Why homosexuals are more likely to be killed in Russia?
Adopted Russian law on gay propaganda ban has led to increase in murders and violence against persons based on their sexual orientation. This conclusion was suggested by Aleksandr Kondakov, candidate of sociological sciences at the European University in St. Petersburg and Centre for Independent Social Research. He recently published the monograph “Hate Crime against LGBT people in Russia”, based on the analysis of court cases, which somehow mention sexual orientation of the defendants. The researcher discusses and shares his findings with representatives of Lenta. ru Agency.
Lenta.ru: You mentioned that on average 20-35 crimes took place annually against lesbians and gay men. If we look at the country scale, the numbers are not so shocking?
Kondakov: We do not say that our study captures the full picture of situation. In our case, the statistics rather demonstrate the development of trends. Today, police does not consider crime, which is motivated by the hatred of LGBT people. In our study, we also strongly relied on data from most reliable and conservative source – the court. In the process of study, the official data was informally generalized. Speaking about discovered unimpressive numbers …. even when one human is perished, this is already tragedy. But here, we have dozens to die because they are gays and lesbians…
(informal translation by GLORI Foundation, original article in Russian can be accessed at www.lenta.ru)