UPDATE: Italian ex-MP arrested again at Sochi Games

Vladimir Luxuria, wearing rainbow colours, was stopped as she entered arena to watch hockey

Italian activist and former MP Vladimir Luxuria was reportedly detained for a second time within a 24-hour period for protesting Russia’s gay-propaganda law, the International Business Times (IBT) reports.

The IBT report says plainclothes officers stopped Luxuria, who was wearing a rainbow-coloured dress, as she went into the Shayba Arena to watch a hockey game. The officers also detained two Italian journalists.

Nataliya Vasilyeva, a Moscow correspondent for the Associated Press (AP), tweeted that Luxuria was “merely dressed in rainbow colours.”

Luxuria told media that she was first arrested Feb 16 for bearing a banner that read, “Gay is OK” in Russian and was subsequently released in the early hours of Feb 17. While authorities warned her against displaying gay-friendly slogans in public at the time of that detention, Luxuria said, she nevertheless promised to continue to speak out against the anti-gay gag law.

Natasha Barsotti is originally from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. She had high aspirations of representing her country in Olympic Games sprint events, but after a while the firing of the starting gun proved too much for her nerves. So she went off to university instead. Her first professional love has always been journalism. After pursuing a Master of Journalism at UBC , she began freelancing at Xtra West — now Xtra Vancouver — in 2006, becoming a full-time reporter there in 2008.

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