Drawing a screen around the realities of life for gay Russians, President Vladimir Putin and the organizers of the Sochi Winter Olympic games are presenting a decidedly friendly face to international visitors. Elena Vlasenko reports
Greenpeace prosecutions show the lengths the Russian president will go to to protect his oligarch friends, says Elena Vlasenko
Russia's drive against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people continues unabated as the country's Duma considers a law banning "homosexual propaganda", Elena Vlasenko reports from Moscow. Before 1993, being a homosexual in Russia meant the...
A year after the mass protests marking Vladimir Putin’s controversial presidential win, Elena Vlasenko reports from Moscow on the heavy-handed repression confronting the Russian opposition.
Self-censorship has poisoned Russian media, art and other spheres. In the past few years, criminal prosecution of artists and new laws have made it clear for those who criticise the Kremlin or Russian Orthodox Church in their creative work, will...
Self-censorship has poisoned Russian media, art and other spheres. In the past few years, criminal prosecution of artists and new laws have made it clear for those who criticise the Kremlin or Russian Orthodox Church in their creative work, will face consequences for portraying either of these institutions negatively. Just last week, the State Duma passed two controversial laws in the first hearing. One forbids obscene language in movies, books, TV, and radio during mass public events. The other stipulates criminal punishment — including five years in prison — for “insulting believers’ feelings”. Both laws, as far as human rights activists are concerned, limit artists’ freedom of expression, and encourage self-censorship. Index spoke to three notable artists to find out […]
Russian non-governmental organisations are facing a wave of state inspections, which some believe are taking place as revenge for united protests against a law classifying international NGOs as “foreign agents”. The list of NGOs visited by prosecutors and other inspectors during last days, is impressive: Transparency International, Amnesty International, Memorial, Moscow Helsinki Group, Human Rights Watch, Agora, For Human Rights (Za prava cheloveka), GOLOS, and numerous regional NGOs. Even regional organisation Shield and Sword of Chuvashiya, which actually appealed to the Ministry of Justice seeking “foreign agents” status, has received a notification of an inspection. According to the law, an NGO that receives financing from abroad, has to register as “foreign agent” or face criminal charges. “Foreign agents” are obliged to […]
A Russian court yesterday dismissed the appeal of Maria Alekhina, one of the three members of feminist punk group Pussy Riot. Alekhina, 24, appealed to the local court asking to defer the remaining 13 months of her two year sentence until her...
The gay community is one of the most vulnerable minorities in Russia, and homophobia is one of the country’s most rampant prejudices. According to Levada centre research, around 74 per cent of Russian citizens consider members of the Lesbian, Gay,...
Mikhail Afanasyev is a veteran of the libel courts. As one of the few independent journalists in Russia’s Urals he has faced 13 defamation suits in 15 years, and won every one. Afanasyev edits an online newspaper, New Focus, and reports to Glasnost...
MOSCOW. 29 October 2012 (INDEX). Earlier this month a Moscow court freed Ekaterina Samutsevich, one of three imprisoned women from Russian punk band Pussy Riot but upheld the two-year jail term handed down to her bandmates. Samutsevich, Maria...
Ekaterina Samutsevich told Index on Censorship’s Russia correspondent that Pussy Riot is here to stay.