The Saturday Profile: Russia’s Best-Known Gay Activist Has an Uphill Fight

AT first glance, it seemed like a breakthrough for homosexual equality in Russia. After years of battling the authorities, here was Nikolai Alekseyev, Russia’s most visible gay-rights campaigner, on a popular prime-time debate show called “Duel” recently talking about plans to hold a gay pride rally in Moscow.

But the discussion quickly deteriorated, with hostile and bigoted remarks coming not just from Mr. Alekseyev’s opponents but also from the host, who at one point equated homosexuality with pedophilia. When a woman in a Kentucky Derby-style hat started into a screed about “homosexual extremism,” he had had enough.

Calling the woman a lying “hag in a hat,” Mr. Alekseyev charged offstage, stamping a hole through the set as he left.

Any conversation about gay rights in Russia today is bound to be tense. But with Mr. Alekseyev, it can be explosive.

For six years, he has flouted a government ban and held an annual gay-rights event that he calls Moscow Pride. He has weathered arrests and attacks by neo-Nazi thugs, and once got into a shoving match with the press secretary of Yuri M. Luzhkov, the former Moscow mayor who has referred to Mr. Alekseyev’s protests as “satanic.”

With short blond hair and a round, youthful face, Mr. Alekseyev, 33, has the air of a maligned schoolboy out for retribution. He decided to become an activist after Moscow State University, where he was enrolled, refused to accept his graduate thesis, “Legal Regulation of the Status of Sexual Minorities.”

He is brash and provocative, even among would-be supporters. He has berated journalists for coverage he disagrees with.

“He is a complicated person and does not have a mild personality,” said Anna Komarova, a transgender activist allied with Mr. Alekseyev. “But laid-back people choose other occupations.”

BEING a gay-rights activist in Russia is not for the timid. At this year’s Moscow Pride, held outside the Kremlin last month, the two dozen or so participants stood little chance against the phalanx of police officers deployed to stop them. Most were arrested seconds after unfurling a rainbow flag or a placard denouncing homophobia. Gangs of muscular men wearing surgical masks and yelling antigay slurs chased away the rest.

Participants suffered only minor cuts and bruises, and all were released the same day. Mr. Alekseyev, who spent this year’s protest coordinating from an apartment — his father was recently found to have cancer, he said, and he could not risk being jailed as a repeat offender — said previous years were bloodier.

Few others in Russia have risked being as publicly outspoken — or just as out — as Mr. Alekseyev. He calls news conferences at fancy Moscow hotels, gives interviews to newspapers and has appeared on television with increasing regularity. He has, for better or for worse, become the face of a budding campaign for gay rights in Russia.

His efforts have attracted news media attention and forced politicians to discuss the issue. But it is a steep uphill battle; asked to weigh in, Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s prime minister, said homosexuals deepen Russia’s demographic crisis. And Russia joined many African and Muslim-majority countries on Friday in voting against a United Nations resolution condemning discrimination against homosexuals that, nevertheless, passed.

Mr. Alekseyev, who founded the group Gay Russia in 2005, believes that there can be no advance in rights until gay people are allowed to protest publicly.

But in a country where the authorities view any sort of public protest with trepidation, his position has provoked hostility.

“This is a very dangerous thing,” said Aleksandr Khinshtein, a member of Parliament, and Mr. Alekseyev’s principal opponent on the recent debate show. “Homosexuality can never be allowed to be considered normal. It’s a question of survival.”

Even other gay-rights campaigners have criticized Moscow Pride, saying the rallies and the violence that typically accompanies them distort perceptions of the issue in Russia, where there is still significant confusion about what homosexuality is and what exactly gay people want.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 18, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the citizenship of Nikolai Alekseyev as a result of his marriage to his Swiss partner. He is not a Swiss citizen.

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Chinese Officials Beat Activist and His Wife, Group Says

Mr. Chen was released from jail last year after serving a 51-month sentence for disturbing public order and destroying public property — charges linked to his uncovering of forced sterilizations and abortions in the eastern Chinese city of Linyi.

But since his release, he has been under “ruanjin,” or “soft detention,” a kind of house arrest increasingly being used by the authorities to silence people who have not violated the law. The authorities once celebrated Mr. Chen, a 39-year-old self-taught lawyer, as a symbol of the country’s efforts to build a legal system, but they turned against him when he used the law to protest government abuse. Earlier this year, a video was smuggled out showing the circumstances of his detention. Reporters who tried to visit him were turned away by undercover police officers who had encircled his home.

Now ChinaAid, a human rights group based in the United States, says it has evidence of increased harassment, including beatings and the confiscation of personal property. The group, which released Mr. Chen’s video, says it has obtained a letter from Mr. Chen’s wife, Yuan Weijing, that details the couple’s most recent travails.

Contents of the letter were confirmed by a friend of the family, He Peirong. Ms. He, who describes herself as a Nanjing-based Internet activist, said she visited Mr. Chen’s hometown in late May and spoke with people related to his family.

According to Ms. He’s account and the undated letter, Ms. Yuan said that in February and March, Communist Party officials from Shuanghou, a suburb of Linyi, stormed the couple’s home. Ms. Yuan said she was bundled into a blanket and repeatedly kicked so hard that she still cannot stand straight. She said she saw her husband being tortured by the men, who twisted his arms and neck until he passed out. The couple were denied medical aid, she said, except for one intravenous drip from a village doctor. They had to stay in bed because of their injuries, she said.

The men came back repeatedly, according to Ms. Yuan’s letter, and confiscated legal documents related to Mr. Chen’s case as well as a computer, video camera, audio recorder, flashlight and television antenna. Metal sheets were fixed over the windows, and the power was cut off. Telephone lines had already been cut.

Still later, she said, men took away their books, pictures of their daughter and calendars off the wall. The authorities installed video cameras to monitor the couple.

The house arrest extends to the couple’s 5-year-old daughter, Ms. Yuan wrote, and Mr. Chen’s mother.

Local authorities did not answer phone calls seeking comment, but the use of house arrest appears to have increased in recent years as the authorities try to silence critics. Several pastors of the Beijing-based Shouwang Church, for example, have been under house arrest for months since trying to lead outdoor services after their meeting place was closed. The church refuses to place itself under government control.

The authorities seem especially nervous, with a string of political anniversaries on the horizon. On July 1, the Communist Party celebrates the 90th anniversary of its founding, and later this year is the 100th anniversary of the revolution that overthrew China’s emperor. Next year, a crucial, twice-a-decade party congress will choose the country’s leadership for the next 10 years.

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US developing activist technology

  Anti-government campaigners in Egypt use laptops to help their campaign to oust Hosni Mubarak The United States government is spending millions of dollars developing technology to help pro-democracy activists in the Middle East and China.

Washington has begun to open-up about the projects which include a "panic button" that lets protesters wipe their mobile phones if they are arrested.

State department official Michael Posner said that the US was investing money "like venture capitalists".

He also revealed that it was providing campaigners with technology training.

The US has budgeted $50m (￡30m) since 2008 for its activist projects, which include developing systems to get round internet-blocking firewalls.

"We are working with a group of technology providers, giving small grants," said Mr Posner, who is assistant secretary of state for human rights and labour.

"We are looking for the most innovative people who are going to tailor their technology and their expertise to the particular community of people we're trying to protect."

Mr Posner described the challenge of keeping ahead of government controls in certain countries as "a sort of cat and mouse game".

Internet shutdown

In what has become an almost standard reaction to growing political dissent, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain have all restricted access to the internet and, in some cases, temporarily shut it off.

Ironically, in some cases, US made technology has been used to help impose those restrictions, according to reports.

While private firms may take a more free market approach, the US government has been keen to leverage social networking to aid campaigners.

In 2009, it asked Twitter to postpone planned maintenance downtime so the site would remain available to Iranians who were protesting against the country's disputed election outcome.

Key-logging technology

Mr Posner also addressed the issue of government eavesdropping, citing the example of a Tunisian activist who had attended a US led training session.

His computer was found to contain key-logging software, designed to record and report everything typed on it.

Around 5,000 activists have received training, funded by the US government, said Mr Posner.

He insisted that the State Department was committed to pressing ahead with such programmes, but conceded that some of the technology could fall into the wrong hands.

He warned that putting tools for evading detection into the public domain might aid drug dealers or terrorists.

"The fact is that Al Qaeda probably has their own way of gathering some of these technologies," he said.

"The goal here is to protect people who are, in a peaceful manner, working for human rights and working to have a more open debate."

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