THE STATS
Opinions
“People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think. In fact, one can even get killed for giving me information. I am not the only one in danger. I have examples that prove it.”
- Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist, writer, and human rights activist
“We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial—whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.”
- Anna Politkovskaya
- Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist, writer, and human rights activist
“We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial—whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.”
- Anna Politkovskaya
“We support LGBT equality globally and we condemn violence, discrimination and harassment targeted against LGBT individuals everywhere. Russia’s law is harmful to LGBT individuals and families, and it’s harmful to a diverse society.”
- AT&T spokesperson
"AT&T has broken the ice, top sponsors of the Olympics like Coke, GE, McDonald's and Visa are going to have to follow suit — they are very much on the wrong side of history in refusing to use their leverage with the International Olympic Committee to ask for reform and to defend LGBT Russians."
- Minky Worden, director of global initiatives for Human Rights Watch
- AT&T spokesperson
"AT&T has broken the ice, top sponsors of the Olympics like Coke, GE, McDonald's and Visa are going to have to follow suit — they are very much on the wrong side of history in refusing to use their leverage with the International Olympic Committee to ask for reform and to defend LGBT Russians."
- Minky Worden, director of global initiatives for Human Rights Watch
"Gays in Russia are now confronting all kinds of violence. There’s vigilante violence. There’s organized-for-the-cameras violence. There’s street violence because people feel entitled. They feel that nothing will happen to them. And nothing does happen to them when they attack and sometimes even murder LGBT people." - Masha Gessen, a Russian and American journalist and author
"Russia has a lot of poorly written laws and regulations that contradict its own constitution, but this one was different. Like other contemporary laws, it was so vaguely worded that it encouraged corruption and extortion (fines for "homosexual propaganda" are backbreaking) and made selective enforcement inevitable. But it also did something that had never been done in Russian law before: it enshrined second-class citizenship for LGBT people. Think about it: it made it an offence to claim social equality."
- Masha Gessen
"Russia has a lot of poorly written laws and regulations that contradict its own constitution, but this one was different. Like other contemporary laws, it was so vaguely worded that it encouraged corruption and extortion (fines for "homosexual propaganda" are backbreaking) and made selective enforcement inevitable. But it also did something that had never been done in Russian law before: it enshrined second-class citizenship for LGBT people. Think about it: it made it an offence to claim social equality."
- Masha Gessen
“I’d like to ask my colleagues and friends that, as they try to criticize us, they would do well to set their own house in order first. I did say, after all—and this is public knowledge—that in some states in the U.S., homosexuality remains a felony…How are they in a position to criticize us for what is a much softer, liberal approach to these issues than in their own country?…There a lot of folks in the U.S. who share the view that the legislation in their state or their nation is appropriate, well-grounded and is in sync with the sentiment of the vast majority of the population.”
- Vladmir Putin
- Vladmir Putin
"I think Putin and Russia have a big stake in making sure the Olympics work, and I think they understand that for most of the countries that participate in the Olympics, we wouldn’t tolerate gays and lesbians being treated differently. They’re athletes, they’re there to compete. And if Russia wants to uphold the Olympic spirit, then every judgment should be made on the track, or in the swimming pool, or on the balance beam, and people’s sexual orientation shouldn’t have anything to do with it.”
- President Obama
- President Obama