LGBTQ+ Russians win fight not to be called ‘perverts who should be crushed with tanks’

A group of LGBTQ+ Russians who were described as ‘Aids-riddled perverts’ have won a claim in the European Court of Human Rights.

Aleksey Yevstifeyev, Ruslan Miniakhmetov and Daniil Grachev alleged Moscow did nothing to protect them from homophobia.

The three claimants alleged that a ‘well-known politician’ hurled homophobic insults at them at a 2015 May Day rally in St Petersburg.

Among the insults, and there were many, they were called: ‘perverts’, ‘scumbags’, ‘Aids-ridden’ and ‘paedophiles’. The official said the trio should be ‘liquidated’ and ‘crushed with tanks and tractors’, the claim says.

Aleksey, Ruslan and Daniil all lodged individual applications to the court in 2017.

The court ruled ‘unanimously’ in favour of the LGBTQ+ campaigners and found Russia violated Articles eight and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to enjoy a ‘private life’ and live free from discrimination.

Moscow will now have to cough up €7,500 (roughly £6,200) to Aleksey, Ruslan and Daniil.

On May 1, 2015, Aleksey, Ruslan and Daniil came carrying LGBTQ+ Pride flags and banners in a defiant protest to celebrate International Workers’ Day. Among the 90,000 attending, around 600 formed an LGBTQ+ column.

But Vitaly Milonov, deputy of Russia’s lower house of parliament, the Duma, unleashed a barrage of ‘vulgar prison-slang terms for gay men and women’ at the queer demonstrators.

‘He claimed that he knew half of the participants and that they were all paedophiles,’ the court said.

‘He also shouted that the participants should all be “liquidated”, thrown into the river, crushed with tanks and tractors, be arrested and jailed for five years, “cast into the cauldron” and should “croak from Aids”.

‘Pointing at some of the participants he imitated the gesture of cutting a throat or shouted “I am going to find you, be scared!” or “I am going to rip off your head”.’

Pointing to Daniil, the United Russia politician for Saint Petersburg South called him a ‘outcast f****t’ as he urged police to arrest him.

He had the same choice of words for Ruslan, saying according to the court: ‘F****t! Absolute f****t. F****t, f****t, f****t, get out of here. I will give you a holed spoon.’

Aleksey, Ruslan and Daniil tried multiple times to take their case to Russian courts only be told Milonov was expressing his ‘opinion’ and was simply trying to ‘prompt the nearby police officers to arrest Mr Grachev’.

ECHR officials said Milonov’s remarks ‘affected the applicants’ psychological well-being and dignity and therefore fell within the sphere of their private life’.

Despite anti-discrimination laws being in place, the court had its ‘doubts’ that Russian authorities effectively enforce them. The court, however, had little doubt that officials ‘failed’ the LGBTQ+ victims.

‘Furthermore, the domestic authorities did not provide any reasons for rejecting the complaint in so far as it concerned discrimination and minor disorderly acts,’ the judgement added.

Coming Out, a Russian queer campaign group that supported the three claimants, said the ECHR ruling was a reminder that the Kremlin is encouraging and turning a blind eye to anti-LGBTQ+ hatred.

Stressing that while it might not change things for the better right now, the decision will soon become an ‘important, precedent-setting character for Russia’, they added.

‘It shows how the right to non-discrimination, the right to respect for private life and the right to freedom of speech,’ Ksenia Mikhailova, a legal expert for Coming Out, told Metro.

‘This decision shows that in the case when the statement comes from a person who is a public figure, a political figure, and is aimed at humiliation/insulting persons on the basis of sexual orientation, the right to respect for privacy and the right to non-discrimination takes precedence over the right to freedom of speech.

‘It will be important that already exists a decision on Russian’s applicants and it will be implemented much faster than it would be without a decision against Russia.’

Andrey Petrov meanwhile also filed his own case in 2022 after a comic made an Instagram video pretending to ‘hunt’ for gay people.

It came after a pro-Kremlin news outlet FAN released a propaganda video in support of Vladimir Putin’s proposed constitutional ban on marriage equality in June 2020. Russians were being asked to vote on the ban as part of a referendum on a raft of changes to the country’s 1993 constitution.

Parodying the FAN video, comedian DK uploaded an Instagram video of a father and son going on a mock ‘gay hunt’ in 2035.

They say that hunting LGBTQ+ people was legalised in 2020 following the constitutional reform, with the son saying: ‘I killed my first gay at the age of sixteen.’

The father and son try to lure out their ‘prey’ by repeating the word ‘Starbucks’ before shooting at a man in colourful clothes.

‘Mum will make a fruit tart,’ the son remarks.

The court, however, found Andrey’s application ‘inadmissible’ as officials were ‘not convinced that the [gay hunting] video at issue contained negative stereotyping of LGBTI people reaching the level of seriousness required to affect the “private life” of individual members of that group’.

Andrey, the head of the Moscow LGBTQ+ campaign group Stimul, filed a complaint accusing DK of inciting violence against LGBTQ+ people.

The police refused to investigate, citing the ‘absence’ of a criminal act, which a top district court agreed with. MK, meanwhile, told prosecutors that the video ‘mocked homophobia by exaggerating it to a grotesque level of absurdity’.

Andrey told the ECHR that the authorities’ ‘failure to respond’ left him feeling ‘humiliated, anxious and fearful’.

But court officials said the campaigner was not being personally targeted by the clip and weren’t ‘convinced’ that it was a real call to arms.

‘Taking into account its content, its humorous tone and the context in which it was published, it is difficult to construe it literally as approving of the hunting of gay people,’ the judgement said.

While homosexuality is legal, ‘gay propaganda’ is banned and even something as simple as carrying a queer Pride flag is considered ‘extremism’.

Nearly nine in 10 queer Russians say they have noticed an increase in homophobic and transphobic attitudes in the last year. Nearly 45% experienced violence in 2023, compared to 30% the year before.

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