{"id":318194,"date":"2017-05-11T12:13:07","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T12:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=318194"},"modified":"2017-05-11T12:13:07","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T12:13:07","slug":"gay-rights-petitioners-detained-in-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/05\/gay-rights-petitioners-detained-in-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Gay rights petitioners detained in Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"
Five gay rights activists have been detained in Moscow as they tried to deliver a petition to the office of Russia’s prosecutor general.<\/p>\n
Police said they were held because their action was unauthorised.<\/p>\n
The activists said more than two million people had signed the petition to investigate alleged torture and detentions of gay people in the Russian region of Chechnya.<\/p>\n
Chechen officials have denied that gay people even exist in the republic.<\/p>\n
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin backed an inquiry into the reported crackdown on gay people in Chechnya, in the North Caucasus.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the Russian authorities to help protect gay rights.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, four Russians and an Italian national were held as they tried to deliver a printout of the petition to the prosecutor general’s office.<\/p>\n
They also carried huge empty boxes, symbolising online signatures they had collected in protest against the alleged crackdown, a BBC Russian reporter says.<\/p>\n
The petition was signed “by more than two million people around the world, more than the entire population of the Chechen republic,” the Russian LGBT Network said.<\/p>\n
It said they were demanding “an unbiased investigation of illegal detentions of hundreds of people in Chechnya because of their homosexuality”.<\/p>\n