A post I have translated into English from Vladislav Slavsky, LGBT activist based in Sochi.
Park Hotel, Sochi: a
venue that caters for huge numbers of guests, including foreign journalists and
celebrities. Officially this is a 4 star hotel with staff trained in English.
Walking past, I decided to pop in to drink some coffee. The bar was on the
ground floor. After some time a drunken man walks into the building. It turned
out later that he was a friend of one of the security guards and that he
himself is a security guard (working in a different location.) He walked up to
the bar and started to pester both the male and female bar staff. Then he
approached me, grabbed me by the hair and started to say homophobic slurs (‘fag’
etc.). I called security and demanded that they remove the inebriated man from
the hotel. They led him away and said that he should understand that this kind
of behaviour is unacceptable, given that he is a security guard himself. With
the security guards supervising him he seemed to calm down, but later he
continued to harass the bar staff. He offered me anal sex and insulted me by
calling me a ‘rooster’ (an offensive term from Russian prison slang, making
reference to homosexuals, who are often forced to participate in humiliating sexual
acts by their cell mates). I said that I was going to call the police and began
to dial the number on my phone, but no one answered my call. I complained to the
security once more about the behaviour of the drunken individual. T
he security
guard responded by walking up to the man and asking him politely to leave. When
he realized that the man had no intention of doing so, he proceeded to simply
stand by the man’s side and monitor his behaviour, as if he were some sort of
nanny. Later on the man finally left. The security politely bade him farewell.
I remind you that this is a hotel that caters for international guests…
The woman at the
reception informed me that the drunkard used to work there. She apologized for
his behaviour. But the security made no attempt to do the same. It’s a disgrace. Maximum repost! Spread awareness of ‘olympic tolerance’ in Sochi!
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