Across former (and current) Communist states in Asia, the news is not encouraging for sexual and gender minorities. In Azerbaijan, over 100 patrons of a gay-friendly night club were arrested by police, compelled to stand outside in the cold, and then detained unless willing to pay a bribe. In detention, they were beaten, forced to drink water out of the toilet, and urinated upon by guards. Although same-sex activity is technically legal in Azerbaijan, gays continue to be victimized by police.
In Kazakhstan, President Tokayev, a key Putin ally, has signed a new law banning all “LGBT and pedophile propaganda” in media and online, imitating the common conflation of the two in Russian jurisprudence.
Meanwhile, in Chengdu, once known as the gay capital of China, authorities have been cracking down on social media posters who “disrupt the order of cyberspace and cause adverse social impact” by degrading the city’s reputation; their latest target were two men who posted an AI-generated photo of two male pandas copulating.
