Gay men reportedly being detained in Belarus after police raid clubs
By Will Stroude
An unknown number of men have reportedly been detained in Belarus after police raided two gay bars last weekend.
According to the Russian LGBT Network Facebook page, authorities raided gay clubs Casta Diva and Club Burlesque in the capital of Minsk and detained “some visitors” for unspecified reasons.
An eyewitness told the group that authorities asked customers to “show their passports and copied data from them.”
In a statement, Human Rights First’s Shawn Gaylord said: “The reports out of Belarus are alarming. It is alarming that police targeted legal businesses, violated the privacy of their patrons, demanded personal information, and dragged some away to detention.
“The US government should raise these issues with their Belarusian counterparts and make it clear that the United States will not stand by while already-marginalized communities are targeted and attacked.”
According to reports, a popular gay dating site has also been also shut down by the government on the orders of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Lukashenko, who has been in office for over two decades, has previously accused of running an authoritarian regime in the Eastern European state, and responded to the accusations by saying it’s “better to be a dictator than gay.”
Same-sex sexual activity is legal in socially-conservative Belarus, but LGBT people face widespread discrimination.
Same-sex marriage was constitutionally banned in 1994, and LGBT persons are not allowed to serve in the Belarusian military on the grounds that homosexuality is a psychiatric disorder.
The reports comes just a week after a victim of alleged anti-gay abuse in Chechnya – a partly self-governing region in Belarus’s neighbouring Russia – became the first to go public with their claims.
Meanwhile, concerns continue to grow for missing Russian pop singer Zelimkhan Bakaev following reports the 26-year-old singer was killed after entering Chechnya earlier this year. was allegedly tortured to death.
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