The Russian Ministry of Justice indicated on Friday that it had requested the ban for “extremism” of the “international LGBT movement”, a new illustration of the ultraconservative turn in Russia which has accelerated since the offensive against Ukraine and which NGOs describe as homophobic.
In a press release, the ministry does not specify whether it is generally targeting the LGBTQ+ movement across the world, or whether it is designating one or more existing organizations. And he did not immediately respond to a request for details from AFP.
The Russian Supreme Court must study this request for a ban on November 30.
The ministry said it had “filed an administrative request to the Supreme Court […] in order to classify the international LGBT social movement as extremist and ban its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has for years pursued a policy described as homophobic and transphobic by many representatives of the LGBTQ+ community and NGOs.
Since the offensive against Ukraine launched in February 2022, the Russian authorities have further increased conservative measures, particularly against LGBTQ+ people, saying they want to eliminate behavior deemed deviant and positioning themselves as a moral bulwark against the West deemed decadent. .
For several human rights organizations, Vladimir Putin and his regime pursue a homophobic and transphobic policy. The Kremlin affirms that individuals are free of their sexual orientation, but that Russia must protect children in the face of Western propaganda which, according to Moscow, denies the existence of a biological sex.
The announcement by the Ministry of Justice was denounced by specialized organizations.
“The Russian government is once again forgetting that the LGBT+ community is people, citizens of this country like any other. And now they not only want to make us disappear from public space, but to ban us as a social group,” reacted to AFP Dilia Gafourova, director of the Sphere fund, an association for the defense of LGBT + rights in Russia.
“It is a typical measure of repressive and undemocratic regimes: persecuting the most vulnerable,” she continued, promising to “fight”.
Prohibition of “propaganda”
In July, Russian MPs passed a law targeting trans people, prohibiting them from medically transitioning, including through surgeries and hormonal therapies, and banning their right to adopt children.
Since 2013, a law has already banned in Russia “propaganda” aimed at minors of “non-traditional sexual relations”, a text denounced by NGOs as an instrument of repression of LGBTQ +.
At the end of 2022, this law was considerably expanded. It now bans LGBTQ+ “propaganda” to all audiences, in the media, on the Internet, in books and films.
For this reason, a ballet at the Bolshoi about the life of Soviet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, a homosexual, was withdrawn from the repertoire last spring.
Since 2020, the Russian Constitution has also specified that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, effectively prohibiting same-sex unions.
The main LGBT + NGO in Russia, LGBT-Set (“LGBT Network”, in Russian), was classified at the end of 2021 as a “foreign agent”, an infamous label which complicates its functioning and exposes it to fines, or even a ban.
Since 2006, the NGO has been helping sexual minorities across Russia, particularly in the Russian republic of Chechnya, where the authorities are particularly hostile to them.
The Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta and several NGOs revealed in 2017 that gays were arrested and sometimes tortured and murdered by the police in Chechnya.