"We thought, 'This system isn't working.' That's when we went to police in hopes that such comments would be deleted," she tells RFE/RL in a telephone interview.Īnna Plyusnina, a lawyer for the LGBT Resource Center in Yekaterinburg Plyusnina, who first revealed her story to the Yekaterniburg-based news site, says that she decided to file formal complaints in March after local news portals refused to delete homophobic comments - some involving violent imagery - posted under articles about LGBT issues. LGBT activists, Western governments, and rights watchdogs have also warned of an increasingly repressive atmosphere for sexual minorities in Russia, including a 2013 law signed by President Vladimir Putin that bans "promoting" among minors "nontraditional sexual relations."
Russia has undertaken a broad crackdown on online speech in recent years that critics say is aimed at stifling dissenting views and is abused by authorities to bolster conviction rates.Ī spate of recent cases in the Siberian region of Altai - including a 19-year-old facing up to five years in prison for the Jon-Snow-as-Jesus meme - has triggered debate about the need to reform hate-speech laws. Plyusnina's decision to go public this week with the responses by regional police comes amid heightened national attention in Russia to criminal prosecutions over online content - including satirical memes - that authorities deem hate speech or insulting to religion. "The comments in question express a negative attitude toward homosexuals," police continued in the response, a copy of which was obtained by RFE/RL. "The texts examined are not aimed at forming among readers a negative attitude toward individuals or a group of individuals singled out by nationality, race, religion, or social affiliation," reads one of the three police responses to complaints filed by Anna Plyusnina, a lawyer with the LGBT Resource Center in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg. Internet users in Russia have faced criminal hate-speech charges for mocking religion on social media, including for likening the Jon Snow character from Game Of Thrones to Jesus Christ.īut when a Russian LGBT activist complained to police about online comments saying "faggots should be pummeled" or "snuffed out," they said no laws were broken - and that sexual minorities are not a group protected under hate-speech laws.
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