Russia has spent greater than a 12 months creating an electronic database of its LGBTQ+ residents, independent Russian media has reported.
The country’s top court declared the international LGBTQ+ rights movement ‘extremist’ in November 2023.
Within the months since, law enforcement officials have been constructing a register to trace ‘extremist’ LGBTQ+ Russians, insiders told Meduza.
The officials, members of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, are creating the list using police records of LGBTQ+ people arrested in recent raids.
Moscow views LGBTQ+ people as a shadowy cabal of ‘paramilitary groups’ calling for an ‘open gender war’ and fascinating in ‘devil worship’, they said.
Citing ministry insiders, people making the watch list include the handfuls of LGBTQ+ club-goers and venue owners detained in recent months under Russia’s ‘gay propaganda’ ban.
The law, which prohibits describing LGBTQ+ lives as normal, has led to even My Little Pony conventions being targeted by police.
One queer bar owner told Meduza that in a raid, ‘security forces copied your entire database from the pc where we keep track of reservations’.
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Dmitry Chukreev, of the pro-Kremlin political party United Russia, confirmed to Meduza that ‘records have been kept for the reason that Supreme Court ruling got here into force’.
‘Everyone seems to be being recorded and placed on record,’ he added.
Nonetheless, ministry sources said funds and worker numbers are too scarce to determine the database properly amid the Ukraine war.
‘There is just one district police officer left for each six districts,’ they said.
‘They’re not going to go knocking on people’s doors and say, “So, you f*****s, are you going to examine in?”‘
Attempts to watch LGBTQ+ activity in Russia are also happening along the border, human rights campaigners said.
Officers from Russia’s Federal Security Service, or the FSB, are reportedly asking people going into Russia whether or not they are ‘affiliated with the LGBTQ+ community’ or have ‘plans to vary gender’.
These interrogations can last as long as five hours, claimed Evelina Chaika, the founding father of EQUAL PostOst who said their group has been approached by the FSB and the Ministry of Defence.
Trans individuals who have since fled from Russia have had the doors of their old homes knocked by officers, added activist Yael Demedetskaya.
‘In February 2024, a person from Vladivostok got here to us, he’s a trans man and as soon as he and his wife crossed the [American] border, a neighborhood police officer got here to his home,’ Demedetskaya said.
‘He asked where he was now and whether he had really modified his documents.’
Demedetskaya added that security offices have begun demanding the patient records of doctors known to supply gender-affirming healthcare, which was banned in 2023.
Chaika added: ‘One doctor, who had previously been on the gender reassignment commission, simply took his family and left [Russia].’
In addition to a roster of LGBTQ+ people, sources alleged the Kremlin is allegedly planning to make a public registry for sex staff so ‘everyone could check a friend or fiancée’.
The Russian Federation has been approached for comment.
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