The ECHR awarded compensation to those detained at a rally against the ban on “LGBT propaganda”

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in the case of Valery Sozaev, Ivan Babitsky, Svetlana Mishina, Evgenia Samoshkina and Pavel Samburov, who were detained in 2013 at a rally against a bill banning “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors” initiated by Elena Mizulina. This was reported on the website of the court. The lawyers of the Memorial Human Rights Center published a detailed commentary on the ECtHR-Info telegram channel.

On June 11, 2013, about thirty opponents of the bill came to the entrance to the building of the State Duma in Moscow. At the same time, journalists were present, as well as a group of hundreds of conservative Orthodox activists who supported the passage of the bill. OMON officers were also present, they stood between opponents of the bill and Orthodox activists. Opponents of the bill during the action began to kiss their, as a rule, same-sex partners. Orthodox activists reacted to this and began to throw eggs and nettles at the opponents of the bill. After that, the police surrounded the opponents of the bill and detained about thirty participants, they were taken to the police stations. None of the Orthodox activists was detained.

Valery Sozaev, Ivan Babitsky, Svetlana Mishina, Yevgeny Samoshkina and Pavel Samburov were later found guilty of violating the procedure for holding public events (Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses) and fined 10,000 rubles each.

The ECtHR recognized that the Russian authorities violated their right to freedom of expression (Article 10 of the Convention ) and the right to freedom of assembly (Article 11). The court awarded compensation to the activists in the total amount of 25,808 euros.

The complaints of Sozaev, Babitsky, Mishina, Samoshkina and Samburov were communicated in 2016. As Memorial's lawyers note, the ECHR did not consider it necessary to delve into all the circumstances of the detentions and consider this case in the context of discrimination (Article 14 of the Convention).

• As a result of the adoption of the draft law by Mizulina, Article 6.21 appeared in the Code of Administrative Offenses (“propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors, expressed in the dissemination of information aimed at the formation of non-traditional sexual attitudes among minors, the attractiveness of non-traditional sexual relations, a distorted idea of ​​the social equivalence of traditional and non-traditional sexual relationships, or the imposition of information about non-traditional sexual relationships that arouse interest in such relationships, if these actions do not contain a criminal offense”).
• In 2020, Elena Mizulina initiated another draft law on amendments to the Family Code. Under this bill, transgender people and same-sex couples will be prohibited from marrying and adopting children. Transgender people will also not be allowed to change the gender on their birth certificate. On July 18, protests against Mizulina's bill were held in Moscow and St. Petersburg, were detained . 33 people