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Russia: Supreme Court Bans “LGBT Movement” as “Extremist”
Russian LGBT Community in Dire Need of International Support
Russia’s Supreme Court ruled today that the “international LGBT movement” is an “extremist organization,” jeopardizing all forms of LGBT rights activism in the country, Human Rights Watch said today.
In a closed hearing, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Justice Ministry’s lawsuit accusing the “LGBT movement” of inciting social and religious discord. Russian authorities should immediately end this perverse persecution of LGBT people and concerned countries should support LGBT people and their advocates facing extreme risks and persecution in Russia.
“The authorities’ move apparently serves a dual purpose,” said Tanya Lokshina, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “It is meant to increase the scapegoating of LGBT people to appeal to the Kremlin’s conservative supporters before the March 2024 presidential vote and to paralyze the work of rights groups countering discrimination and supporting LGBT people.”
Under Russian criminal law, participating in or financing an extremist organization is punishable by up to 12 years in prison. A person found guilty of displaying such groups’ symbols faces up to 15 days in detention for the first offense and up to four years in prison for a repeat offense. The authorities may include individuals suspected of involvement with an extremist organization in the countrywide “list of extremists” and freeze their bank accounts. People deemed to be involved with an extremist organization are barred from running for public office.
In a November 28 submission to the Supreme Court, seven prominent Russian rights groups said that a decision to support the Justice Ministry’s lawsuit would be discriminatory and violate a wide range of rights. Since the organization the government sought to outlaw, the “International LGBT Movement,” does not exist, human rights defenders fear that the ruling will allow the authorities to arbitrarily prosecute anyone for any activities related to LGBT rights.
Russian authorities have long misused Russia’s broad and vague anti-extremism legislation to prosecute peaceful critics. In 2021, the Moscow City Court banned three groups affiliated with leading opposition figure Alexey Navalny as extremist. The authorities then brought new charges against the already imprisoned politician, accusing him of organizing an “extremist community” and inciting extremist activities, which resulted in an additional 19-year sentence.
At least four Navalny supporters were sentenced to prison on a range of extremism charges. Dozens of his supporters across the country were fined and arrested over old social media posts mentioning his anti-corruption work and other projects.
Additionally, for over a decade, Russian authorities have exploited Russia’s pernicious “gay propaganda” law to target LGBT people and activists. In December 2022, the parliament toughened the 2013 “gay propaganda” ban by extending it to cover all public information or activities supporting LGBT rights or displaying non-heterosexual orientation.
The legislation does not provide any exclusion for art, scientific studies, or education and perpetuates a false and damaging messaging that tries to link LGBT people with pedophiles, repeatedly referring to “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations and/or preferences, pedophilia, and sex change.”
On November 13, during the fourth Universal Periodic Review of Russia’s human rights record at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Andrey Loginov, Russia’s deputy justice minister, claimed that there is no discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in Russia because the prohibition of discrimination is enshrined in the constitution. At the same time, he described “gay propaganda” as “alien to spiritual and moral values of our multiethnic and the polyconfessional Russian society.”
Since 2021, after lawmakers included a ban on same-sex marriage in Russia’s constitution, authorities have designated 17 LGBT organizations as “foreign agents,” a term that in Russian has connotations of spying and engaging in sabotage. This designation subjects the groups to a range of stifling and stigmatizing requirements.
Earlier in 2023, Russia’s parliament adopted legislation that violates a wide range of transgender people’s rights. It bans health care needed by trans people, changing gender markers in official documents, and dissolving marriages of trans people. It also prevents trans people from adopting or taking guardianship over children.
With Russian LGBT rights organizations and activists already in jeopardy and the risk of prosecution exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s “extremism” ruling, countries around the world should provide safe haven to those forced to flee Russia in the face of criminal prosecution or other grave threats, Human Rights Watch said.
Other countries, and the European Union member states in particular, given their geographic proximity, should also enable activists who continue LGBT rights work in Russia to obtain long-term visas in case of emergency or to attend international events and meetings with colleagues, along with providing other support to Russian LGBT rights activists working inside Russia or from abroad.
“The assault on LGBT rights has become a symbol of Russia’s rejection of universal human rights, as the government positions Russia as the defender of so-called traditional values in opposition to ‘the collective West,’” Lokshina said. “Russian LGBT people need support now more than ever.”
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
68 'Summer of Heat' Activists Arrested in NYC Protesting Citgroup's Fossil Fuel Financing
"Citi's business model is frying our planet," said one campaigner.
Scores of activists were arrested Friday during a protest outside Citigroup's New York City headquarters, where demonstrators condemned what organizers called the megabank's "racist investments devastating Black and brown communities" and fueling the worsening climate emergency.
Around 1,000 people including environmental leaders from the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana gathered at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan's Financial District, where they rallied before marching to "demand that Wall Street stop funding the fossil fuel projects causing environmental devastation in mostly Black and brown communities in the Gulf South and across the globe."
The march ended at Citigroup's headquarters on the west side of Lower Manhattan, where organizers from New York Communities for Change said 68 people were arrested. The group said a total of 259 activists have been arrested during ongoing Summer of Heat on Wall Street protests, which it organized along with Stop the Money Pipeline, Climate Defenders, and Planet Over Profit.
"On Monday, climate activists from the Gulf South and allies held a roving speak out in front of financial institutions backing the fossil fuel industry, including KKR, BlackRock, and Bank of America," New York Communities for Change said. "On Wednesday, protesters held a civil disobedience action in front of the insurance conglomerate Chubb, which insures petrochemical projects destroying the climate in the Gulf South and around the globe."
One of the protest's organizers, Roishetta Ozane—who founded the Vessel Project of Louisiana—said that "projects that kill our communities like Freeport LNG (liquefied natural gas), Cameron LNG, Corpus Christi LNG, and others would not exist without the backing of financial institutions like Citigroup."
"Money made from them is blood money," Ozane added. "Since they destroy our homes, we're coming to pay them a visit. We will break this cycle of violence and exploitation now because later is too late. We want Citigroup to stop funding fossil fuels and to stop hurting our communities and our families."
As Stop the Money Pipeline coordinator Alec Connon explained in an opinion piece published earlier this month by Common Dreams:
Since the adoption of the Paris agreement in 2015, Citi has provided $204.46 billion in financing to the company's most rapidly developing new coal, oil, and gas fields. Remarkably, Citi has provided more money to those oil and gas companies than even JPMorgan Chase―the bank that climate activists like to call the 'Doomsday Bank.'
To be clear, I'm talking here only about the financing Citi has provided for companies developing new oil and gas reserves, not merely investing in infrastructure to keep the oil pumping from existing reserves. When we take into account financing to all fossil fuel companies, Citi has provided a little shy of $400 billion to coal, oil, and gas companies since 2015.
Citigroup contends that it is "supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy through our net zero commitments and our $1 trillion sustainable finance goal," and that its "approach reflects the need to transition while also continuing to meet global energy needs."
However, Climate Defenders organizing director Marlena Fontes countered that "Citi's business model is frying our planet."
"Every credible climate scientist says that we can't afford to put one more penny into fossil fuels, but Citi is the number one funder of fossil fuel expansion in the world," Fontes added. "Until Citi stops funding fossil fuels, they can expect resistance from everyday people like us who want our children to be able to play outside without coughing on wildfire smoke or getting sick from deadly heatwaves."
GOP Attack on Biodiversity, Climate 'Sticks Finger in the Eye of American People'
Critics of a House appropriations bill that guts environmental agencies warn it's a sign of what the Republicans will do if they retake the Senate and the presidency next year.
Democrats and watchdog groups reacted with outrage on Friday as a U.S. House environmental subcommittee led by Republicans approved an appropriations bill that would reduce funding for two federal agencies and limit their ability to protect the environment.
The House Appropriations Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee voted to advance a bill to weaken the regulatory capacities of the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), cutting funding for conservation, climate action, national parks, and environmental justice initiatives.
"This bill sticks a finger in the eye of the American people who care deeply about clean air, climate change, endangered species, and responsible use of public lands," said Greta Anderson, deputy director of Western Watersheds Project. "It's a nasty wishlist to defund the priorities of protecting a livable future."
The fiscal year 2025 bill proposes a 20% cut to the EPA's annual budget, from $9.2 billion to $7.4 billion, including a $749 million cut to state and tribal assistance grants. It also proposes reductions to many Interior agency budgets, including a $210 million cut to the National Park Service and a $144 million cut to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Taking aim at the government's ability to regulate industry, most of the Republicans' spending allocations are below fiscal year 2024 and almost all of them are below the amount requested by the Biden administration.
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, said in a statement that the proposed EPA cut was "irresponsible" and that she was "greatly disappointed and frustrated" by the bill, which "completely disregards the reality of a warming planet and ignores the need for us to do more, not less."
Pingree's Democratic colleague, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the full appropriations committee, agreed.
The bill "promotes dirty energy, taking the side of fossil fuel companies and those who deny the scientific reality rather than address the escalating risk to our economy and national security presented by the changing climate and growing number of extreme weather events," DeLauro said in the statement.
Critics of the bill also objected to the large number of "poison-pill" riders that seek to undo Biden administration rules and undermine the Endangered Species Act by naming specific animals for which listing can't be funded. Per a Trump-era Interior rule, the legislation also delists most gray wolf populations from the ESA.
"This proposal is a hatchet job of disastrous proportion that in an unprecedented scale, targets our nation's most imperiled species and the law saving them from extinction," Robert Dewey, vice president of government relations at Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement.
The Republicans' bill includes proposed reductions to funding for clean water infrastructure projects, which Food and Water Watch (FWW) said was a step in the wrong direction—water and sewer systems need huge infusions of money just to meet current water quality standards.
"The proposed cuts would leave many with unsafe water and exacerbate the nation’s water affordability crisis, adding more pressure on household water bills at a time when families are already grappling with soaring costs for essential services," Mary Grant, a FWW campaign director, said in a statement, calling safe water "non-negotiable."
Grant said that to safeguard Americans' clean water from "foolishly political annual appropriations battles," Congress should pass the Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity, And Reliability (WATER) Act—a call she also made last year, when the same subcommittee advanced a similar bill.
The full appropriations committee will consider the bill on July 9. If the bill passes through the committee and then the full chamber, as last year's version did, it's unlikely to make headway in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate. However, critics of the bill warned that it's a sign of what the Republicans will do if they retake the Senate and the presidency.
Earlier this month, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump said that he plans to gut federal agencies dealing with climate, such as the Interior Department. A union of EPA workers rebuked Trump for the remarks.
Supreme Court Refuses to Rescue Prison-Bound Steve Bannon
When he's done serving his four-month sentence for flouting congressional subpoenas, the former top Trump adviser faces a federal trial over the We Build the Wall scam.
Steve Bannon, a onetime senior adviser to former U.S. President Donald Trump who was convicted of defying congressional subpoenas related to the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, must report to prison Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his 11th-hour bid to avert his four-month sentence.
In a single-sentence order with no public dissents, the Supreme Court stated that Bannon's "application for release pending appeal presented to the chief justice and by him referred to the court is denied."
In July 2022, a federal jury found Bannon guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. That October, he was sentenced to four months in prison and fined $6,500. Bannon has remained free pending appeals and has benefited from a pause imposed by Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee.
David Schoen, an attorney for Bannon, toldThe Washington Post on Friday: "I fully believe the conviction will be reversed and it is a shame to see it mishandled like this. He never should be going to jail for even a day."
However, Bannon not only faces four months behind bars for flouting Congress, another federal trial awaits him over his alleged conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering in connection with the
We Build the Wall fundraising scam.