How anti-gay groups use 'Russian Facebook' to persecute LGBT people - PHOTO+VIDEO

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.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.”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.”(theguardian.com)ANN.Az