MOSCOW, March 22 (Reuters) – Russia has added what it calls the “LGBT movement” to a list of extremist and terrorist organisations, state media said on Friday.
The move was in line with a ruling by Russia’s Supreme Court last November that LGBT activists should be designated as extremists, a move that representatives of gay and transgender people said they feared would lead to arrests and prosecutions.
The list is maintained by an agency called Rosfinmonitoring that has powers to freeze the bank accounts of the more than 14,000 people and entities designated as extremists and terrorists. They range from Al Qaeda to U.S. tech giant Meta and associates of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
The new listing refers to the “international LGBT social movement and its structural units”, state news agency RIA said.
As part of a shift under President Vladimir Putin towards what he portrays as family values that contrast with decadent Western attitudes, Russia has tightened restrictions over the past decade on expressions of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Among other steps, it has passed laws outlawing the promotion of “non-traditional” sexual relations and banned legal or medical changes of gender.
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Reporting by Reuters; writing by Mark Trevelyan Editing by Tomasz Janowski
