The instigators learned about the new venue where lectures and seminars scheduled for the conference had been transferred to due to safety reasons, the conference organizers told AIDS.CENTER website. After they had threatened a number of volunteers by phone, the project managers decided to cancel the event already announced by the internal newsletter.
Another venue refused to take part in the project last Friday because of the similar threats though it had pledged earlier to host the conference.
Moreover, according to the Russian LGBT Network, two project volunteers were attacked by strangers when leaving the first venue last Friday. Tear gas was sprayed in their faces.
It is hard to tell who is behind these attacks and threats. But on the eve of the conference the venue that had to cancel their participation in the event afterwards received a hostile letter from a lawyer named Mr. Korelov containing his registration number in the Moscow Region Bar Chamber and contact information.
AIDS.CENTER website editorial team has a copy of this letter. Database search helped to identify the sender. His full name is Korelov Alexander (lawyer registry number 50/1410). By all accounts, this person is a licensed lawyer indeed and was admitted to the bar on 15 October 1997.
Earlier he used to be a head of the Moscow Region Bar Association “Stoglav” that was shut down back in 2003, and in 2007 Korelov co-founded the so-called “Legal Committee for Human Rights and Dignity Protection” of the Russian Association of Centers for Study of Religions and Sects (RACSRS) under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church. (Contacts of the organization can be found on the Moscow Patriarchate official website).
Mr. Korelov is an official spokesperson for the “association” and occasionally appears on Orthodox TV channels to tell about “massive support to destructive sects from abroad”. In addition to that he was also mentioned in the media as a lawyer of the notorious “sects expert” Alexander Dvorkin.
Reports on feminism, gender issues, non-binary identity and modern institution of the family transformation were to have been presented on the conference.