Trump’s Friend Putin

I bet that Trump is envious of the way Putin handling the LGBT people in Russia… killing us off or locking us up.

In case you haven’t heard a Russian LGBTQ+ activist was murdered.

Russian LGBT Activist Is Found Dead; Friends Say She Was Threatened
NPR
By Sasha Ingber
July 23, 2019

A woman in Russia who was known for defending LGBT rights has been killed in St. Petersburg, according to activists and media reports that cite government statements about the death of Yelena Grigoryeva.

On Grigoryeva's Facebook page, supporters are posting messages that mourn her death and celebrate her life. Her last profile picture, shared just days before she died, shows Grigoryeva standing in the street, in sneakers, holding a poster in support of three Russian teenage sisters who killed their father after enduring years of physical and sexual abuse.
[...]
On Sunday, her body was discovered in the bushes near her home; Grigoryeva had been stabbed multiple times, according to Russian news website Fontanka. Authorities have reportedly arrested a 40-year-old man from Bashkortostan, in western Russia, as a suspect in her death.

Grigoryeva often received death threats, an activist named Dinar Idrisov wrote on Facebook. He said she had recently "been a victim of violence" and was "regularly threatened with murder."

She was also listed on a homophobic website that directed visitors to hunt down homosexual, bisexual and transgender people, Idrisov and local photojournalist George Markov said.

Even though it wasn’t about LGBTQ+ rights, protesting the government in Russia take courage.

Russia detains more than 1,000 people in opposition crackdown
Reuters
By Gleb Stolyarov, Andrew Osborn
July 27, 2019

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian police rounded up more than 1,000 people in Moscow on Saturday in one of the biggest crackdowns of recent years against an increasingly defiant opposition decrying President Vladimir Putin’s tight grip on power.

The detentions came around a protest to demand that opposition members be allowed to run in a local election. Authorities had declared it illegal and sought to block participation, but thousands of people turned up anyway in one of the longest and most determined protests of recent times.

Chants of “Russia without Putin” and “Putin resign” echoed through central Moscow as guardsmen clad in riot gear beat back protesters with batons and roughly detained people.

At least one woman and a man appeared to have suffered serious head wounds. Activists said the crackdown was the harshest since a wave of anti-Kremlin protests in 2011-12.

The Russians are stirring up hate for LGBTQ+ people in Russia.

Is the Infamous Russian Troll Farm Pushing Deadly LGBT Hate?
People identifying themselves as “Saw,” after the American horror films, have been trying for years to terrify gays in Russia. The murder of an activist last week may be linked.
The Daily Beast
By Anna Nemtsova
July 25, 2019

MOSCOW—Thousands of people stood in silence at an anti-government rally in downtown St.Petersburg, Russia, on Wednesday night.

The demonstrators demanded an end to violence against Russia’s LGBT community and political opposition. The minute of silence was devoted to the victim of a terrible murder, Yelena Grigoryeva, a 41-year-old gay activist who was stabbed to death last week.
[…]
“The Saw site has been publishing photographs of lesbians, gay men, and transgender, threatening to kill them, but neither police nor investigators react to these threats,” gay rights activist Igor Kochetkov said in a video addressed to the authorities. “And if you think that citizens like us do not deserve to be defended, find yourself a different job.” 
[…]
The first hit list appeared in 2016. “It included up to 800 names of people from the Russian LGBT community, opposition activists, their children, and just random people like me, who posted funny memes of Putin as Gollum on  social media pages—at that time I was not an activist,” Yulia Rusa, a 42-year-old interpreter told The Daily Beast.

One of the websites was just shutdown by the government, Pink News reported that “A website designed to help users to hunt and torture Russian gay people has finally been taken down by authorities after more than a year online.”

Meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights found Russia had violate LGBTQ+ people human rights.

Russia Fined for Anti-LGBT Actions
European Court Finds Russian Authorities Discriminated Against LGBT Groups
Human Rights Watch
By Kyle Knight
July 17, 2019

The European Court of Human Rights ruled this week that the Russian government must pay 42,500 euros in damages to three lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights groups for having refused their registration in recent years.

From 2006 to 2011, Rainbow House, the Movement for Marriage Equality, and the Sochi Pride House attempted to register their respective organizations with Russian authorities. The government denied their applications, claiming the organizations “will destroy the moral values of society” or “undermine [Russia’s] sovereignty and territorial integrity…by decreasing its population.”

Most perniciously, in denying Movement for Marriage Equality’s registration, the government construed LGBT rights activities as “gay propaganda,” and said the organization’s work amounted to “extremist activities.”

Formally called the law “aimed at protecting children from information promoting the denial of traditional family values,” the “gay propaganda” law – a classic example of political homophobia – bans the “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors,” a reference universally understood to mean a ban on providing children with access to information about LGBT people’s lives. The ban includes, but is not limited to, information provided via the press, television, radio, and the Internet.

I bet Trump and his cronies dream of a law like that here.