31.03.2014
On March 24, 2014, “Coming Out” lodged a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights related to the St. Petersburg law prohibiting “propaganda of transgenderism." The applicant of the complaint. Ruslan Savolainen, was denied the approval to organize a picket in St. Petersburg, dedicated to transgender rights a year ago. The complaint is against the violation of the right to freedom of assembly and discrimination on the grounds of gender identity.
On March 31, 2013, a group of individual activists planned to hold a series of pickets dedicated to the International Transgender Visibility Day. Activists wanted to attract attention of the public and law enforcement representatives to the problem of discrimination against transgender people, transsexual people and other gender minorities. However, none of the 11 picket locations, proposed by the organizers in the downtown of St. Petersburg, were approved.
The administration of the Moscow district of St. Petersburg refused permission to organize the picket on the basis of the following reasons: a) the picket could provoke car accidents, b) consent is needed by the organization “Vodokanal,” which manages the fountains in the square, and c) the city has a ban on “propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexualism and transgenderness among minors.”
The refusal was unsuccessfully contested in the district and city courts, and now activists are forced to go to Strasbourg. They ask the ECtHR to find the Russian authorities’ refusal as violating the human rights and freedoms by applying the law on “propaganda” to fully ban public pickets in support of the rights and interests of transgender people.
In Russia, transgender people have problems with change of documents, name and legal gender, face discrimination in employment and other areas. They face degrading searches, and become victims of crimes motivated by transphobic hatred. However, all these problems remain virtually invisible to the authorities, who could initiate positive changes aimed at improving the situation of transgender people in Russia.
The complaint was prepared by “Coming Out”’s lawyer Kseniya Kirichenko.