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MOSCOW: Police in Moscow raided multiple bars early Saturday and arrested the director of a gay travel agency under laws criminalising “LGBT propaganda,” state media reported.
The raids came on the one year anniversary of Russia’s Supreme Court outlawing the “international LGBT movement,” paving the way for arrests and prosecutions of the country’s already repressed LGBTQ community.
Russian security forces raided at least three bars and nightclubs overnight “as part of measures to combat LGBT propaganda,” the state TASS news agency reported.
Social media videos from the Arma nightclub, the former premises of the Mutabor, showed club-goers sitting on the dancefloor while riot police walked around shouting orders.
Another video showed people being walked out of the popular Mono gay club in central Moscow with their hands above their heads, with a police van parked outside.
The interior ministry said police had also raided an unnamed nightclub on Skladochnaya Street that had been “propagandising the ideology of the banned LGBT movement.”
The Interfax news agency named the club as “Inferno Night”.
Police in the capital also arrested the director of a travel agency for gay men on suspicion of “organising tours for members of the LGBT community.”
The 48-year-old director of “Men Travel” was suspected of “preparing a trip for supporters of non-traditional sexual values to go to Egypt for the New Year holidays,” the TASS news agency reported Saturday, citing law enforcement.
The Kremlin has ramped up conservative rhetoric since launching its military assault on Ukraine almost three years ago, casting the conflict as a battleground against the West and its values.
Rights groups say the country is waging an unprecedented crackdown on LGBTQ people that has seen the owners of gay bars arrested and anyone associated with promoting LGBTQ rights prosecuted.
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