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Norway’s PM rules out Sochi boycott

Norway's Prime Minister has announced she will not follows the leaders of the US, Germany and France and boycott the Winter Olympics in Sochi in protest at Russia's new anti-gay legislation.

Published: 19 December 2013 10:09 CET

Norway's PM rules out Sochi boycott

Protesters mock Russian President Vladimir Putin's stance on gay rights at New York's gay pride march - Kasya Shahovskaya

"I'm not in favour of mounting a strong protest by not being there," Erna Solberg told the VG newspaper. "I do not think it provides a better basis for dialogue with anyone."

On Tuesday, the US announced that no major politicians would be attending the event, with President Barack Obama instead sending two openly gay Americans to represent the country, the tennis player Jean King and the hockey player Caitlin Cahow.

France's President François Hollande and Germany's President Joachim Gauck have both also said they will not attend the games.

Solberg told the paper that Norway frequently brought up human rights issues such as gay rights in its meetings with Russian officials.

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Germany to compensate gay soldiers who faced discrimination

A German flag is sewed to the uniform of a Bundeswehr soldier in Dresden. Photo: DPA

Under the proposed law, which needs to be approved by parliament, soldiers
who were convicted by military courts for being gay, demoted or who otherwise
saw their careers damaged because of their sexual orientation, would receive a
“symbolic amount” of €3,000.

“We cannot erase the suffering inflicted upon these people,” Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer told the RND newspaper group. “But we want
to send a signal” and “turn the page on a dark chapter in the history of the
armed forces”, she said.

The compensation would apply to soldiers from the Bundeswehr, which was
created in West Germany in 1955, and to troops from former East Germany's
National People's Army, founded in 1956.

READ ALSO: More Germans identify as LGBT than in rest of Europe

The defence ministry estimates that about 1,000 people would be eligible
for a payout.

Military court judgments against soldiers for engaging in consensual gay sex acts would also be quashed under the draft bill.

It took until 1969 for homosexuality to be decriminalised in West Germany, but discrimination against gay service people continued for much longer, including after Germany was reunified in 1990.

Gay soldiers could expect to be overlooked for promotions or removed from positions of responsibility, with senior officers often deeming them a “security risk” or a bad example to others.

That ended with a law change in 2000 that officially protected gay, lesbian
and bisexual people from discrimination in the armed forces.

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