosexuals in Belarus looks rather pessimistic.

«Most hate us! Even the president humiliates us via television! … For the public, we look like people with the brain disorder,» — says Victoria.

The girl together with her girlfriend is considering to move to Western Europe, however she asks her fellow citizens to get rid of the hate towards LGBT people.

Madonna is sued in Russia for promotion of homosexuality. Some Russian activists have sued the pop singer for $ 5.3 MM, claiming they were offended by her support for gay rights during a recent concert in St. Petersburg.

Madonna did not respond, whether she comes to Russia for trial. However, for  the first meeting neither pop star, nor her representative didn’t show.

26-year-old resident of Mezhdurechensk, Russia has murdered his friend with the stone for a love confession through SMS.

When received another SMS with the «obscene content», the man offered his 41-year-old victim to meet. After drinking beer, the victim expressed «unconventional» attraction to the accused, which brought him to anger. Therefore he shot the friend with a stone several times till death, and then threw his body into the well and put some branches on top.

The killer came to the police with the confession.

In Russia the project «Children 404», besides the talks of its banning, launched a survey among people younger than 18 years. The profile contains about 40 questions, most of which require a detailed response in the form of a short story about yourself. Its results will be used to update Elena Klimova’s book about LGBT teens.

For the first time such a survey was held in October 2014, 378 people took part in it. Activists intend to conduct it annually.

In St. Petersburg LGBT-initiative group collects the facts of discrimination and violence against LGBT people in the framework of the program «Monitoring of discrimination». According to the organizers, anonymized data of the monitoring will be used in the fight for LGBT rights. The data will be also included in the annual report of the Ombudsman for Human Rights in St. Petersburg.

28-year-old Russian soccer player Roman Neustädter, who is playing at Turkish club «Fenerbahce», attended Football Pride Week in Berlin to support LGBT fans. Heterosexual midfielder decided to fight homophobia and sexism in football after having received direct insults in the comments to his post in Instagram.

In Chernivtsi, Ukrainian nationalists disrupted the screening of the documentary film «This is gay propaganda» by Canadian director of Ukrainian origin Maroussi Botsyurkiv. The movie is about gay activists who have participated in the Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity. Two people were injured  during this brawl.

Mayor of the city with the population of 250,000 Alexey Kaspruk condemned the attack on the LGBT visitors of the event, and also criticized police inaction in preventing the disruption of the event. Kaspruk publicly apologized for the incident.