By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Oct 30 | In a report issued today by the United Nations Committee on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, the 18 member panel of independent experts concluded that Russia fails to protect journalists, activists, prison inmates, gays and lesbians and others at odds with authorities from a wide range of abuses, including torture and murder.
In the report's findings, the panel found that there was great need to urge and propose that the Kremlin implement numerous legal reforms. These included narrowing the broad definitions of terrorism and extremism under current Russian law, decriminalising defamation cases against journalists and granting appeal rights to people forced into psychiatric hospitals by Russian courts. The report detailed incidents of violence against lesbian, gay and bisexual persons, including documented cases of police harassment. According to the panel, it had received reports of people being assaulted or even killed because they were gay or lesbian. The panel said it was concerned at the “systematic discrimination against individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation” in the Russian Federation.
Homosexuality was decriminalised after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, but many Russians today are vehemently opposed to expansion of gay rights or gay-rights demonstrations. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is an outspoken foe of gay rights and has blocked attempts to hold gay pride marches in the capital, calling them "satanic gatherings."
The U.N. panel – which this week assessed the compliance of Russia and four other countries with the U.N.’s 1966 international treaty on civil and political rights – receives its information from various U.N. agencies, non-governmental organizations and cases heard before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
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