Widespread homophobia affects Russia’s online communities - and little is being done to stop it

It is known as the Russian Facebook, and it is the 8th biggest social networking site in the world, with over 239 million registered users and 55 million active daily. It is VKontakte (VK), and it is host to videos of rapes, threats to kill, and the humiliation of gay people.

While the world tunes in to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, hundreds of gay, lesbian, and transgender Russian citizens will be persecuted and attacked; the result of plots formed online by homophobic groups buoyed up by Putin’s anti-gay propaganda laws.

“Occupy Paedophilia” was one of the leading groups to feature in a Channel 4 Dispatches programme, broadcast last Wednesday, which exposed the extent of the violence faced by the LGBT community. The group has a prominent presence on VK, with over 90,000 followers – as well as other local factions pulling in more supporters.

Occupy Paedophilia use the site to connect with gay men, posing as potential love interests, before luring them into situations where they will be attacked, a process they refer to as “safaris” using “bait”.

Uploaded regularly to the site, films show victims being violently attacked and humilliated. This is content that is easily available to view, and is “liked”, passed around, and shared on the site, seemingly without impediment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest This month Human Rights Watch released this video showing the full extent of violence perpetrated against Russia’s gay communities. Credit: Human Rights Watch / YouTube



Warning: This video contains footage some viewers may find disturbing

The leader of Occupy Paedophilia, Ekaterina Zigunova, has posted screenshots of abuse she has received from UK television viewers after the airing of the Dispatches investigation, in which she featured heavily.



Despite the group claiming on screen that they are not neo-Nazis, but rather upholding a moral obligation to rid Russia of paedophiles (whom they conflate with homosexuals), the VK pages of Occupy Paedophilia and other similar groups are littered with Nazi insignia.

So what is VK doing about the profiles and groups which organise and post evidence of the criminal activity (although not recognised as hate crime under Russian law) which has brought so much widespread international criticism and resulted in calls for a boycott of the Sochi Winter Olympics?

When contacted by the Guardian, George Lobushkin, VK’s press officer, pledged to delete the content. “We do our best to remove the content that violates our terms of service, as fast as possible. Videos of violence and abuse are forbidden,” he said.

“We also block and delete communities where users call to violence or illegal actions against gay people or any other people. Please note that we are the only Russian social network that lets its users select a same-sex person when specifying their relationship status.

“But it is very important for VKontakte to be an independent company, equidistant from any ideological position or belief. People can express themselves freely, as long as they don’t commit illegal acts or call others to those.”

A screenshot of one of Occupy Paedophilia's 'safari' videos shows a man being harassed and beaten for his sexuality. Photograph: YouTube

VK is not the only social network site on which Occupy Paedophilia is operating. YouTube returns over 23,000 search results for the gang, and hate propaganda from Russian fascist groups is tweeted often.

Kirill Maryin is a teenager in Novosibirsk, Russia’s third largest city, who has set up the Twitter account, @ru_lgbt_teen. The profile’s name is simply Gay Teen from Russia, with a picture of an SOS sign, and the bio: “World, help us! I plead you! History must not happen again!”

Kirill tweets about the everyday discrimination that he faces, as well as coverage of Russia’s politics, authorities, and how Russia’s homophobia is being covered by external news outlets.

He told the Guardian he started the account to help the world understand the struggles of the LGBT population in Russia from the viewpoint of a teenager on the ground, rather than a celebrity campaigner.

“General information about gay life in Russia has come from Nikolai Alekseev and his project GayRussia in the past few years.

“I wanted people who live abroad to hear the true story of life for LGBT teenagers from Russia. I have no husband in Switzerland, I do not live in the ECHR, I do not organise Gay Pride in Moscow. I am an ordinary LGBT teenager, and in this country, that is incredibly dangerous.

“Gays have become targets of crimes and human rights violations. The Russian state uses LGBT as a shorthand for ‘internal enemies’. Homophobia is very much prevalent in our society.”

Gay Teen from Russia (@ru_lgbt_teen) Gay Olympic athlete punches with rainbow glove at Sochi http://t.co/iQSRMXJoPa с помощью @gaystarnews

The time Kirill feels the impact of homophobia the most is at school. “I have been insulted and humiliated, and the teachers pretend that nothing is happening. I am called ‘motherfucker, fag, cock, a non-entity, a mistake of nature’.



“Once they told me I should move to the Netherlands because that country is for fags. I hate my school, my class and my teachers. I have no friends there, and I dream of it ending.

“I am not considered a person. I have low self-esteem. Psychologists cannot do anything, and they are often also homophobic. Honestly, I cannot see an end to this problem.”

As Lobushkin points out, the site does have LGBT groups. I ask Kirill if thse help him. He tells me that although he has an account and has added many LGBT groups, he limits his activity and he does not openly identify as gay on the site because he could be targeted.

“I would like them to remove all the fascist calls and actions. I do not feel free there.”

Children 404 is one of the biggest LGBT support groups on VK. The 404 element is a reference to the internet error message – ‘404 not found’ – because gay people feel isolated and ignored, and because Russian authorities like to pretend that gay individuals do not exist.



Or as the group’s founder Lena Klimova explains: “they believe LGBT people arrived from Mars”.

Lena Klimova, the founder of Children 404, a support group for LGBT teenagers in Russia. Photograph: Lena Klimova

Klimova is 25 and lives in Nizhny Tagil, in the Urals area of Russia. She is openly gay and works as a journalist. Children 404 focuses on helping gay teenagers.

“I saw that they needed help, at least this kind of help – the possibility to tell other people about themselves, the chance to speak out and possibly get some advice, to form a community online.

“Homophobic harassment is very common on VKontakte, as in real life. And you don’t necessarily have to be openly gay, or a gay at all.



The harassment hits everybody who is speaking out in favour of gays, everybody who looks like they might be gay, and everybody who does not conform to the standards of a “real man” or a “real woman”.

On Wednesday, the same day as Channel 4’s Dispatches programme aired, Klimova was charged under Putin’s new gay propaganda laws.



She has been told her court hearing will be in a couple of weeks, and she faces a large fine. Lena was pursued after Children 404 was investigated by Vitaly Milonov, a prominent politician in St. Petersburg.



“I am depressed. I feel very sad, hurt and bitter. LGBT people are experiencing harsh oppression: they are living in fear, they fear being fired, being beaten up, being killed just without any reason. In Russia such harassment isn’t considered hate crime. It is terribly frightening.”

Despite pledging to remove the violent content and deleting the relevant accounts, five days after the Guardian’s enquiry only one video had been removed, turning a blind eye to the thousands of videos still hosted on VK; men looking into the camera with their eyes full of fear, while members of Occupy Paedophilia grab them by their necks and punch them, and Zigunova laughs.

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