If you think America’s NSA spying scandal is bad, imagine if your government published the results of its surveillance on the nightly news.
This is chilling.
Vladimir Putin’s government is spying on LGBT organizations — recording audio of at least one private meeting — and then unabashedly airing that audio in a news program warning of the “threat to Russia†that the Western “homosexualists who attempt to infiltrate our country†pose.
The program, “Special Correspondent,” portrayed the activists as creating “excessively radical, aggressive propaganda” forcing a “war” between Russia and the West.
“By the end of the taped part of the broadcast, the program’s ‘correspondent’ Alexander Buzaladze warned that ‘the attack on Russia is already in full-swing,’ and it could be forced to adopt same-sex marriage and other gay rights in the face of ‘massive LGBT propaganda.'” Buzzfeed’s J. Lester Feder reports:
The LGBT activists were recorded without their knowledge during a meeting at the Holiday Inn in St. Petersburg on Oct. 12 and 13 intended to strategize about how to respond to the deterioration of LGBT rights in the country in advance of the Olympics. It was convened by the Open Society Foundation, which was founded by financier George Soros, and brought together representatives of six Russian LGBT organizations with key international partners, Human Rights Watch, the Human Rights Campaign, and All Out.
This surveillance was revealed on Nov. 12, when a state television channel broadcast audio from the meeting as part of a program presented as an exposé of the “threat to Russia†posed by the “homosexualists who attempt to infiltrate our country.â€
By highlighting Western human rights groups’ interest in Russia, the program also appeared to be laying the groundwork for potentially accusing LGBT rights activists of being “foreign agents,†which could be grounds for huge fines if activists are found to be taking money from foreign sources without reporting it to the authorities. The “foreign agent†law, passed last year, has been widely criticized for stifling Russia’s already embattled civil society.
Tuesday’s broadcast described the meeting of Russian LGBT activists and foreign partners as “a for-reasons-unclear, closed-to-the-public conference funded by the Soros Foundation [organized because] foreigners were afraid the LGBT-ization of Russia is going too slowly.â€
Here’s the entire video, which, obviously, is in Russian:
//www.youtube.com/embed/jU7IHDq4Chc
On Monday, November 18, Wall Street will be celebrating “Russia Day,†during which a Russian Deputy Minister will ring the bell at the closing of the New York Stock Exchange. There is a Change.org petition asking the NYSE to cancel the event.