Anti-extremist police visit Vladivostok center for LGBTQ+ community and domestic violence survivors
In Vladivostok, police and employees of Center E, Russia’s Anti-Extremism Center, visited the Mayak community center, which helps LGBTQ+ people and women facing domestic violence.
Mayak representatives said on social media that this was the first police visit to the community center. Previously, police have tried to disrupt Mayak events outside of the city.
“The police have chosen a psychological support group for LGBT+ people as a target,” Mayak said.
During their visit the police spoke about “LGBT propaganda,” looked through the center’s brochures, and required several employees to go to the police station to have their fingerprints taken.
“They required that one activist become an ‘informant,’ otherwise they threatened that they would charge him personally with running Mayak,” the center said in a statement.
The Russian justice ministry has declared Mayak and its leader, the human rights activist Regina Duzgkoeva, “foreign agents.”
