February 08, 2024

Arrested for Rainbow Earrings


Arrested for Rainbow Earrings
Conditions for LGBT Russians grow increasingly dire.  RussianLife files

A court in Nizhny Novgorod found a young woman guilty of extremism for simply wearing earrings with a rainbow design. She was sentenced to five days in jail on charges of "public display of extremist symbols."

The human rights organization Egida reported that Maria (her name has been changed to protect her privacy) was approached by a reactionary blogger on January 29. He demanded she remove the earrings, claiming that the earrings were symbols of the LGBT movement. After her accuser posted a video of the incident on Telegram, Maria was summoned to the Center for Combatting Extremism for questioning. The video, in which Maria is aggressively questioned by the blogger, also shows her wearing a pin of the Ukrainian flag. 

In court proceedings on January 30, Maria's lawyer described the earrings as being "in the shape of a frog with a seven-color rainbow." Maria's defense team argued that associating the rainbow with the LBGT movement was "an error of perception." After two hours of deliberation, Maria was found guilty of a misdemeanor. 

In November 2023, the Russian Supreme Court declared the so-called "international LGBT movement" an extremist organization. 

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