News
Dutch activist recalls arrest under anti-gay Russian law
Claims police used anti-gay slurs, accused him of spying
Kris van der Veen (Photo courtesy of Kris van der Veen)
One of the four Dutch LGBT rights advocates whom Russian authorities arrested in July told the Washington Blade he feels they wanted to use them as an example of what could happen to anyone who challenges the country’s gay propaganda to minors ban.
“They thought that we came there to make the Russian law or Russian authorities [look] ridiculous,” Kris van der Veen said during an interview from his home in the Dutch city of Groningen on Sept. 27. “It was not the case, but they think we were doing that.”
Van der Veen, 33, and three other Dutch LGBT rights advocates traveled to Murmansk to film a documentary about LGBT life in Russia. They interviewed members of Coming Out and the Russian LGBT Network and organizers of an LGBT film festival in St. Petersburg before they arrived in the city.
Groningen and Murmansk have been sister cities for nearly 25 years, and the coordinator of the program helped van der Veen and his colleagues secure a cultural visa that he said allowed them “start a dialogue about any subject with” the city’s residents. Van der Veen said it also permitted him and his fellow advocates to discuss homosexuality while in Russia because “it’s not specified.”
The trip also coincided with a year-long series of events that commemorated the 400th anniversary of friendship between Russia and the Netherlands.
“I thought, well I will go there, I will ask them about their lives and if the anti-gay law has any effect on their lives,” van der Veen told the Blade. “So that’s what I did.”
Van der Veen said he and a group of up to 20 others that included his fellow activists and their crew arrived at a summer camp in Murmansk on July 20.
He said he discussed Dutch LGBT advocacy efforts during a lecture he gave on human rights. Van der Veen said he also filmed some of the other seminars on the same topic – and interviewed a Russian teenager and her girlfriend.
Van der Veen said authorities detained him and his colleagues on July 21 as they tried to leave the camp and return to Murmansk to get footage of the city.
“I walked into this hallway and then when I turned the corner I saw about 15 police officers — men, women in uniforms, without uniforms — coming towards me,” he recalled. “They were also spreading into other hallways and rooms.”
Van der Veen said the officers told him in Russian that he had to return to the room “where the rest of the people were.” He said the Russian activists who had organized the human rights lectures “stood up for us” and began to speak with the authorities. In spite of these efforts, Van der Veen said immigration officials requested to see his and his colleagues’ passports and told them to go with them into another room.
Van der Veen told the Blade they interrogated him and the three other Dutch LGBT rights advocates for three hours. They subsequently received a fine of 3,000 rubles or roughly $93.
“We thought, OK we get a fine, it’s now over,” Van der Veen said. “Then they said there are also police officers [who] want to talk to you.”
He said uniformed police officers and others whom he described as KGB agents questioned them for another five hours. Van der Veen categorized one of the officials as “very provocative.”
“The first thing he said was, this is a police hat. You can wear it and I can take a picture of you,” he said, noting the officer was standing less than a foot in front of him. “I couldn’t say no, but I had to say no because I think otherwise I would make fun of the Russian authorities if I would take the hat and put it on my head. He also said I can take a picture of you.”
Van der Veen said the authorities referred to him as a spy and used unspecified anti-gay slurs against him while in custody. He told the Blade they said the teenager whom he interviewed for his documentary was a minor.
“She was already a part of the LGBT community in Murmansk,” van der Veen said. “They were already out of the closet… so I wasn’t doing any propaganda towards minors.”
Van der Veen said authorities also asked him whether he told people to “become gay because it’s good to be gay.”
“I was laughing because I thought it was a ridiculous question,” he said.
Van der Veen said the authorities released him and his fellow advocates at 11 p.m. on July 21 — eight hours after they initially detained them. He told the Blade they ordered them to go to court the next morning, even though they did not obtain a warrant to arrest them.
Van der Veen said he and his colleagues thought they could leave the city and return to the Netherlands after 5 p.m. on July 22 because a judge had yet to hear their case. He said Russian police officers who had called him 20 times told them they had to go to a Murmansk hotel and explain the contents of the hard drive that had been taken from them at the summer camp the previous day.
Van der Veen told the Blade the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs told him and his colleagues to leave the country as soon as possible. The six police officers whom he said met them at the airport told them to go to “a certain address in Murmansk” the next day.
“They wanted to keep us there, but we didn’t sign anything because the consulate said we have rights, we have the right to talk to a lawyer and to have a translator in our own language,” van der Veen said. “We pressed and pressed on that. It was very scary because of the look in their eyes… there’s no dialogue.”
Van der Veen said the Dutch consulate in St. Petersburg received a letter upon his return to the Netherlands that he and his colleagues could not return to Russia for three years. He added police spoke with the Murmansk-based coordinator of the sister city program with Groningen on several occasions.
Van der Veen described these visits as “very provocative.”
“Police officers were very angry that we came there,” he said. “They were telling us on Sunday [July 21] that our government should tell us about Russian laws and about the anti-gay laws and that we can’t do this like we were 7-year-olds.”
The Murmansk incident coincided with mounting outrage over the gay propaganda law that President Vladimir Putin signed less than a month before van der Veen and his colleagues traveled to the city.
The Dutch LGBT advocacy group COC Nederland, President Obama and retired tennis champion Martina Navratilova are among those who have publicly criticized the Kremlin over the statute and its overall gay rights record. Others, including actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein, have called for a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics that will take place in Sochi, Russia, in February.
Van der Veen told the Blade he does not support a boycott of the Sochi games.
“If there’s an opportunity to go [to Russia] I think we should go there, use our influence, our contacts to give a global stage to the topic of equal rights and also LGBT people in Russia,” he said.
He said he plans to finish the documentary by the end of November.
Dutch LGBT rights advocate Kris van der Veen in Murmansk, Russia, in July. (Photo courtesy of Kris van der Veen)
Eswatini
Eswatini’s government ordered to allow LGBTQ group to legally register
Unanimous Supreme Court ruling caps off 7-year legal battle
Eswatini’s Supreme Court has ordered the government to allow an LGBTQ rights group to legally register.
The Registrar of Companies in 2019 denied Eswatini Sexual and Gender Minorities’ request to register.
The advocacy group in 2020 petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case. The Supreme Court initially ruled against Eswatini Sexual and Gender Minorities, but it appealed the decision.
The Eswatini Commerce, Industry, and Trade Ministry in 2023 said it would not allow the group to register. The Supreme Court on Tuesday in a unanimous ruling ordered the Swazi government to allow Eswatini Sexual and Gender Minorities to register.
“For seven years the Eswatini Sexual and Gender Minorities group has fought the Swazi government for its citizens to have the right to freedom of association,” said Eswatini Sexual and Gender Minorities on Tuesday in a Facebook post. “But this is a hard fight against a government and king who believe LGBTI people have no place in the kingdom and who are trying to restrict the power of civil society organizations.”
Eswatini is a small, landlocked country in southern Africa that borders South Africa and Mozambique.
Consensual same-sex sexual relations between men remain criminalized in the country.
Discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity is commonplace in Eswatini. The country’s first Pride parade took place against this backdrop in 2018.
District of Columbia
Nearly 6,000 turn out for Pride Night Out at the Nationals
Gay Men’s Chorus sings National Anthem
“Just shy of” 6,000 people purchased tickets for the Wednesday, June 24, 21st annual Pride Night Out at the Washington Nationals baseball stadium, which the Nationals said is the longest running LGBTQ Pride event in Major League Baseball, according to a Nationals spokesperson.
The event was organized with the Nationals by Team D.C., the local LGBTQ sports group that organizes similar Pride Nights for other professional D.C. area sports teams.
“It was a good time had by all as the Nationals celebrated the LGBTQ+ community during the Nationals 21st Pride Night Out, presented by Team D.C.” the Nationals said in a statement.
Nationals spokesperson Erica George said the overall game attendance was 27,200.
Similar to recent past years, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington sung the National Anthem at the start of the game, drawing loud cheers from people throughout the stadium.
The Nationals lost the game to the Philadelphia Phillies by a score of 5-4. Although most of the LGBTQ attendees of the event, held in the right-field mezzanine section of the stadium, were cheering for the Nationals, a sizeable number also cheered for the Phillies.
Miguel Ayala, one of Team D.C.’s lead organizers, said he noticed fans displaying Pride flags and recognized LGBTQ people in all parts of the stadium, indicating significantly more LGBTQ people and their supporters attended the game beyond the close to 6,000 or more who purchased the specific Pride Night Out tickets.
“It was a great excitement last night,” he told the Washington Blade on the day following the event. “I saw a lot of big crowds of our people, I saw everybody I can think of in the community. And it was really great to see the turnout.”
Also, like in previous years, Team D.C. along with the Nationals helped to organize a pre-game show on the large concourse platform area next to the stadium seating area involving a drag show led by local drag performer Shi-Queeta Lee.
“During pregame ceremonies, the Nationals Pride employee resource group was recognized on the field,” the statement released by the Nationals says. “Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a physician and public health leader who has had a profound impact on the LGBTQ+ community and those living with or vulnerable to HIV, threw out the ceremonial first pitch as the guest of Team D.C.,” the statement says.
It adds that Team D.C.’s scholarship recipient Spencer Doll made the ceremonial call to “Play Ball.”
As if all that were not enough, a Nationals employee who entertains during the Nationals pre-game shows on the field dressed as a giant eagle named “Screech” wearing an eagle’s head mask appeared in the seating area where the Pride Night Out crowd was seated and mingled with the LGBTQ fans, many of whom posed for photos with Screech.
South Africa
White House to end PEPFAR funding for South Africa
State Department says country failed to respond to 2025 executive order demands
The Trump-Vance administration will end PEPFAR funding for South Africa.
A State Department spokesperson on Wednesday told the Washington Blade the State Department “will begin a phased drawdown of PEPFAR programming in South Africa, with most programs ending by Sept. 30, 2026, and critical personnel support continuing through March 31, 2027.”
Semafor last week reported South Africa has received more than $8 billion in PEPFAR funding since President George W. Bush created the program to combat the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in 2003.
President Donald Trump on Feb. 7, 2025, issued an executive order that addressed what it described as “egregious actions of the Republic of South Africa.” The State Department spokesperson with whom the Blade spoke noted the directive included five specific requests:
• South African government provides exemptions or alternatives for U.S. companies to Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment laws and other race-based mandates.
• Senior government officials (e.g., president, deputy president, or minister of justice) unequivocally condemn all race-based incitement to violence, including the “Kill the Boer” song, more frequently.
• The South African government prevents the implementation of measures that would allow expropriation without fair compensation and due process under the Expropriation Act of 2024.
• South African Police Service designates rural crime a “priority crime” and increases resources dedicated to high-crime rural areas.
• South Africa refrains from actions that would significantly interfere with the implementation of the refugee program, within the confines of South African law.
“The United States communicated to the government of the Republic of South Africa multiple times at many levels that PEPFAR funding was likely to be terminated in the absence of progress on the five asks,” said the State Department spokesperson.
The State Department spokesperson further noted South Africa is “one of the largest economies in sub-Saharan Africa” and “has funded the vast majority of its own HIV response, estimated at 76 percent of the total, including procurement of all treatment commodities.”
“South Africa will continue to be supported by the Global Fund, including for the introduction and scale up of lenacapavir through Global Fund Resources,” the spokesperson told the Blade.
Lenacapavir is groundbreaking HIV prevention drug that users inject twice a year. Eswatini, which borders South Africa, is among the African countries that have received doses of the drug through PEPFAR.
HIV/AIDS service organizations in the U.S. and around the world have sharply criticized the Trump-Vance administration over plans to not fully fund PEPFAR and to cut domestic HIV/AIDS funding.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio shortly after the current White House took office issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during a freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending. HIV/AIDS service providers around the world with whom the Blade has spoken say PEPFAR cuts and the loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which officially closed on July 1, 2025, has severely impacted their work.
Eswatini’s government ordered to allow LGBTQ group to legally register
Does Pride decor resemble Trump’s design aesthetic?
Nearly 6,000 turn out for Pride Night Out at the Nationals
White House to end PEPFAR funding for South Africa
Washington Blade names new publisher
Union leader files assault complaint against gay Md. delegate after fight at early-voting site
PHOTOS: 2026 Capital Pride Parade
US no longer refuge for LGBTQ refugees
Cool convertibles
