Last week, one of the Pink Singers small groups, the Barberfellas, were invited to sing at a party/protest to highlight the plight of LGBT Russians – a hot media topic given the Winter Olympics and by the shocking documentary, Hunted.
Little did our Barberfellas know that in attending the event at Ku Bar in Soho, they would be caught on camera during a live Channel 4 debate between Peter Tatchell and former Kremlin adviser Alexander Nekrassov. You can see the full debate, presented by Cathy Newman, here:
The sort of rhetoric put forward by Alexander Nekrassov sounds reminiscent of some views heard commonly in the UK before the 1990s. But of course LGBT equality is a global issue, not a Russian one. Last week, the BBC published an insightful interactive highlighting the countries in the world where it’s still illegal to be gay. It’s a sobering map. Whilst some good progress is being made, some countries such as India and Burundi are actually making retrograde steps and making life even harder for their LGBT citizens.
We still have a long way to go. And so, we continue to sing. The Pink Singers wish to express their love and solidarity with all LGBT people and their supporters in Russia, and we’d like to share one of our anthems, Hand in Hand, the lyrics of which ring especially true for Russia and other oppressed nations.