“Punitive psychiatry can be used on everyone”: Human rights activists on Putin’s “institute for LGBT studies”

Indeed, after the adoption of the new law “On the ban of LGBT propaganda” in Russia, which came into force on December 5, 2022, the State Duma has not abandoned the idea of adopting new legislation restricting and discriminating against LGBT people amid a wave of populism. Among them is the bill on banning gender transitions, currently under consideration. And it would seem that in this logic, the state can raise the question of the implementation of anti-scientific ideas about conversion therapy at the state level – with the support of the Russian Ministry of Health. However, there is no evidence of such state action.

Such practices have long been condemned in the medical community as violations of human rights. Not a single proven case of the “correction” of sexual orientation or gender identity as a result of psychiatric influence on LGBT people exists.

However, there are private clinics in Russia where, at the insistence of their parents, LGBT youth are placed to “correct” their sexual orientation or gender identity. From a human rights perspective, these practices are torture, which is prohibited by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Russia has pledged to abide by [the ICCPR].

In these private clinics, LGBT adolescents and adults are held against their will, locked up in conditions of unfreedom, handcuffed and suspended in the air, and forced to take drugs that do not “cure” but cripple their health. These “centers” are widespread in the [North] Caucasus and in other regions with strong patriarchal attitudes. What these centers do has nothing in common with the law or medicine. Under the guise of “treatment,” they not only cripple the fate of LGBT people, but also extort hundreds of thousands of roubles from their relatives, effectively deceiving them, as they cannot “cure” homosexuality or transgenderism — no one has succeeded in doing so.