194
Human Rights Watch,
They Have Long Arms and They Can Find Me Anti-Gay Purge by Local Authorities in Russia’s Chechen Republic, at 1, 16, 19 (May 2017). Interviews by Committee Staff with US. NGOs. US. Department of State,
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2016: Russia, at
56.
Sadie Levy Gale, Russian Politician Behind Anti-Gay Law Wants to Decriminalise Domestic Violence
Independent, July 28, 2016. Tom Balmforth, Russian Duma Approves Bill to Soften Penalty for Domestic Violence
Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, Jan. 27, 2017; Claire Sebastian & Antonia Mortensen, Putin Signs Law Reducing Punishment for Domestic Battery
CNN, Feb. 7, 2017. the powerful speaker of the Chechen parliament.
7
Some NGOs estimate that as many as 200 individuals were detained in the campaign and subjected to various forms of torture, threatened with exposure to their
families and honor killings, and pressured to give up the names of other gay men.
8
The politicization of traditional family values in Russia has also influenced the state’s policies regarding the treatment of Russian women. According to Russian government statistics from 2013, Russian women are victims of crime in the home at disproportionately high rates, while 97 percent of domestic violence cases do not reach court.
9
Against this bleak backdrop, the parliamentarian who introduced the original 2013 gay propaganda law also introduced a law in 2017 dubbed the slapping law to reduce punishments for spousal abuse to a misdemeanor and administrative offense.
10
The law was adopted by a vote of 380 to 3 in the Duma and signed by President Putin in February 2017, decriminalizing a first instance of domestic violence if the victim is not seriously injured some observers have noted its passage was hastened by support from the Russian Orthodox Church.
11
VerDate Mar 15 2010 04:06 Jan 09, 2018
Jkt PO 00000
Frm 00200
Fmt 6601
Sfmt 6601
S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\COMMITTEE PRINT 2018\HENRY\JAN. 9 REPORT
FOREI-42327 with DISTILLER