The Supreme Court of Russia on Thursday banned the activities of the international LGBT movement for being ‘extremist’, opening the way to greater repression of that community and the defenders of its rights.
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This decision comes in the midst of an ultra-conservative turn in the country, which now positions itself as the standard-bearer of “traditional” values against the alleged liberalism of Western countries.
This policy that targets LGBT people has accelerated since the start of the Russian army’s offensive in Ukraine in February 2022.
Since then, repression against any criticism of President Vladimir Putin’s government has also intensified.
The judge of the country’s highest jurisdiction, Oleg Nefedov, determined that “the international LGBT movement and its affiliates are extremists” and consequently ruled on the “prohibition of their activities in the territory of the Russian Federation,” according to AFP journalists. .
Nefedov specified that the decision came into force “immediately.” The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, was quick to denounce this ruling.
The Russian Supreme Court banned the “international LGBT movement” and its “subsidiaries” in Russia for extremism, in the midst of the country’s ultraconservative turn. The judge read his verdict after a closed-door hearing and indicated that the decision came into effect “immediately” #AFP pic.twitter.com/iRcsAoHADZ
— Agence France-Presse (@AFPespanol) November 30, 2023
“No one should be imprisoned for having defended human rights” or be “deprived of their rights due to their sexual orientation or gender identity,” he said in a statement.
The hearing, the first on this case, lasted only a few hours and took place without lawyers – since there is no organization with the name “international LGBT movement” in Russia – and behind closed doors, since the case was classified as ” secret”.
“LGBT are not poor gays or lesbians against whom, as we are told, Russia has decided to fight. It is a well-organized and planned project to undermine traditional societies from the inside,” Piotr Tolstoy, vice president of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament.
A spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, Vakhtang Kishidze, quoted by the Ria Novosti agency, celebrated this ban as “a form of moral self-defense.”
LGBT people are not poor gays or lesbians against whom, as we are told, Russia has decided to fight. It is a well organized and planned project to undermine traditional societies.
“Russia showed 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 Dudaev, a member of the government of the Russian republic of Chechnya, said on Telegram.
LGBT people were secretly tortured and murdered in Chechnya in recent years, according to NGOs and independent Russian media.
In mid-November, the Ministry of Justice asked to classify it as an “extremist organization” and ban “the international LGBT movement”without clearly specifying which specific organization he was referring to.
Any public activity related to what Russian authorities consider “non-traditional” sexual preferences could now be punished for “extremism”, a crime punishable by harsh prison sentences.
Until now, LGBT people faced heavy fines if they were accused of what authorities call “propaganda,” but not jail terms.
In the last decade, LGBT rights have been drastically limited under the push of President Putin, who, together with the Orthodox Church, assures that he wants to eliminate from the public sphere behaviors considered deviant and imported from the West.
Ian Dvorkin, founder in Russia of the NGO Center T, which helps transgender people, fled the country for fear of being accused “of extremism” and imprisoned for having created this association.
“Working in Russia is becoming very uncertain (…) It seems that those [militantes LGTB] that survive, they will live completely hidden,” he told AFP.
Since 2013, a law prohibits the “propaganda” of “non-traditional sexual relations” aimed at minors, a text denounced by NGOs as an instrument of homophobic repression.
This law was considerably expanded at the end of 2022. It now prohibits LGBT “propaganda” for all audiences, in the media, on the internet, in books and films.ace.
In July, Russian deputies also adopted a law that targets transgender people, prohibiting them in particular from surgical operations and hormonal therapies.
AFP
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