In current years, L.G.B.T.Q. individuals in Russia have lived underneath growing concern as the Kremlin has ratcheted up measures curbing homosexual and transgender rights in tandem with the repressive seek for “internal enemies” in the course of the struggle in Ukraine.
In the newest risk, the Ministry of Justice will search a courtroom order on Thursday to declare the worldwide homosexual rights motion an “extremist organization.”
Gay rights activists and different consultants say {that a} ruling in favor would put homosexual individuals and their organizations underneath the specter of being criminally prosecuted at any time for one thing as easy as displaying the rainbow flag or for endorsing the assertion “Gay rights are human rights.”
That prospect has heightened angst and alarm within the nation’s already beleaguered homosexual communities.
“It is not the first time we are being targeted, but at the same time, it is another blow,” mentioned Alexander Kondakov, a Russian sociologist at University College Dublin, who research the intersection of legislation and safety for the L.G.B.T.Q. communities. “You are already marked as foreign, as bad, as a source of propaganda, and now you are labeled an extremist — and the next step is terrorist.”
President Vladimir V. Putin has sought to painting the troubled, protracted struggle that he started as a battle to keep “Russian traditional values.” To that finish, the homosexual communities are sometimes portrayed as a possible Trojan horse for the Wes. And the courtroom case comes months earlier than Mr. Putin is anticipated to use what he calls his protection of Russian values as a pillar of his marketing campaign within the March 2024 presidential elections.
The authorities, which filed a lawsuit on Nov. 17 with the Supreme Court in search of to label the homosexual rights motion as extremist, is probably going to prevail.
While a courtroom ruling in favor of the measure wouldn’t criminalize homosexuality and would most certainly not have an effect on day by day life for homosexual and transgender individuals, consultants mentioned, it could make the work of all L.G.B.T.Q. organizations, as properly as any political exercise, untenable.
It could possibly be used to mete out jail sentences of six to 10 years to homosexual rights activists, their legal professionals or others concerned in any sort of public effort.
The requested designation can be written in a sometimes ambiguous method, so it could possibly be exploited by just about anybody to denounce a homosexual person as an extremist, such as a provincial legislation enforcement officer hostile towards homosexual individuals or neighbors who covet a homosexual couple’s residence, consultants mentioned.
Until it turns into clearer how the measure could be carried out, it’s troublesome to advise homosexual individuals in Russia about altering their lives, mentioned Igor Kochetkov, a founding father of the Russian LGBT Network, an umbrella group.
Critics say it’s uncommon to use a designation meant to goal particular organizations in opposition to one thing extra amorphous like a global motion. There are a pair precedents, nonetheless, particularly two home campaigns seen as encouraging youth violence.
In addition, the Kremlin has more and more slapped the “extremist” label on organizations that it doesn’t like. They embody the opposition group organized by Aleksei A. Navalny; the Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose presence in Russia is opposed by the Russian Orthodox Church; and Meta, the guardian firm of Facebook and Instagram, which the Russian authorities has accused of spreading Russophobia.
In Russia, measures concentrating on L.G.B.T.Q. teams started in earnest after 2012, when Mr. Putin returned to the presidency. In 2013, Russia handed a legislation banning “gay propaganda” directed towards minors and expanded that in 2022 to prohibit something that, it mentioned, smacked of endorsing “nontraditional relationships and pedophilia” amongst all Russians.
Last summer time, the authorities started issuing fines for what they deemed to be such propaganda in movies and tv collection on-line. Then, in July, Mr. Putin signed a legislation banning medical gender transitions or altering genders on official paperwork.
There is an extended custom of countries at struggle singling out minority teams, particularly homosexual individuals, for prosecution, such as Nazi Germany. The effort to construct assist for the struggle inevitably includes figuring out exterior and inside enemies, and in Russia the widely damaging angle towards homosexual individuals dovetails with this effort, mentioned Alexandra Arkhipova, a social anthropologist who research the ripple results of the struggle on Russian society.
A 2016 research confirmed {that a} majority of Russians “think about homosexual minorities as a form of disease brought by the collective West,” she mentioned.
This angle is very prevalent amongst Russians older than 65, who’re additionally Mr. Putin’s core supporters. They determine along with his promise to return to the Russia of 1970, when the thought of homosexual rights and fluid sexuality didn’t exist publicly, she mentioned.
Some Russians applauded the newest transfer.
“Rainbow days are coming to an end,” crowed one commenter on a channel on a Telegram messaging app, Operation Z, a reference to the struggle in Ukraine. It was accompanied by an emoji of clapping palms.
Despite all of the measures, Russia has maintained that it doesn’t goal its homosexual minority. In current weeks, Mr. Putin has mentioned at a cultural discussion board in St. Petersburg that homosexual and transgender individuals had been “part of society,” whereas mocking what he known as a pattern within the West to confer public prizes solely on those that have a good time the homosexual group.
Days earlier than saying the lawsuit, a deputy minister of justice, Andrei Loginov, testified earlier than the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva that, in Russia, “the rights of L.G.B.T. people are protected,” saying that “restraining public demonstrations of nontraditional sexual relations or preferences is not a form a censure for them.”
The proposed designation opens the door to the sort of authorized and verbal gymnastics that the Kremlin typically makes use of to deny that it’s prosecuting a sexual minority group, Ms. Arkhipova mentioned. “They can say to everybody: We are not prosecuting homosexual people; homosexual people are fine — we are just prosecuting extremists,” she mentioned.
Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.
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