Vladimir Putin has for years followed a policy characterized as homophobic and transphobic by many representatives of the LGBTI+ community and NGOs
Russia’s Justice Ministry announced on Friday that it sought the ban for … “extremism” of the “international LGBTI movement”, in a new sign of the ultra-conservative turn in Russia that accelerated after the attack on Ukraine, which non-governmental organizations describe as homophobic.
In its announcement, the ministry did not specify whether it was targeting the LGBTQI+ movement across the world in general or one or more existing organizations. And he has not yet responded to an AFP request for clarification.
The Russian Supreme Court is expected to consider this ban request on November 30.
The ministry said it “filed an administrative request to the Supreme Court (…) in order to list the international LGBTI 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 that has been characterized as homophobic and transphobic by many representatives of the LGBTI+ community and NGOs.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian authorities have ramped up conservative anti-LGBTQ+ measures, saying they want to stamp out deviant behavior and casting themselves as a “bulwark of morality” against a West in decline .
For many human rights organizations, Vladimir Putin and his regime are conducting a homophobic and transphobic policy. The Kremlin says for its part that people are free to choose their sexual orientation, but Russia must protect children against Western propaganda that, according to Moscow, denies the existence of biological sex.
Organizations criticized the announcement of the Ministry of Justice.
“The Russian authorities forget once again that the LGBTI+ community are people, citizens of this country just like everyone else. And now they not only want to eliminate us from the public space, but to ban us as a social group,” he said. to AFP Dilya Gafurova, director of “Sphere”, an association for the defense of LGBTI+ rights in Russia.
“It is a characteristic measure of repressive and undemocratic regimes: to persecute the most vulnerable,” he continued.
Prohibition of “propaganda”
In July, Russian lawmakers approved a law targeting transgender people, banning gender reassignment, notably surgeries and hormone treatments, and denying them the right to adopt children.
As of 2013, a law already forbade the “propaganda” of “non-traditional sexual relations” to minors in Russia, a text denounced by NGOs as a tool to oppress LGBTI+ people.
At the end of 2022, this law was significantly expanded. LGBTI+ “propaganda” in all public, media, internet, books and movies is henceforth prohibited.
As of 2020, the Russian Constitution ‘clarifies’, moreover, that marriage is the union between one man and one woman, essentially prohibiting same-sex marriages.
The main LGBTQ+ NGO in Russia, LGBT-Set (“LGBTQ Network”) was classified as a “foreign agent” at the end of 2021, a designation that complicates its operation and exposes it to the risk of fines and even banning.
The NGO has been seeking help from sexual minorities in the four corners of Russia since 2006, mainly 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 homosexuals had been arrested and some tortured and killed by police in Chechnya.
Source :Skai
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