Sir Elton John says he wants to meet Vladimir Putin to discuss what he called the Russian president’s “ridiculous” attitude to gay rights.<\/p>\n
A report by Human Rights Watch last year said Russia was failing to prevent and prosecute homophobic violence amid a rise in attacks against minorities.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the BBC, Sir Elton said he would welcome talks with Mr Putin even though “he may laugh behind my back… and call me an absolute idiot”.<\/p>\n
The musician is currently in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
He met Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and called for the country to give stronger support to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-sexual (LGBT) community.<\/p>\n
Sir Elton also met with business leaders to call on them to not turn away LGBT employees.<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s neighbour, Russia, passed a law in June 2013 that prosecuted private individuals promoting “homosexual behaviour among minors”.<\/p>\n
Sir Elton criticised the move, and comments Mr Putin made last year, indicating gay people targeted children.<\/p>\n
“Give me a break,” Sir Elton said. “You are President of Russia, and you go and say stupid things like that?”<\/p>\n
He said Mr Putin’s attitude to gay people was “isolating and prejudiced” and “ridiculous”.<\/p>\n
“I would like to meet [Mr Putin],” Sir Elton told the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, Bridget Kendall.<\/p>\n
“It’s probably pie in the sky… He may laugh behind my back when he shuts the door, and call me an absolute idiot, but at least I can think I have the conscience to say I tried.”<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sir Elton John says he wants to meet Vladimir Putin to discuss what he called the Russian president’s “ridiculous” attitude to gay rights. A report by Human Rights Watch last year said Russia was failing to prevent and prosecute homophobic violence amid a rise in attacks against minorities. Speaking to the BBC, Sir Elton said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":151160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-151159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=151159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/151160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=151159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=151159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=151159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}