Statement by the Yabloko Party Gender Faction, 29.11.2023

On 17 November, the Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court demanding that an “International LGBT Public Movement” be recognised as an extremist organization and banned.

The Gender Faction of the Yabloko party believes that this lawsuit by the Ministry of Justice is a new round of inciting hatred, at the state level, towards a certain social group. Officials of the Ministry of Justice know very well that the organisation “International LGBT Public Movement” does not exist. They use this formulation to create a legal fiction with the help of which security forces can persecute any person of non-heterosexual orientation, encouraging another wave of denunciations, interfering in people’s personal lives and controlling their bodies. Persecution and even extermination of people with alternative (non-traditional) sexual orientations was practiced in National Socialist Germany, and is now widespread in the toughest dictatorships – Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Iran, Yemen, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other countries practicing Sharia.

In Russia, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people have been consistently limited for ten years. In 2013, the Code of Administrative Offenses introduced an article on “LGBT propaganda among minors”. Last year, this rule was expanded to include adult citizens; and this year, the legislator banned changing the gender marker in documents for transgender people. It is surprising that the State Duma considers it possible to pass such laws in the 21st century, contrary to the opinion of doctors about the impossibility of turning a heterosexual person into a homosexual by “seducing to another sexual orientation”.

Sexual orientation is inborn, it is impossible to encourage its change, therefore the adoption of the law punishing for alleged “LGBT propaganda” is absurd from a medical point of view and represents repression against a group of people based solely on their sexual orientation.

The Ministry of Justice wants to ban an “International LGBT Public Movement”, which is not legally and organisationally established, does not have a location, governing bodies, requirements for members and other signs of an organisational structure. Thus, it is unclear who or what is the defendant in the lawsuit. The actual purpose of the lawsuit is to intimidate and possibly persecute citizens of alternative sexual orientation who have nothing to do with the “movement”. If the court recognises the “movement” as extremist, then all activists, open LGBTQI+ people and human rights organisations that provide assistance to them will be outlawed.

On 13 November, Ekaterina Kudelich, a Justice Ministry employee, stated during the presentation of a report to the UN on human rights in Russia that “the rights of LGBT citizens are protected in Russia by legislative practices”. The Yabloko Gender Faction calls on the Ministry of Justice to withdraw its lawsuit so that human rights in Russia are respected in their entirety.

Galina Mikhaleva,

Chairwomen, Yabloko Gender Faction