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The St Petersburg City Court has upheld the Ministry of Justice’s lawsuit to ban the Interregional Public Movement “Russian LGBT Network.” This was reported by the court press office.
“The court deemed as extremist activities the defence of LGBT people’s rights, monitoring violations of the rights of queer people, and providing reports to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Russia, Mariana Katzarova. In essence, the ‘Russian LGBT Network’ was banned because of its human rights work. This decision has nothing to do with the law,” said lawyer Maksim Olenichev (quote from ‘First Department’).
The ‘LGBT Network’ is the largest interregional movement in Russia defending the rights of LGBTQ+ people. It has been operating for 20 years. The movement will appeal the court’s decision.
This is already the sixth such decision since the start of the year. In this time, five other organisations that helped queer people have also been declared extremist:
- ‘Resource Centre LGBT,’ based in Yekaterinburg, a major city in the Urals
- the LGBTQ+ group ‘Vyhod’ in St Petersburg;
- the Samara public organisation LGBT+ ‘Irida,’ from Samara, a large city on the Volga River;
- the Moscow Community Centre for LGBT Initiatives;
- the queer media outlet ‘Parni+.’
The Ministry of Justice is also seeking to ban the ‘Kallisto’ movement in Yaroslavl, a historic city northeast of Moscow, and the organisations ‘Centre T’ and T9 NSK, which have supported transgender people.