Day: August 11, 2013

The Prime Minister, David Cameron has rejected a call from broadcaster and actor Stephen Fry to strip the City of Sochi of the Winter Olympics in February 2014 because of the treatment of LGBT people in Russia.

His intervention follows growing international concern about the rights of LGBT in Russia following a new law passed in June threatening heavy fines and prison to people spreading ‘gay propoganda’ about homosexuality to people under the age of 18. The law also extends to people visiting Russia.

In an open letter addressed to the Prime Minister, Jacques Rogge, Lord Coe and Members of the International Olympic Committee he compared the emerging plight of LGBT people in Russia to the situation of Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s following the decision to grant the 1936 Olympic Games to Berlin.

David Cameron said on Twitter he shared Fry’s “deep concern about the abuse of gay people in Russia”, but did not support a boycott.

He said:

“I believe we can better challenge prejudice if we attend.”

Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: 

“The Prime Minister has said he wants to export same-sex marriage to other countries. But it’s not enough for Britain to set an example, we should also be actively fighting attacks on LGBT people across the world, and in particular by governments.  It’s sad then that Mr Cameron won’t take a strong stand against  explicitly homophobic laws in Russia.   A boycott of the winter olympics would send an unambiguous message that Britain stands for equality and fairness.”

Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympics Committee says that Russia’s written reassurances over the Winter Olympics needed clarification.

Mr Rogge in Moscow for the World Athletics Championships, said:

“We don’t think it is a fundamental issue, more a translation issue.” 

“We are not clear about the English translation of the Russian law and we want clarification of this translation to be able to understand what has been communicated to us.” 

He stressed that, under the Olympic Charter, sport was a “human right and should be available to all regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation”.

Stephen Fry’s open letter reads:

Dear Prime Minister, M Rogge, Lord Coe and Members of the International Olympic Committee,

“I write in the earnest hope that all those with a love of sport and the Olympic spirit will consider the stain on the Five Rings that occurred when the 1936 Berlin Olympics proceeded under the exultant aegis of a tyrant who had passed into law, two years earlier, an act which singled out for special persecution a minority whose only crime was the accident of their birth. In his case he banned Jews from academic tenure or public office, he made sure that the police turned a blind eye to any beatings, thefts or humiliations afflicted on them, he burned and banned books written by them. He claimed they “polluted” the purity and tradition of what it was to be German, that they were a threat to the state, to the children and the future of the Reich. He blamed them simultaneously for the mutually exclusive crimes of Communism and for the controlling of international capital and banks. He blamed them for ruining the culture with their liberalism and difference. The Olympic movement at that time paid precisely no attention to this evil and proceeded with the notorious Berlin Olympiad, which provided a stage for a gleeful Führer and only increased his status at home and abroad. It gave him confidence. All historians are agreed on that. What he did with that confidence we all know.

“Putin is eerily repeating this insane crime, only this time against LGBT Russians. Beatings, murders and humiliations are ignored by the police. Any defence or sane discussion of homosexuality is against the law. Any statement, for example, that Tchaikovsky was gay and that his art and life reflects this sexuality and are an inspiration to other gay artists would be punishable by imprisonment. It is simply not enough to say that gay Olympians may or may not be safe in their village. The IOC absolutely must take a firm stance on behalf of the shared humanity it is supposed to represent against the barbaric, fascist law that Putin has pushed through the Duma. Let us not forget that Olympic events used not only to be athletic, they used to include cultural competitions. Let us realise that in fact, sport is cultural. It does not exist in a bubble outside society or politics. The idea that sport and politics don’t connect is worse than disingenuous, worse than stupid. It is wickedly, wilfully wrong. Everyone knows politics interconnects with everything for “politics” is simply the Greek for “to do with the people”.

“An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 on Sochi is simply essential. Stage them elsewhere in Utah, Lillyhammer, anywhere you like. At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.

“He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same. He may claim that the “values” of Russia are not the “values” of the West, but this is absolutely in opposition to Peter the Great’s philosophy, and against the hopes of millions of Russians, those not in the grip of that toxic mix of shaven headed thuggery and bigoted religion, those who are agonised by the rolling back of democracy and the formation of a new autocracy in the motherland that has suffered so much (and whose music, literature and drama, incidentally I love so passionately).

“I am gay. I am a Jew. My mother lost over a dozen of her family to Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Every time in Russia (and it is constantly) a gay teenager is forced into suicide, a lesbian “correctively” raped, gay men and women beaten to death by neo-Nazi thugs while the Russian police stand idly by, the world is diminished and I for one, weep anew at seeing history repeat itself.”