With the Sochi Olympics just six months away, US President Barack Obama, actor Stephen Fry and international gay rights group All Out have increased attention on Russia over its new anti-gay law.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in June signed into law legislation that punishes the dissemination of information about homosexuality to minors but which activists say can be used for a broad crackdown against gays.
The controversial law has prompted a boycott of Russian vodka in the US and criticism from pop stars including Madonna and Lady Gaga ahead of the Games which open on February 7, 2014.
Obama cancelled a planned September meeting in Moscow on Wednesday in a diplomatic rebuke over Russia's harbouring of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, having also said in a television interview hours earlier that he had "no patience" with countries who discriminate against gay people.
Fry's open letter to IOC President Jacques Rogge has been delivered by All Out at Olympic headquarters in Lausanne along with a 320,000-name petition demanding action.
Fry, the British author and actor, says banning Russia from staging the Olympics in the Black Sea resort is a must.
"The IOC absolutely must take a firm stance on behalf of the shared humanity it is supposed to represent against the barbaric, fascist law that Putin has pushed through the Duma," Fry wrote on his personal website.
"An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 in Sochi is simply essential. Stage them elsewhere in Utah, Lillehammer, anywhere you like. At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world," he added.
Fry boasts six million followers on Twitter.
He visited the country in March this year to interview one of the initiators of the anti-gay law in Saint Petersburg.
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