A crackdown on LGBTQ rights in Russia has continued for greater than a decade, with a sequence of laws being launched focusing on what the Kremlin refers to as “homosexual propaganda” since 2013.
However after ordering the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has ramped up a marketing campaign in opposition to what it referred to as the West’s “degrading” affect, in what rights advocates noticed as an try to legitimise the battle.
Now, the primary publicly identified circumstances have emerged of Russian authorities penalising individuals below a courtroom ruling that outlawed LGBTQ activism as extremism, in keeping with Russian media and rights teams.
At the very least three individuals who displayed rainbow-coloured objects have been jailed or fined.
The supreme courtroom ruling in November banned what the federal government referred to as the LGBTQ “motion” working in Russia and described it as an extremist organisation.
The ruling was a part of a crackdown on LGBTQ individuals within the more and more conservative nation, the place “conventional household values” have develop into a cornerstone of Vladimir Putin’s 24-year rule.
Russian legal guidelines prohibit public shows of symbols of extremist organisations, and LGBTQ rights advocates have warned that these displaying rainbow-coloured flags or different objects may be focused by the authorities.
On Monday, a courtroom in Saratov, a metropolis 453 miles southeast of Moscow, handed a 1,500-rouble (£13) fantastic to artist and photographer Inna Mosina over a number of Instagram posts depicting rainbow flags, Russia’s unbiased information web site Mediazona reported.
The case contained the complete textual content of the Supreme Court docket ruling, which named a rainbow flag the “worldwide” image of the LGBTQ “motion”.
Ms Mosina and her defence group maintained her innocence, in keeping with the stories. She mentioned the posts have been printed earlier than the ruling, at a time when rainbow flags weren’t regarded by authorities as extremist, and her lawyer mentioned a police report about her alleged wrongdoing was filed earlier than the ruling took drive.
The courtroom ordered her to pay the fantastic nonetheless.
Final week, a courtroom in Nizhny Novgorod, some 248 miles east of Moscow, ordered Anastasia Yershova to serve 5 days in jail on the identical cost for sporting rainbow-coloured earrings in public, Mediazona additionally reported.
And in Volgograd, 559 miles south of Moscow, a courtroom fined a person 1,000 roubles (£9) for allegedly posting a rainbow flag on social media, native courtroom officers reported on Thursday, figuring out the person solely as Artyom P.
