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TALLINN, Estonia (AP) \u2014 As police raided the home of a gay couple in the Belarusian capital of Minsk and brutally beat them, the officers didn’t hide that the crackdown was aligned to similar moves in neighboring Russia.<\/p>\n
The students, Andrei and Sasha, said security forces demanded that they unlock their smartphones and surrender the names of \u201cgays in Minsk and Moscow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey slammed our heads against the door frame, threatened to report us to the university and said that this was just the beginning,” said Andrei, 20, who like other gay and transgender Belarusians interviewed by The Associated Press insisted on being identified only by his first name because of safety concerns.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThey wanted to expose an \u2018underground network\u2019 of gay people in Belarus, following the example of Russia,\u201d he said of the autumn raid. “They openly told us that if it is banned in Russia, then it should be banned in Belarus too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Belarus decriminalized homosexuality in 1994 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the deeply conservative country under authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko<\/a> doesn\u2019t recognize same-sex marriages, and there are no laws protecting LGBTQ+ rights.<\/p>\n Russian President Vladimir Putin adopted repressive laws curtailing LGBTQ+ rights in recent years, and close ally Belarus is poised to follow suit, proposing legislation to ban \u201cgay propaganda.\u201d While still to be defined in Belarus, the Russian version bans any endorsement of LGBTQ+ activities and nontraditional sexual relations.<\/p>\n But even before the measure is drafted, life has gotten worse for the LGBTQ+ community in Belarus, rights advocates say.<\/p>\n They say 32 people were detained and beaten in seven cities in the last three months, including 10 transgender or nonbinary individuals and activists. Some were released after questioning, fined and allowed to emigrate, they say, while several remain in custody, facing charges of \u201cdisseminating pornography\u201d and up to four years in prison.<\/p>\n More people probably have been detained but might be afraid to contact advocates, according to LGBTQ+ rights group TG House Belarus.<\/p>\n Lukashenko \u201cuses repressions against the LGBTQ+ community in order to gain some kind of praise from Russian authorities and shore up support among conservative residents of Belarus,\u201d said the group’s coordinator, Alisa Sarmant.<\/p>\n \u201cTo a large extent, it\u2019s a carbon copy of what is happening in Russia, but in Belarus all these discriminatory practices take on uglier and harsher forms,\u201d Sarmant said.<\/p>\n Moscow has close ties with Minsk, using Belarusian territory as a springboard for the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Last year, the Russian Supreme Court effectively outlawed LGBTQ+ activism, designating \u201cthe international LGBT movement\u201d as an extremist group.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will also need to take similar measures,\u201d said Natalya Kochanova, Lukashenko\u2019s closest adviser and speaker of the upper chamber of parliament.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have family values, traditions we pass from generation to generation -\u2013 traditions of family, Orthodox Christianity,\u201d she said, echoing the Kremlin line.<\/p>\n After Russia banned gender transitioning last year, transgender individuals in Belarus began having problems, even though the procedures are not forbidden. According to Sarmant, the government this year rejected over 80% of those seeking official authorization for gender-affirming procedures and changing their gender marker in official documents. By comparison, 10%-15% were rejected in 2020, she said.<\/p>\n Among other issues, she lists \u201ccatastrophic shortages\u201d of hormonal treatments, humiliating medical procedures and prosecutions on political grounds.<\/p>\n LGBTQ+ activists participated in mass protests that engulfed Belarus in 2020 after Lukashenko won a sixth term in an election the opposition and the West criticized as rigged. Authorities responded with a brutal crackdown, arresting about 65,000 people over the next four years.<\/p>\n There are about 1,300 political prisoners in Belarus, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski. Many imprisoned opposition leaders and activists have spent more than a year in complete isolation, without medical assistance.<\/p>\n As the crackdown widens, LGBTQ+ people are leaving Belarus, seeking asylum abroad.<\/p>\n Tania, a 39-year-old transgender woman, told AP she was arrested twice for following opposition sites that were outlawed as extremist and for supporting Ukraine, adding that she was beaten and subjected to electric shocks in custody. She eventually fled the country.<\/p>\n During the final raid of her apartment, security forces broke her tooth and two ribs, jailed her for 12 days and ordered her to repent on camera, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cAbuse behind bars continued day and night,\u201d she said. \u201cI was humiliated. They tried to shove the taser into my rectum or put it against my genitals. … In a country where terror reigns, you either agree with the government’s line, or have little chance of surviving without access to hormonal treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n Marat, a 37-year-old transgender man, told AP that authorities demanded last year that he detransition and change his documents to restore the gender marker he was assigned at birth. By that time, he said he had \u201cpumped-up muscles and had grown a beard.”<\/p>\n \u201cI couldn’t believe that the doctors are demanding to bring everything back to the way it was and this absurdity is happening in the 21st century,\u201d he said, adding that he tried to contest it but eventually fled to France with his four children.<\/p>\n Lukashenko, who has run Belarus with an iron first for three decades,<\/a> has publicly mocked homosexuals. After Germany’s openly gay foreign minister in 2012 called him \u201cthe last dictator in Europe,\u201d Lukashenko replied, \u201cBetter to be a dictator than gay.\u201d<\/p>\n All independent LGBTQ+ groups have been shut down in Belarus, security forces regularly raid Minsk nightclubs where underground parties are held, and advocates say the KGB blackmails members of the community into cooperating.<\/p>\n \u201cIntimidation, arrests and blackmail have been used in Belarus for years to create a so-called \u2018LGBTQ+ database\u2019 and declare an entire social group dangerous,\u201d said Pavel Sapelka of the Viasna Center, the country\u2019s most prominent rights group.<\/p>\n In April, the Culture Ministry expanded its definition of pornography to include \u201cnontraditional relations,\u201d meaning anyone possessing such material can face criminal prosecution and up to four years in prison.<\/p>\n \u201cBelarus must abolish these outrageous amendments and stop the cynical persecution of LGBTQ+ people,\u201d said Anastasiia Kruope, assistant researcher for Europe and Central Asia with Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n Rights advocates say LGBTQ+ people in Belarus continue to face stigmatization in society, noting a high suicide rate in the community.<\/p>\n \u201cThe state\u2019s policy has a particularly strong impact on young LGBT+ people, who have been living for four years in the conditions of an artificially created \u2018sterile\u2019 space, a Russian agenda and the constant broadcast of hate speech,\u201d according to a report last month by the rights group Justice Initiative.<\/p>\n