Two Russian courts have this week handed out the first convictions in connection with what the government calls the “international LGBT social movement” which was designated as extremist last year.
On Thursday, a court in the southern region of Volgograd found a man guilty of “displaying the symbols of an extremist organisation” after he posted a photograph of an LGBT flag online, according to the court’s press service.
The man, known only as Artyom P, who was ordered to pay a fine of 1,000 roubles (£8.69), admitted guilt and repented, saying he had posted the image “out of stupidity”, the court said.
On Monday, a court in Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow, sentenced a woman to five days in administrative detention for wearing frog-shaped earrings displaying an image of a rainbow, according to Aegis, an LGBT rights group.
The woman was called to the police station after a man filmed himself approaching her in a cafe and demanding she remove the earrings, and posted it online.
A trial will resume next week in Saratov, south-west Russia, of a photographer who posted images of rainbow flags on Instagram, the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona reported.
The rainbow flag represents the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Russian law prohibits anyone in the country “displaying the symbols” of organisations it considers extremist, a list that includes the social network Meta.
Russia’s supreme court banned the “LGBT movement” last November, continuing a pattern of increasing restrictions on expressions of sexual orientation and gender identity.
A law passed last July outlawed legal or medical changes of gender for transgender Russians, and a law banning the promotion of “non-traditional” sexual relations has been on the books for more than a decade.
