A family values group has urged authorities to investigate claims that a kids’ camp in the country’s Ural region pushed and coerced young attendees into cross-dressing, with the local children’s ombudsman agreeing to open a case.
Vyacheslav Baltsevich, the head of the Council of Fathers for the Sverdlovsk Region, centred around Russia's fourth-largest city Ekaterinburg, made the request on Tuesday. According to him, organizers of the ‘Salute’ camp hosted an event branded “Reverse Day,” in which boys dressed up in girls’ clothes and vice versa. The activist alleges that those who didn't want to participate were “harassed and ridiculed” into taking part and filmed on a camera phone.
“Any such event is done with a purpose,” Baltsevich said, “it can either motivate the child to do something or prevent some kind of social deviation. What was the purpose of this event? We want to get answers to this question from the camp employees themselves and from law enforcement agencies, but we, as representatives of the fathers’ community, already have a certain picture.”
While the camp has refused to comment on the situation, the regional Children’s Rights Ombudsman, Igor Morokov, told Kommersant that he would organize a probe into the incident. However, he said that the event may not necessarily fall foul of the country’s tough laws against promoting ‘non-traditional sexual relationships’ to minors.
“I would not make any analogies with LGBT people. We had a similar game in my Pioneer years,” he said, referencing the Soviet Union’s scouting organization. “Maybe some boundaries were crossed, but everyone has their own perception,” he said.
In June, prosecutors in St. Petersburg threw out a case in which a group of anime-loving teenagers were arrested at a cosplay party organized by a local youth group. Officials reprimanded a group of armed policemen who raided the premises and held the youngsters in custody after complaints that a rainbow LGBT+ flag had been unfurled by a participant.
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