Russian LGBT Network
[citation needed] The organization is a member of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA)[1][2][3] and is led by Russian LGBT rights activist Igor Kochetkov.
With other human rights organizations like Memorial,[5] it seeks recognition for members of the LGBT community who suffered criminal persecution in USSR as victims of political repression.
On August 11 the network sent a written request to the Prosecutor General of Russia to bring a criminal case against environmentalist Oleg Mitvol, whom Igor Petrov accused of fomenting discrimination against LGBT people.
The network filed an August 24 complaint with the Prosecutor General against Sergey Ponomarev, deputy chief editor of Komsomolskaya Pravda, for making defamatory public statements about the sexual orientation of individuals.
On January 11, 2010, the public prosecutor's office issued a warning to the newspaper: "The examination established that Ponomarev’s statements expressed the negative attitude towards the people with homosexual orientation.
For the above-stated reason, the inter-district prosecutor's office issues a warning to the ZAO Komsomolskaya Pravda Publishing House, that breaches of the law in the mass media are intolerable".
[citation needed] On September 17–27, 2009, an International Festival of Queer Culture was held in Saint Petersburg celebrating homosexuals and "different" people.
Among the participants were the groups Kolibri, Iva Nova, Betty and S’nega; poets Dita Karelina, Liya Kirgetova and Elena Novozhilova, and singers Olga Krauze and Tatiana Puchko.
The festival also featured photo exhibitions, theater performances, poetry readings, art workshops, films, drag-king shows, seminars and discussions.
[17][18] In a December 24, press release, the network praised Patriarch Kirill's declaration of the inadmissibility of discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Together with other tens of thousands of people who participated in a variety of actions around the world on this day, Samaritans and Tolyatti launched colorful balloons into the air and held other festive events.
LGBT activist "AVERS" Alina Aliyeva decided to refresh the memory of citizens about last year's events in Volgograd on the night of may 9–10, when a group of thugs brutally killed Vladislav Tornov, suspecting him of homosexuality.
Elena Shakhova is involved in various projects devoted to the formation of independent and impartialcourt, legal aid, work with young human rights activists, and distribution of information about NGOs in Russia.
Starting from 2007, the Russian LGBT Network conducts an annual anonymous survey devoted to the violation of human rights and discrimination based on SOGI.
Physical violence – 52 cases One of the largest problems with monitoring violations based on SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) is that often survivors of these violations are not open about their identity,resulting in an unwillingness to resort to law enforcement authorities.Abuses by law enforcement officials – 21 cases.Monitoring shows that the fears faced by survivors of violence and discrimination are not at all baseless.
[MONITORING OFDISCRIMINATION AND VIOLENCE BASED ON SOGI IN RUSSIA IN 2015: GENERAL INFORMATION ] As part of the "Week against homophobia and transphobia" April 4, 2015 Arkhangelsk LGBT activists held an action "Angels of Death".
During this action, information was distributed to residents of the city and explanatory conversations were held.Blood on Angels as a symbol of multiple murders and attacks on LGBT people of Arkhangelsk.
A detailed analysis of concepts and a heated discussion made it clear that the manifestation and content of stigma and discrimination are always equally destructive and any xenophobia is unacceptable.
In Russia, Rainbow flashmobs and other events took place in 16 cities - in Arkhangelsk, Voronezh, Ekaterinburg, Krasnodar, Moscow, Nakhodka, Novosibirsk, Murmansk, Samara, St. Petersburg, Omsk, Perm, Tolyatti, Tomsk, Tyumen and Khabarovsk.
It was attended by 150 people from 26 cities of Russia: Alexandrov, Arkhangelsk, Astrakhan, Belomorsk, Vladivostok, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Kazan, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Murmansk, Nakhodka, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Orel, Perm, Rostov-on-don, Samara, St. Petersburg, Syktyvkar, Tomsk, Tyumen, Khabarovsk.
According to Maria Kozlovskaya, senior lawyer of the Russian LGBT Network, “apparently, the decision was made in advance, and no expert opinions were of any importance”.
However, in practice in this region, the topic of homosexuality is a social taboo, as a result of which LGBT people are subjected to systematic violence by society and police.
In March 2017, the human rights organization Russian LGBT Network began to receive information that mass detentions, torture and killings of homosexual men had begun in Chechnya.
According to Novaya Gazeta's investigation, the first wave of illegal detentions began in the early days of February, when a young man was arrested in Chechnya while intoxicated.
The second wave of repression occurred after LGBT activists of the GayRussia.ru project, as part of an all-Russian company, applied for a gay parade in several cities in the region (Nalchik, Cherkessk, Stavropol, Maykop).
If, in an attack on the homeless, the concept of “inciting hatred of a social group” is often taken into account by the court, then in the case of LGBT people, this wording does not apply.
At the same time, the journalist's killer Sergey Kosyrev called himself a “cleaner”, his life “a crusade against a certain social group” (meaning gays), and the feeling with which he killed Tsilikin “was not hostility, as the protocol says, but hatred ".
The assailants were allegedly looking for a young Chechen woman who had escaped from the region, as well as the Russian LGBT Network emergency programme coordinator David Isteev.
The activist said “They told me to tell David Isteev that they were going to find and kill him,” Three of the assailants were identified as Chechens and four implied they were police officers from Chechnya's capital Grozny, but refused to provide identification documents.
[29][30][31] In February 2022, the Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit seeking the liquidation of Russian LGBT Network's parent organization Sphere Charitable Foundation, arguing that its operations and activism are contrary to "traditional" values and state policy, and is thus a "threat to public order and the rule of law".
