![Russia wants to ban “the international LGBT movement” for “extremism” /></p>
<p>Natalia Kolesnikova Agence France-Presse Police officers stand Tuesday in Moscow at the entrance to an illuminated tunnel that is part of the Russia Expo, an exhibition used to showcase Russia's successes in the fields of culture and of technology. </p>
<p>The Russian Ministry of Justice indicated on Friday that it had requested a ban on the grounds of “extremism” of the “international LGBT movement”, a new illustration of the ultraconservative turn in Russia which has accelerated since the offensive against Ukraine and that NGOs describe as homophobic.</p>
<p>In a press release, the ministry does not specify whether it is generally targeting the LGBTQ+ movement across the world, or whether it is designating one or more existing organizations. And he did not immediately respond to a request for details from AFP.</p>
<p>The Russian Supreme Court must study this request for a ban on November 30.</p>
<p >The ministry said it had “filed an administrative application to the Supreme Court […] to classify the international LGBT social movement as extremist and to ban its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation.”</p>
<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin has for years been pursuing a policy described as homophobic and transphobic by many representatives of the LGBTQ+ community and NGOs.</p>
<p>Since the offensive against Ukraine launched in February 2022, the Russian authorities have further increased conservative measures, particularly against LGBTQ+ people, saying they want to eliminate behavior deemed deviant and by positioning themselves as a moral bulwark against the West deemed decadent.</p>
<p>For several human rights organizations, Vladimir Putin and his regime pursue a homophobic and transphobic policy. The Kremlin affirms that individuals are free of their sexual orientation, but that Russia must protect children in the face of Western propaganda which, according to Moscow, denies the existence of a biological sex.</p>
<p >The announcement by the Ministry of Justice was denounced by specialized organizations.</p>
<p>“The Russian authorities are once again forgetting that the LGBT+ community are people, citizens of this country like any other. And now they not only want to eliminate us from public space, but ban us as a social group,” reacted to AFP Dilia Gafourova, director of the Sphere fund, an association for the defense of LGBT + rights in Russia.</p>
<p>“This is a typical measure of repressive and undemocratic regimes: persecuting the most vulnerable,” she continued, promising to “fight.”</p>
<p >Amnesty International denounced in a press release a “shameful” and “deeply cynical” decision.</p>
<p>“Living in silence and in fear of being humiliated and imprisoned, this is the price that the State wants to impose to countless LGBTI people in Russia,” lamented Marie Struthers, the NGO’s regional director for Eastern Europe.</p>
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Propaganda banned< /h2>
In July, Russian MPs passed a law targeting trans people, prohibiting them from medically transitioning, including through surgeries and hormonal therapies, and banning their right to adopt children.
Since 2013 , a law already prohibits in Russia the “propaganda” aimed at minors of “non-traditional sexual relations”, a text denounced by NGOs as an instrument of repression of LGBTQ +.
At the end of 2022, this law was considerably expanded. It now bans LGBTQ+ “propaganda” among all audiences, in the media, on the Internet, in books and films.
For this reason, a ballet at the Bolshoi on the life of the Soviet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, homosexual, was removed from the directory last spring.
Since 2020, the Russian Constitution has also specified that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, effectively prohibiting unions of people of the same sex.
The main LGBT + NGO in Russia, LGBT-Set (“LGBT Network”, in Russian), was classified at the end of 2021 as a “foreign agent”, a label infamy which complicates its operation and exposes it to fines, or even a ban.
The NGO has been helping sexual minorities in the four corners of Russia since 2006, particularly 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 gays were arrested and sometimes tortured and murdered by the police in Chechnya.