Belarus is trying to copy neighboring Russia’s repressive LGBTQ+ policies, activists say

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — When police raided the home of a gay couple in the Belarusian capital Minsk and brutally beat them, officers did not hide that the crackdown mirrored similar actions in neighboring Russia.

The students, Andrei and Sasha, said security forces demanded they unlock their smartphones and hand over the names of “gays in Minsk and Moscow.”

“They banged our heads against the door frame, threatened to report us to the university and said this was just the beginning,” said 20-year-old Andrei, who, like other gay and transgender Belarusians interviewed by The Associated Press insisted on being identified only by his first name due to security concerns.

“They wanted to expose an ‘underground network’ of gays in Belarus, following the example of Russia,” he said of the autumn raid. “They openly told us that if it is banned in Russia, it should also be banned in Belarus.”

Belarus decriminalized homosexuality in 1994 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the deeply conservative country under authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko does not recognize same-sex marriage, and there are no laws protecting LGBTQ+ rights.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has passed repressive laws restricting LGBTQ+ rights in recent years, and close ally Belarus is poised to follow suit and propose legislation to ban “gay propaganda.” While this has yet to be defined in Belarus, the Russian version bans any endorsement of LGBTQ+ activities and non-traditional sexual relationships.

But even before the measure was drafted, life for the LGBTQ+ community in Belarus has deteriorated, rights activists say.

They say 32 people have been arrested and beaten in seven cities in the past three months, including 10 transgender or non-binary individuals and activists. Some were released after interrogation, fined and allowed to emigrate, they say, while some remain in custody, charged with “distributing pornography” and up to four years in prison.

More people have likely been arrested, but they may be afraid to contact lawyers, according to LGBTQ+ rights group TG House Belarus.

Lukashenko “is using repression against the LGBTQ+ community to gain some praise from Russian authorities and to strengthen support among conservative residents of Belarus,” said the group’s coordinator, Alisa Sarmant.

“To a large extent it is a copy of what is happening in Russia, but in Belarus all these discriminatory practices take uglier and harsher forms,” Sarmant said.

Moscow maintains close ties with Minsk and is using Belarusian territory as a springboard for its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Last year, Russia’s Supreme Court effectively banned LGBTQ+ activism and labeled “the international LGBT movement” an extremist group.

“We will also have to take similar measures,” said Natalya Kochanova, Lukashenko’s closest adviser and speaker of the upper house of parliament.

“We have family values, traditions that we pass on from generation to generation – family traditions, Orthodox Christianity,” she said, echoing the Kremlin line.

After Russia banned gender transition last year, transgender people in Belarus started to face problems, even though the procedures are not banned. According to Sarmant, this year the government has rejected more than 80% of those seeking official permission for gender-affirming procedures and changing their gender marker in official documents. By comparison, 10-15% were rejected in 2020, she said.

She cites, among other things, “catastrophic shortages” of hormonal treatments, degrading medical procedures and political prosecutions.

LGBTQ+ activists took part in the mass protests that swept Belarus in 2020 after Lukashenko won a sixth term in an election criticized as rigged by the opposition and the West. Authorities responded with a brutal crackdown, arresting some 65,000 people over the next four years.

There are approximately 1,300 political prisoners in Belarus, including Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski. Many imprisoned opposition leaders and activists have spent more than a year in complete isolation, without medical care.

As the crackdown spreads, LGBTQ+ people are leaving Belarus and seeking asylum abroad.

Tania, a 39-year-old transgender woman, told AP that she was arrested twice for following opposition sites banned as extremist and for supporting Ukraine. She added that she was beaten and subjected to electric shocks while in custody. She eventually fled the country.

During the latest raid on her apartment, security forces broke her tooth and two ribs, jailed her for 12 days and ordered her to repent on camera, she said.

“Abuse behind bars continued day and night,” she said. “I was humiliated. They tried to push the taser into my rectum or place it against my genitals. … In a country where terror reigns, you either agree with the government’s line or you have little chance of survival without access to hormonal treatment.”

Marat, a 37-year-old transgender man, told AP that authorities last year demanded he transition and change his documents to restore the gender marker he was assigned at birth. By then he said he had “pumped up muscles and had grown a beard.”

“I couldn’t believe that the doctors are demanding that everything go back to the way it was and that this absurdity is happening in the 21st century,” he said, adding that he tried to dispute it but eventually fled to France with his four children. .

Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for three decades, has publicly mocked homosexuals. After Germany’s openly gay foreign minister called him “Europe’s last dictator” in 2012, Lukashenko responded: “It’s better to be a dictator than gay.”

All independent LGBTQ+ groups have been closed in Belarus, security forces regularly raid nightclubs in Minsk where underground parties are held, and advocates say the KGB is blackmailing community members into collaborating.

“Intimidation, arrests and blackmail have been used in Belarus for years to create a so-called ‘LGBTQ+ database’ and declare an entire social group dangerous,” said Pavel Sapelka of the Viasna Center, the most prominent rights organization in Belarus. the country.

In April, the Ministry of Culture expanded its definition of pornography to include “non-traditional relationships,” meaning anyone found in possession of such material could face criminal charges and up to four years in prison.

“Belarus must abolish these outrageous amendments and end the cynical persecution of LGBTQ+ people,” said Anastasiia Kruope, assistant researcher for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch.

Rights advocates say LGBTQ+ people in Belarus continue to face stigmatization in society, pointing to a high suicide rate in the community.

“State policies have a particularly strong impact on young LGBT+ people, who have been living for four years in the conditions of an artificially created ‘sterile’ space, a Russian agenda and the constant broadcast of hate speech,” said a report last year. month by the rights group Justice Initiative.

The legislation being prepared ahead of next month’s presidential election aims to punish anyone who promotes “non-traditional sexual relations, gender reassignment (or) pedophilia.”

TG House Belarus started a petition against the legislation and collected 33,000 signatures. Sarmant suggests that the recent raids were “a revenge for this campaign, so that everyone could hide, be afraid and – best of all – remain silent.”

Andrei and Sasha, whose home was raided, said that if the bill becomes law, they would leave Minsk rather than “wait for a prison sentence.”