The State Duma ethics committee will reprimand ultra-conservative St. Petersburg lawmaker Vitaly Milonov for inciting hatred against the LGBT community.
Activist Alexey Timoshenko published a petition on the website change.org calling for the Duma ethics committee to punish Milonov for his repeated public statements “aimed at inciting hatred and enmity toward certain social groups.”
The petition cited a July 11 broadcast on the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station in which Milonov said that “it is better to kill a lesbian and a homosexual than an innocent child.”
While on the Ekho Moskvy radio station’s morning program, he advocated for the public execution of organizers of the LGBT charity Deti-404 (“Children-404”), saying they should be “publicly hanged” and “mercilessly shot,” according to the petition.
Best known for spearheading Russia’s ban on “gay propaganda,” Milonov has earned a reputation for his inflammatory anti-LGBT rhetoric.
The ethics committee sent a formal notification to Timoshenko on Oct. 12 in response to the petition and said that Milonov would be told of “the inadmissibility in violating the rules of parliamentary ethics.”
This will be Milonov’s second reprimand of this nature. In May the deputy was chastised by the ethics committee for his derogatory comments toward LGBT rights activists during a May 1 parade.
