For the fifth year in a row, Major General Tatyana Moskalkova, Ombudsman for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, has presented a final report, which does not contain any place to mention the problems of the LGBT community.
65-year-old Tatiana Moskalkova in early April presented to President Vladimir Putin another report on the situation in the field of human rights. The 500-page document does not contain a single mention of the specific concerns of the LGBT community. The word with the root “sex” is used twice, the word “gender” is used once.
As in previous years, the problems of the transgender community have been completely ignored. There is not a single mention of the violation of the rights of HIV-positive people.
On April 22, with applause, deputies of the State Duma re-elected Tatyana Moskalkova to the post of Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation for a new term. Only two deputies voted against, one abstained.
The Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation is asked to check the official Instagram account of Dolce & Gabbana for violations of the Code of Administrative Offenses “Propagation of non-traditional sexual values among minors.” As Izvestia found out, such a request to law enforcement agencies was sent by the State Duma deputy from United Russia Anatoly Vyborny. According to him in the document, there are publications on the social network that show unconventional relationships between men and women that violate the constitutional values of Russians.
“The propaganda of homosexuality has now become widespread. This is a real attack on our way of life, values and culture. The word “aggression” is even more appropriate. See how actively this process has gone lately? In Hollywood films, more and more stories are directly or indirectly devoted to the topic of homosexuality. There are serials in which the main actors practice non-traditional relationships, and all the characters who express doubt are presented as stupid, ridiculous and always losing, “Anatoly Vyborny explained his position to Izvestia.
According to him, social networks, the film industry, and global brands are involved in this aggression.
He stressed that blocking such content is a retaliatory measure against LGBT aggression. This is not the first appeal of a deputy to law enforcement agencies regarding non-traditional propaganda of family values among teenagers. In March of this year, he succeeded in blocking similar information on the VKontakte social network.
The social network VKontakte, at the request of Roskomnadzor, blocked the Alliance of Heterosexuals and LGBT People for Equality. This was reported by the VKontakte press service.
The blocking was based on the decision of the Metallurgical District Court of the city of Chelyabinsk. The notice states that “this index of the website page on the Internet contains information, the dissemination of which in the Russian Federation is prohibited by a court decision.”
The Metallurgical District Court of Chelyabinsk recognized the information in the community “Alliance of Heterosexuals and LGBT People for Equality” banned from distribution on the territory of the Russian Federation on December 11, 2019.
Thus, the court granted the prosecutor’s petition, who argued that the community “clearly promotes non-traditional sexual relations, namely homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexual relationships, transgender people,” and also creates “a positive image of public order violators and a negative one – of law enforcement officers”.
The Alliance of Heterosexuals and LGBT People for Equality calls itself a social movement that unites heterosexuals who support the struggle for LGBT equality and LGBT people themselves. More than 30 thousand users have subscribed to the public movement on VKontakte.
Social media regulation in Russia is tightening. On February 1, a law came into force, according to which social networks must independently identify and block prohibited content, and huge fines are provided for refusing to delete such information. Earlier, VKontakte received a fine of 1.5 million rubles for failure to remove calls to participate in rallies. Repeated violation may result in a fine of one tenth of the annual proceeds.
In Russia, since 2013, a law has been in force that prohibits the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” among minors. This law is used to prosecute LGBT people and fight projects on this topic.
On March 11, the film “Supernova” was released in Russia with Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci in the title role. The film tells the story of a gay couple in which one of the partners is rapidly losing his memory.
But the Russian distributor cut out a three-minute intimate scene with two main characters from the picture.
The director of the film, Harry McQueen, said he opposed the censorship of his film in Russia.
“We, the filmmakers, are strongly opposed to the Supernova censorship in Russia. It is deeply troubling that the film was edited without our permission and against our will,” the statement said.
Sergei Shcherbinin, director of the World Pictures distribution company, declined to comment. Later, the distributor released the full version of the film “Supernova” in Russia.
The press service of the company said that “the essence and message of the film is not in the problems of LGBT people, but in something else – in love, in support, in the pain of losing a loved one, in salvation and in freedom of choice.” They referred to McQueen’s statement, who said that it would be better if Russian viewers saw the film in a cut-down form than not at all.
“Due to the fact that there was a lot of excitement around the film, which fueled interest in the full version of the film, all those who want to see it can contact their cinemas, which usually respond promptly to such requests,” the BBC said. -si at World Pictures. – Any cinemas that decide to release the full version of the film and let us know about it, we will be happy to provide it. “
“Naturally, after permission from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation,” the company added. “The viewer votes, and this is the main thing. Therefore, we hope that the full version of the film can be seen in cinemas this week.”
What happened?
The distribution company, while preparing “Supernova” for the Russian distribution, cut out from the film a three-minute sex scene of the main characters.
At the same time, the film was still released with the mark “18+”.
The film’s director, Harry McQueen, said he understands the pressure that Russian distributors are subjected to, but the filmmaking team “will not tolerate this kind of censorship.”
“We want the film to be shown in its original, unedited form around the world,” the director said in a statement.
“As a team, we stand in solidarity with LGBTQ + communities around the world and have expressed our deep concern to the Russian distributor.”
According to film critic Zinaida Pronchenko, the distributor feared that cinemas would refuse to show the full version of the film.
The orientation of the main characters is not mentioned in the press materials sent out by the distributor.
“Now the inattentive viewer may well think that this is a picture of a strong male friendship”, – sums up the film critic Anton Dolin.
The film tells the story of a gay couple in which a writer named Tasker Mulliner, played by Tucci, is rapidly losing his memory.
Therefore, the couple decides to go on a journey so that the writer has time to write a novel before his memory leaves him.
The film received mostly high reviews from critics.
“Of course,” Supernova “is primarily a film about accepting the death of a loved one, and homosexuality is by no means its central theme. But the entire emotional mood of the film is lost and meaningless when significant details in the characters’ relationships are lost: we say goodbye to a loved one differently than to a friend This means that the most important thing has been removed from the film – the key to its understanding, “writes Anton Dolin.
“McQueen does not need to justify the sexual orientation of his characters, he does not need to make a plot mechanism out of it – because then homosexuality will be shown as exotic, as something that must be justified, otherwise it simply will not find a place in history,” film critic Efim Gungin comments on the film …
In 2019, the film “Rocketman”, based on the biography of the English singer and composer Sir Elton John, was similarly censored.
The film was released in Russia without a sex scene of two men and the end credits, which say that the singer is now married to a man.
“We reject in the strongest terms the decision to indulge local laws and censor Rocketman for the Russian market,” Elton John and the filmmakers said in a joint statement.
In Russia, there is a law prohibiting “the propaganda of non-traditional relationships among minors.”
In the resolution of the conference “Legal and Legislative Aspects of Supporting Families and Family Values in the Russian Federation”, which was held today in the State Duma as part of the United Russia party’s “Strong Family” project, they called for tougher responsibility for homopropaganda, as well as banning propaganda of many – from polyamory to transsexuality.
In the resolution of the conference, which is at the disposal of RIA Novosti, it is proposed to amend the law “On information, information technologies and on the protection of information.” The purpose of the changes is “a ban on the promotion of sex change, a ban on the promotion of bisexuality, transgender (transsexualism), and polyamory.” In addition, clerics insist on tougher administrative responsibility for “promoting non-traditional relations.” Another requirement of homophobic people is a ban on the use of LGBT symbols in state institutions.
Recall that the so-called “homopropaganda” was banned in Russia at the federal level in July 2013. A month earlier, the State Duma adopted a law supplementing the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation with Article 6.21, establishing responsibility for “promoting non-traditional sexual relations among minors”, also known as “Mizulina’s law.”
In June 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found Mizulina’s “law” discriminatory. The ECHR ordered the Russian authorities to pay the three gay activists who filed the lawsuit 49,100 euros in compensation for material and moral damage, as well as legal costs. The State Duma promised to “roll up into a tube and use like toilet paper” this decision of the ECHR. The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation in September 2017 challenged the verdict of the ECHR under the “law of Mizulina”.
