Russian LGBT activists have addressed the Prosecutor General’s office claiming MP Elena Mizulina and the recently approved bill on ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations to minors’ promote hatred towards gays.
The news was announced by Nikolay Alekseyev, one of the leaders
of Russian LGBT community, in an interview with the popular daily
Izvestia. Alekseyev gave no details on who submitted the
complaint or when it was done.
“Mizulina should be jailed for infringing minorities’ rights
and inciting hatred for those who have non-traditional
orientation. Millions of people suffer because of her
actions,” Alekseyev told the newspaper.
Yelena Mizulina chairs the Lower House Committee for Children,
Women and Family. She is one of the main sponsors of the
controversial bill and has repeatedly defended it in the mass
media.
“Our bill has a very particular objective — to put a barrier
between children and illegal information. People are not annoyed
by gays, they are annoyed by unsolicited and emphatic promotion,
by propaganda,” Mizulina told the press.
The State Duma last week passed the bill, introducing heavy fines
for propaganda of non-traditional sex relations to minors.
Initially the bill banned gay propaganda, but the formula was
changed before the final reading after gay activists and human
rights campaigners repeatedly noted that direct mentioning of
gays was discriminatory.
However, the current draft stretches the definition of propaganda
as far as “promoting the distorted understanding of social
equality of traditional and non-traditional sex relations.”
Some Russian mass media and public figures have already noted
that this can only be understood as a ban on tolerance.
The bill is yet to be approved by the Upper House and signed by
the president to come into force.
LGBT activists held protests against the bill on all days of
hearings (and on the days when the hearings were scheduled, but
postponed) and every time these protests ended in clashes with
the bill’s supporters and in eventual detentions. However, the
number of protesters and their opponents never exceeded a few
dozen.
As the ban on non-traditional sex propaganda was passed by the
Duma it received critical comments from German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, who said through her government representative that the
bill contradicted the European Convention on Human Rights.
The official said that German cabinet still hoped that the bill
banning the propaganda of non-traditional sex would be canceled.
The head of Russian parliamentary committee for international
relations, Aleksey Pushkov, promised there would be no reaction
to the German Chancellor’s call.
“This call will not be heard. An acute conflict of values is
looming” Pushkov tweeted.
This article originally appeared on: RT