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Airport Official In Russia's Far East Murdered For Being Gay


There is still a lot of hostility in Russia toward the country's gay community. (file photo)
There is still a lot of hostility in Russia toward the country's gay community. (file photo)
Russian officials say an airport manager has been beaten to death in the country's Far East because of his homosexuality.

Investigators said on June 3 that three detained men aged between 18 and 25 are suspected of killing the deputy director of Ozyornaya airport on Kamchatka Peninsula because of his "non-traditional sexual orientation."

The 39-year-old victim man has not been identified by name.

The incident happened in the village of Zaporozhye on May 29, weeks after a 23-year-old man was killed in the southwestern city of Volgograd for being gay.

Although Russia decriminalized homosexuality in the early 1990s, hostility toward gays and lesbians remains high there and in other nations of the former Soviet Union.

Based on reporting by Interfax, dpa, and RIA-Novosti

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