Lately, L.G.B.T.Q. individuals in Russia have lived underneath rising worry because the Kremlin has ratcheted up measures curbing homosexual and transgender rights in tandem with the repressive seek for “inner enemies” through the battle in Ukraine.
Within the newest menace, the Ministry of Justice will search a court docket order on Thursday to declare the worldwide homosexual rights motion an “extremist group.”
Homosexual rights activists and different specialists 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 so simple as displaying the rainbow flag or for endorsing the assertion “Homosexual rights are human rights.”
That prospect has heightened angst and alarm within the nation’s already beleaguered homosexual communities.
“It’s not the primary time we’re being focused, however on the identical time, it’s one other blow,” mentioned Alexander Kondakov, a Russian sociologist at College Faculty Dublin, who research the intersection of regulation and safety for the L.G.B.T.Q. communities. “You might be already marked as international, as unhealthy, as a supply of propaganda, and now you’re labeled an extremist — and the following step is terrorist.”
President Vladimir V. Putin has sought to painting the troubled, protracted battle that he began as a combat to keep up “Russian conventional values.” To that finish, the homosexual communities are sometimes portrayed as a possible Malicious program for the West. And the court docket case comes months earlier than Mr. Putin is predicted to make use of what he calls his protection of Russian values as a pillar of his marketing campaign within the March 2024 presidential elections.
The federal government, which filed a lawsuit on Nov. 17 with the Supreme Court docket in search of to label the homosexual rights motion as extremist, is prone to prevail.
Whereas a court docket ruling in favor of the measure wouldn’t criminalize homosexuality and would most definitely not have an effect on day by day life for homosexual and transgender individuals, specialists mentioned, it will make the work of all L.G.B.T.Q. organizations, in addition to any political exercise, untenable.
It may very well be used to mete out jail sentences of six to 10 years to homosexual rights activists, their legal professionals or others concerned in any form of public effort.
The requested designation can also be written in a usually ambiguous method, so it may very well be exploited by nearly anybody to denounce a homosexual particular person as an extremist, reminiscent of a provincial regulation enforcement officer hostile towards homosexual individuals or neighbors who covet a homosexual couple’s condo, specialists mentioned.
Till it turns into clearer how the measure can be carried out, it’s tough to advise homosexual individuals in Russia about altering their lives, mentioned Igor Kochetkov, a founding father of the Russian LGBT Community, an umbrella group.
Critics say it’s uncommon to make use of a designation meant to focus on particular organizations in opposition to one thing extra amorphous like a world motion. There are a pair precedents, nonetheless, particularly two home campaigns seen as encouraging youth violence.
As well as, the Kremlin has more and more slapped the “extremist” label on organizations that it doesn’t like. They embrace 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 Fb and Instagram, which the Russian authorities has accused of spreading Russophobia.
In Russia, measures focusing on L.G.B.T.Q. teams began in earnest after 2012, when Mr. Putin returned to the presidency. In 2013, Russia handed a regulation banning “homosexual propaganda” directed towards minors and expanded that in 2022 to ban something that, it mentioned, smacked of endorsing “nontraditional relationships and pedophilia” amongst all Russians.
Final summer season, 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 regulation banning medical gender transitions or altering genders on official paperwork.
There’s a lengthy custom of countries at battle singling out minority teams, particularly homosexual individuals, for prosecution, reminiscent of Nazi Germany. The trouble to construct help for the battle inevitably entails figuring out exterior and inner enemies, and in Russia the widely destructive perspective towards homosexual individuals dovetails with this effort, mentioned Alexandra Arkhipova, a social anthropologist who research the ripple results of the battle on Russian society.
A 2016 examine confirmed {that a} majority of Russians “take into consideration gay minorities as a type of illness introduced by the collective West,” she mentioned.
This perspective is very prevalent amongst Russians older than 65, who’re additionally Mr. Putin’s core supporters. They establish 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 finish,” crowed one commenter on a channel on a Telegram messaging app, Operation Z, a reference to the battle in Ukraine. It was accompanied by an emoji of clapping arms.
Regardless of 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 “a part of society,” whereas mocking what he known as a development within the West to confer public prizes solely on those that have fun the homosexual neighborhood.
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. individuals are protected,” saying that “restraining public demonstrations of nontraditional sexual relations or preferences will not be a type a censure for them.”
The proposed designation opens the door to the form of authorized and verbal gymnastics that the Kremlin typically makes use of to disclaim that it’s prosecuting a sexual minority group, Ms. Arkhipova mentioned. “They’ll say to all people: We aren’t prosecuting gay individuals; gay individuals are positive — we’re simply prosecuting extremists,” she mentioned.
Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.
