var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};
With just one day before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi are set to begin, a new poll from Pew Research Center shows that a plurality of Americans agree that the IOC’s decision to award the games to Russia was ill-advised. The poll, released Tuesday, shows that 44 percent of Americans believe it was a “bad idea” to host the Winter Games in Russia, with an additional 24 percent sharing that they weren’t sure whether or not Sochi was the right choice.
While there are a host of reasons for concern — including environmental damage, mind-numbing corruption, and the fact that multiple buildings were built near the scenes of Circassian mass murders — most Americans cited security, safety, and terrorism issues as their greatest cause for pause. This, perhaps, makes a bit of sense — between the (specious) Chechen connection to the Boston bombers, as well as the recent Volgograd bombing, it’s not as if Americans aren’t unaware of the safety issues surrounding the North Caucasus. Likewise, there’s been a recent, bizarre uptick among conservative Americans in support for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As such, when 62 percent of Americans cite security as their largest concern, with only 4 percent pointing to Russia’s LGBT treatment, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. But a new Human Rights Watch report should remind us of why Russia’s LGBT treatment should, perhaps, garner that much more concern. As the painfully detailed report notes:
LGBT people face stigma, harassment, and violence in their everyday lives in Russia, and LGBT victims of violence and groups told Human Rights Watch that these problems intensified in 2013. Victims in cities including Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk told Human Rights Watch they were attacked in public places, abducted, beaten, harassed, threatened, and psychologically abused. They told Human Rights Watch that they were afraid to go to the police to report violence, fearing further harassment and believing the police would not bother to pursue their attackers. When victims did lodge complaints with the police, few investigations followed.
Unfortunately, Sochi doesn’t present the last quadrennial sports event that will allow massed protest against LGBT treatment. Not only will Russia be hosting the 2018 World Cup, but both Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Lviv, Ukraine, are vying for the 2022 Winter Games. This anti-LGBT narrative we’ve seen unfurl in the former communist sphere has only just begun to accelerate — and the opportunity for Americans to protest, we can hope, will only swell commensurately.
Image via the Kremlin
