Garbage in Ahshtyrskaya near Sochi. Credit: Environmental Watch on North Caucasus.

By Pavol Stracansky
MOSCOW, Nov 11 2013 (IPS)

Despite an endorsement from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for their adherence to environmental standards in preparations for next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russian authorities are cracking down harder and harder on people trying to expose the environmental cost of projects related to the Games.

Local environmental activists have for years been warning of what they claim is serious damage being done to Black Sea beaches as well as the Sochi National Park and the Caucasus national nature reserve near the city.

But as the Olympics get closer and preparations for the games advance, they say they are facing growing harassment, including intimidation, wiretapping, arrests and, possibly, attempts on their life, by authorities desperate to avoid environmental scandals after making a “Zero Waste” pledge for the Games.

“The harassment is increasing,” Andrey Petrov, World Heritage Campaign Coordinator at Greenpeace Russia told IPS. “Organisations and the people working for them are facing pressure.”“The harassment is increasing. Organisations and the people working for them are facing pressure.”

One group in particular, the Environmental Watch on North Caucasus (EWNC) appears to have become the authorities’ prime target.

Two of its members, Evgeny Vitishko and Andrey Rudomakha have been detained by local police, both for what the group claims are spurious reasons. Both, later released, believe they were followed and probably wiretapped by police before being picked up by officers.

But there have been even more disturbing incidents. EWNC activist Vladimir Kimayev recently ended up in hospital after a traffic accident when the brakes on his moped failed to work.

He told local media that he suspects they had been tampered with.

Rudomakha, head of the EWNC, told IPS: ”Of course, the reprisals we have faced come from the concerns of the authorities that we will continue to expose lawlessness in the preparations for the Olympics.”

The intimidation comes as authorities face serious questions over the environmental impact of the Games.

Billed by the hosts as the cleanest Olympics ever, the government has pledged the Games – to be held between Feb. 7 and 21 next year – will be ‘zero waste’.

But it has been revealed that the state-owned rail monopoly has been dumping tons of waste into an illegal landfill just north of Sochi, posing a contamination risk to local water sources.

The news was an embarrassment to local and federal authorities as it came during the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Conference on Sport and the Environment being held in Sochi.

At the event – which the EWNC and Greenpeace Russia were not invited to and which the WWF boycotted because of its criticism of the authorities’ approach to the environmental impact of the Games – IOC officials had given a ringing endorsement to the Games’ organisers, saying they had met environmental standards in their preparations for the Games.

But following the revelations about the landfill, some IOC members called for a full investigation. The IOC did not respond when contacted by IPS, but in a previous statement it said that local authorities were responsible for dealing with the illegal landfill.

Russia’s Environmental Protection Agency, which issued a report months ago identifying the use of the illegal landfill, said that it had not ordered the dump closed but that Russian Railways had been fined 3,000 dollars. The project it is working on – a 30-mile road and rail link between Games venues – has so far cost 8.5 billion dollars.

The company blamed the landfill on a subcontractor and last week said that the subcontractor had dealt with the problem. This came despite trucks being seen to be still dumping tons of waste in the landfill.

Residents in and around Sochi say that there are numerous other smaller dumps which have cropped up in the area, and point to the fact that since the Russian Railways project began wells near the village housing the illegal landfill site have dried up. Locals are forced to get their water from cisterns which are brought in once a week.

The problem with the illegal landfill is just one of many that environmental groups have said the Games have caused.

These include the destruction of thousands of hectares of rare forests, spawning sites for endangered fish, hibernation sites and migration routes for animals. They have also pointed to the fact that low quality projects which did not take into account local weather conditions had already led to some deaths as storms washed away sites under construction.

The government has denied any serious environmental problems connected to the Games and maintains it is meeting its environmental commitments.

But critics point out that the government has already backslid on promises to keep the Games as clean as possible. Its 51 billion dollar budget for the Games – the largest in Olympic history – has no provisions for dealing with construction waste.

Legislation has also been repeatedly amended to help Games preparation – at the expense of the environment.

Then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last year cancelled waste legislation from Games preparation plans, including construction of recycling facilities. This meant that Sochi authorities were free to do what they wanted with waste and soon after abandoned plans for recycling in favour of burning non-separated rubbish.

Prior to this, between 2006 and 2009, environmental conservation legislation was changed, allowing for sports events to be held in national parks and rare species of trees and plants to be destroyed for Olympic construction.

Authorities seem determined to ensure that the Games will go ahead with as little bad publicity over their environmental impact as ever and have already introduced legislation to ensure there will be no protests in the run-up and during the Olympics.

Mass meetings of any kind have been banned in most of the area in and around Sochi from Jan. 7 until Mar. 21 next year.

However, the environment has already been scarred, activists say, and the effects will be felt long after the Games end.

Greenpeace’s Petrov told IPS: “Apart from everything that has already been destroyed, there is a serious threat that after the Olympics many buildings will no longer be used and will start to fall apart and decay. This would lead to catastrophes over much wider areas than just those that have been built on.”

A poll carried out in April showed that 80 percent of Russians believe that homosexuality is a disease that can be treated. Photo credit: Bigstock

By Pavol Stracansky
ST. PETERSBURG , Sep 18 2013 (IPS)

“It’s okay to be gay in Russia if you live in a big city such as St. Petersburg or Moscow, study at university or work at a liberal company, but even here you can’t feel absolutely safe,” says Nikita Mironov, describing the climate of fear that many homosexuals face in Russia.

The editor of Queerculture.ru and a resident of St Petersburg, Russia’s second city, he tells IPS about the problems LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people experience in daily life.

“If you are openly gay in these cities, even then you get scared if you kiss your boyfriend in public or just take hold of his hand.” Then he adds, chillingly: “But if you live in a small town or the countryside, you have to keep your sexuality secret. If you don’t you’ll be beaten or killed.”

This is the daily reality for LGBT people across Russia, who are facing growing stigmatisation and attacks by homophobic neo-Nazi vigilante groups at the same time as politicians ramp up anti-LGBT rhetoric and new legislation criminalises support for non-heterosexual lifestyles.

“LGBT people in Russia have always faced prejudice, ignorance and discrimination, but now the government has formalised this at a legal level,” Natalia Tsymbalova, coordinator of the Straight Alliance for LGBT Equality group in St. Petersburg, tells IPS.

“Sexual minorities are officially ‘socially unequal’ by law and people are being fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation, while others are being beaten or killed by homophobes,” she adds.

Although homosexuality was made legal soon after the fall of communism, it has never been properly accepted in Russian society. A poll carried out in April showed that 80 percent of Russians believe that homosexuality is a disease that can be treated while in another poll in June this year 42 percent of respondents said that homosexuality should be a criminal offence.

The Orthodox Church has an extremely strong influence on social attitudes – the Church is widely seen as the country’s supreme moral authority – and its leaders openly and regularly denounce non-heterosexual orientations as a perversion or sickness.

But in recent years there has been an increasingly virulent anti-homosexual stance among politicians who have openly labeled homosexuality a perversion and propagate claims that homosexuality and paedophilia are linked.

Many commentators say that although legislators point to their own beliefs as grounds for their statements and policies, there is another agenda being followed.

They say the Kremlin is, in the face of public protests, trying to divert public discontent by portraying particularly vulnerable, already unpopular groups as enemies – including LGBT people and immigrants.

They also say this is part of Russia’s efforts to curb freedom of expression under the guise of promoting ‘traditional values’ and a continuation of anti-Western ideology; LGBT lifestyles are often described as being a social degradation, like AIDS and drug abuse, that has been imported from the West.

Controversial legislation passed this summer makes the “promotion of non-traditional sexual lifestyles” to minors a criminal offence. The law was supported by almost 90 percent of the population, according to surveys at the time.

“The level of ignorance in Russian society towards LGBT people is very high and it is easy to incite hatred [against LGBT people] in society and cast them as an enemy. Any totalitarian government needs an enemy. President [Vladimir] Putin is building a new ideology – statist, conservative and anti-Western,” Tsymbalova tells IPS.

In the run-up to the law’s passage and in its wake, physical attacks on LGBT people increased, including horrific assaults by homophobic vigilante groups. Images of some of the attacks have been later uploaded to the internet.

The law was condemned by the international community and there were calls for a boycott of the Winter Olympics due to be held in Sochi, Russia next year.

In response to the uproar, Putin said that “people of non-traditional sexual orientation are not discriminated against” and that he has no problem with them and would happily meet with LGBT organisations.

But rights groups are dubious about his intentions and no meetings have so far taken place.

Meanwhile, lawmakers have put forward a bill which would prevent non-heterosexual couples from being parents.

“This law will allow children to be removed from homosexual parents. There are same-sex families in Russia, although the law does not recognise them. For them to come out of the closet now would be to risk their children,” says Tsymbalova.

There is little hope for any change to the law from the Kremlin or a shift in Russian societal attitudes towards LGBT people. But international pressure may force some change, rights groups say.

“Russia’s international partners should really make it clear to Vladimir Putin and his government that….concrete steps should be made to repeal the law and protect LGBT people in Russia from discrimination and violence,” Tanya Lokshina, Russia programme director at Human Rights Watch, tells IPS.

She adds: “Russia’s partners should speak with one voice and press the Russian authorities to have the law repealed. The Sochi Olympics represent a huge window of opportunity for this.”

Until then though, the plight of LGBT people in Russia is unlikely to improve.

“The level of homophobia and relevant stigmatisation in Russia was high even before the ‘propaganda’ legislation was adopted and many LGBT people had reservations about coming out. The law is designed to keep people in the closet,” says Lokshina.

Tsymbalova paints an even grimmer picture: “The vast majority of LGBT people in Russia do not come out of the closet and a very small percentage of the population personally knows any LGBT person. People are afraid to be open about their sexuality, sometimes even to their loved ones.

“Russia has the highest number of teenage suicides in Europe and a large proportion of them are LGBT teens. The environment here of homophobic hatred turns the lives of LGBT teenagers into a living hell: it cripples their minds and sometimes simply kills them.”