homophobic violence in Russia – The Russian Reader

Manmade Savagery
Tatiana Kosinova
April 7, 2016
Cogita.ru

Tonight, police detectives in Petersburg arrested student Sergei Kosyrev, who confessed to the murder of journalist Dmitry Tsilikin. Kosyrev has dubbed himself the Cleaner and claims his motive for committing the murder was hatred.

Slain Petersburg journalist Dmitry Tsilikin. Photo courtesy of Cogita.ru

On the morning of April 7, 2016, the website of the Russian Federal Investigative Committee’s Petersburg office reported that the office had detained a suspect in the murder of journalist Dmitry Tsilikin.

Tsilikin’s death was discovered on March 31, 2016. Relatives founded his body, covered with multiple stab wounds, in his own apartment. Investigators opened a case under Article 105.1 (murder) of the Russian Federal Criminal Code.

Fontanka.ru’s Yevgeny Vyshenkov chronicled the search for Sergei Kosyrev in the early hours of April 7, 2017. Vyshenkov writes that after studying billing recordings of the journalist’s mobile telephone, investigators intercepted the 21-year-old Kosyrev, who had called Tsilikin on the morning of March 27. Investigators had established that the journalist bled to death at five p.m. on March 27, 2016.

According to an article published today by Fontanka.ru, the murder suspect “called himself the Cleaner during questioning, and his life a crusade. Sergei Kosyrev, a 21-year-old student at the Hydrometeorological University, explained that the crime was a mission […] a crusade against a particular social group, […] and the feeling he had when he, allegedly, killed Tsilikin, was not dislike, as written in the arrest report, but hatred.”

Investigators have informed the media that Kosyrev holds right-wing views and is a fan of the Norwegian black metal band Emperor, whose “drummer stabbed a man to death in Lillehammer in for ideological reasons” in 1992.* Komsomolskaya Pravda writes that Kosyrev might turn out to be a “serial killer of gays.”

The gloomy stories involving the unsolved deaths and injuries of gays in recent years cry out to be seen as symptomatic.

As Masha Gessen wrote in The New York Times yesterday, “What no one has written in response to any of these deaths is that the Kremlin’s antigay campaign, which simultaneously pushes people underground and communicates to the public that homophobic violence will go unpunished, ensures that these shameful killings continue.”

Like the rest of the country, Sergei Kosyrev, a student at the Hydrometeorological University, has lived for the last four years in an atmosphere of increasing hatred for LGBT, “fifth columns,” “foreign agents,” and a whole list of official aliens and others compiled by official propagandists and state media. The security services do not see their actions as incitement of hatred and enmity, because they are busy searching for “extremists” among opposition-minded journalists, politicians, and lone picketers. However, the atmosphere of hatred and savagery is manmade, and sooner or later culpability will catch up with the people who have generated it in the shape of a war of all against all.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Correction. When this post was originally published, it contained a link to a different article on Fontanka.ru, not the article containing the passage cited by Tatyana Kosinova, in which it is alleged that suspected killer Sergei Kosyrev referred to himself as “the Cleaner,” etc., during question by police. I apologize for my error. May 18, 2016. TRR

* On 21 August 1992, [Bård “Faust” Eithun] stabbed Magne Andreassen, a gay man, to death in a forest just outside Lillehammer. Eithun was visiting his family there. He went to a pub and had a drink, but “the atmosphere didn’t suit him, so he decided to head home.” According to Eithun, while walking in the Olympic park, “this man approached me – he was obviously drunk and obviously a faggot […] it was obvious that he wanted to have some contact. Then he asked me if we could […] go up to the woods. So I agreed, because already then I had decided that I wanted to kill him, which was very weird because I’m not like this.” Eithun carried a knife because, as he explained: “It’s better to have a knife you don’t need than to not have one when you need it.” Once in the woods, Eithun stabbed Andreassen 37 times and then kicked him in the head repeatedly as he lay on the ground.

Eithun claimed that he felt no remorse at the time. In the late 1990s, he said of the murder: “I was outside, just waiting to get out some aggression. It’s not easy to describe why it happened. It was meant to happen, and if it was this man or another man, that’s not really important.” Ihsahn, his bandmate in Emperor, said that Eithun “had been very fascinated by serial killers for a long time, and I guess he wanted to know what it’s like to kill a person.”

The media has linked the murder to black metal and speculated that Eithun was motivated by Satanism or fascism, but in a 2008 interview he explained: “I was never a Satanist or fascist in any way, but I put behind me the hatred and negativity. Those feelings just eat you up from inside.” In a 1993 interview he had said “I am not a Satanist, but I praise the evil.” In an interview for the book Lords of Chaos he explained he had been “interested in Satanism but there are other things as well. Basically, I don’t give a shit.”Jørn Tunsberg of the band Hades Almighty said that the murder was “an impulse killing” and that “it had nothing to do with black metal.”

Source: Wikipedia

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Drawing to Go on Living
Yuri Ivashchenko
November 3, 2015
Mediazona

Photographer Yuri Ivashchenko looks for people who have been assaulted by racists and homophobes in Russia. He asks them to make a schematic drawing of what happened to them on a snapshot of the crime scene.

Mikhail Tumasov, Russia. Assaulted April 2012 in Samara

Mikhail came out to a new friend, who violently assaulted him. Mikhail spent a week in the hospital. A magistrate judge rejected Mikhail’s lawsuit, since Mikhail had not listed the assailant’s birthplace, registered address, and other personal data.

Ibrahim Yunusov, Uzbekistan. Assaulted on October 3, 2008, at Sokolovskaya railway platform in the Moscow Region

Ibrahim and his brother, immigrants from Central Asia, were assaulted at the railway platform, where they had gone to see off a Belarusian friend. When eyewitnesses of the assault called the police, the officers who arrived on the scene suspected the brothers had been involved in a recent rash of telephone thefts on commuter trains. Despite eyewitness testimony corroborating the Yunusovs’ alibi, a court found them guilty of stealing other people’s property and sentenced Ibrahim to a year of probation. His brother Rustam was sentenced to six months of probation. The six months they had spent in a pretrial detention facility was deducted from their sentences.

Alexander Lee, Uzbekistan. Assaulted June 17, 2014, on Leningrad Highway in Moscow

Alexander was standing at a tram stop when several men attacked him. Fighting them off, he ran towards the Sokol subway station. Screaming, “Kill him!” ten to fifteen young men chased Alexander. They caught up with him and surrounded him on a lawn. One of the assailants hit Alexander in the back. He fell to the ground and was beaten up by the mob. The assailants took Alexander’s telephone and wallet, which contained around 10,000 rubles. Later, passersby called an ambulance. Alexander was taken to hospital, where he spent over a month. Doctors have diagnosed Alexander with a bruised spinal cord. A criminal investigation of the assault is underway, and there are suspects in the case.

Mele, Cameroon. Assaulted November 30, 2013, at the Novoslobodskya subway station in Moscow

Mele was attacked in the late evening at the turnstile to the subway by a man shouting racist slogans.

The assailant was arrested. He confessed his guilt in court and was released after reaching a settlement with Mele that involved paying him compensation and apologizing.

Anvar Yusupov, Tajikistan. Assaulted January 16, 20112, in the Moscow subway

A group of drunken young men, their faces covered in scarves, attacked Anvar and two of his friends when they were returning home from work. Noticing the young men were wielding knives, Anvar decided to defend himself with a beer bottle and managed to wound one of the assailants. Subsequently, the wounded young man was arrested in Saint Petersburg for stealing tennis shoes and testified about the incident in the subway. The court, however, found Yusupov guilty and sentenced him to six months’ imprisonment in a penal colony, which was later commuted to a fine.

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John, Russia. Assaulted April 18, 2015, near Nevsky Prospect, 184, in Saint Petersburg

John was walking down the street in rainbow-colored glasses when he drew even with two young men. One of them bumped John hard with his shoulder. John asked the passerby why he had done this. The man replied that he hated “fags” and head-butted John. John responded by pepper-spraying the assailant, who fled the scene with his companion. The police refused to open a criminal investigation into the incident.

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Translated by the Russian Reader

Tag: homophobic violence in Russia

Tatiana Kosinova: Manmade Savagery (The Murder of Dmitry Tsilikin)

Drawing to Go on Living