Violent Video Draws Messages Of Intolerance On Russian Social Network
A video appearing to show four Russian men brutally beating a transgender woman is spreading on Russian social networks. It's the latest known case in a string of so-called vigilante attacks on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in Russia.
The three-minute clip, posted to a group page on VKontakte, a popular Russian social network, begins with a man using a vulgarity to describe the violence he intends to inflict on the victim. He and three other men then punch and kick her multiple times, before stripping her pants off and attempting to force her to sit on a glass bottle. After the victim breaks the bottle on the ground and runs away, the men chase after her and the video stops.
Human rights advocates claim that a recent law banning the "promotion of nontraditional sexual relations" has created an environment that tacitly accepts hatred and even violence against LGBT Russians. Groups calling themselves Occupy Pedophilia and Occupy Gerontophilia have encouraged attacks on gay teens, claiming that their efforts will "reform" them.
It is still not clear who perpetrated the assault in the most recent video, but it was first posted August 12 on the "Only Street Fighting" VKontakte page, which has more than 530,000 members.
The video has spread to sites favoring LGBT rights, but comments under the original posting are overwhelmingly supportive of the attackers.
The language in many comments is too graphic to post.
Nikolai Kuntsevich, a VKontakte user from Samara, calls for the destruction of "these monsters," adding: "For now let them do what they want behind closed doors, but when they go out onto the street like this, it is necessary to drive them away. I wouldn't want my child, walking on the street, to see such (offensive term for gay men)."
Some messages express a desire to see the victim beaten further.
"Haha, it's too bad he ran away," writes Irbis Yaguarov:
Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-video-brutal-beating-lgbt-vkontakte/25082232.html
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