Police in Moscow raided multiple queer bars in the early hours of Saturday, November 30 and arrested the director of a travel agency serving LGBTQ+ customers under laws criminalising “LGBT propaganda.”
The raids came on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s Supreme Court outlawing the “international LGBT movement,” paving the way for arrests and prosecutions of the country’s LGBTQ+ community.
Social media videos from the Arma nightclub showed clubbers sitting on the dancefloor while riot police shouted orders.
Another video showed people being walked out of the popular Mono gay club in central Moscow with their hands above their heads, with a police van parked outside.
The interior ministry said police had also raided a nightclub – reported to be Inferno – had been “propagandising the ideology of the banned LGBT movement.”
Police in the Russian capital also arrested the director of a travel agency for gay men on suspicion of “organising tours for members of the LGBT community.”
The 48-year-old director of Men Travel was suspected of “preparing a trip for supporters of non-traditional sexual values to go to Egypt for the New Year holidays”.
Rights groups say the country is waging an unprecedented crackdown on LGBTQ+ people that has seen the owners of LGBTQ+ bars arrested and anyone associated with promoting LGBTQ+ rights prosecuted.
