The Russian Supreme Court on Thursday banned the “international” LGBTQ+ movement for “extremism”, opening the way to legal proceedings and prison sentences for homosexuals and activists defending their rights in Russia.
This decision comes in the midst of an ultraconservative shift that targets LGBTQ+ people, with Russia positioning itself as the standard bearer of “traditional” values in the face of the supposed decadence of the West.
This policy has accelerated since the Russian army’s attack on Ukraine at the end of February 2022, which led to a repression targeting all forms of criticism of the Kremlin.
Judge Oleg Nefedov ordered to “recognize the international LGBT movement and its subsidiaries as extremists, to ban their activities on the territory of the Russian Federation”, according to AFP correspondents on site.
Mr. Nefedov specified that this ban came into force “immediately”.
Less than a dozen people gathered in front of the Court. “Not many people came,” regrets Ada Blakewell, a journalist. “It shows how scared everyone is […] to talk about LGBTQ people. »
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, immediately denounced this new decision. “No one should be imprisoned for working for human rights or deprived of their rights because of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” he stressed in a statement.
“The Monster” LGBT+
The hearing, the first in this case, lasted only a few hours and took place without a lawyer – no organization with this name exists in Russia – and behind closed doors, because the case was classified “secret”.
“LGBTs are not poor gays or lesbians against whom, as we are told, Russia has decided to fight. This is a well-organized and planned project to undermine traditional societies from within,” Duma Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy assured on Telegram.
“Sodomy is a sin,” he insisted, calling for “destroying” the LGBTQ+ “monster” entirely and not just its “tentacles”.
A spokesperson for the Russian Orthodox Church, Vakhtang Kichidze, quoted by the Ria Novosti agency, welcomed this ban as “a form of moral self-defense”.
“Russia has shown once again that neither the collective West nor the United States will deprive us of the most important thing: a religious and national identity! “, Akhmed Doudaev, member of the government of the Russian Republic of Chechnya, said on Telegram.
According to Russian NGOs and independent media, LGBTQ+ people have been secretly tortured and murdered in Chechnya in recent years.
In mid-November, the Russian Ministry of Justice requested that the “international LGBT movement” be classified as an “extremist organization” and banned, without clearly saying which organization it was targeting.
Any public activity associated with what Russia considers “non-traditional” sexual orientations could now be punished for “extremism”, a crime punishable by heavy prison sentences.
“The authorities could start opening criminal cases against public figures and activists to create a climate of fear,” said Maxime Olenitchev, a lawyer from the NGO Pervy Otdel, which helps victims of repression in Russia.
“Peak in madness”
Until now, LGBTQ+ people risked heavy fines if they were accused of making “propaganda” – the term used by the authorities – but not imprisonment.
The last decade has seen their rights drastically limited under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, who, with the Orthodox Church, claims to want to eliminate from the public sphere behavior deemed deviant and imported from the West.
Ian Dvorkine, founder in Russia of the NGO Center T, which helps transgender people, fled the country for fear of being accused of “extremism” and being thrown in prison for having created this association.
“Working in Russia is becoming very uncertain […] It looks like those (LGBTQ+ activists) who survive will live entirely in hiding,” he told AFP.
For him, this trial is “a new peak of madness”, and “more and more people” are asking for help to leave the country.
Since 2013, a law has prohibited the “propaganda” of “non-traditional sexual relations” among minors, a text denounced by NGOs as an instrument of homophobic repression.
This law was considerably expanded at the end of 2022. It now bans LGBTQ+ “propaganda” to all audiences, in the media, on the Internet, in books and films.
In July, Russian deputies also adopted a law targeting transgender people, notably banning them from surgical operations and hormonal therapies.