European human rights court rules against Russia for blocking LGBTIQ websites
Incidents were ‘motivated by homophobia’, human rights court says.
Europe’s human rights court ruled Tuesday that Russia has:
- Violated LGBT citizens’ freedom of expression by blocking access to websites that support the LGBT community.
- Infringed privacy rights by collecting information on users’ sexual orientation from social media.
Russia says it withdrew from the jurisdiction of the court in 2022 and no longer is affected by its rulings.
ECHR accuses Russia of violating LGBTIQ people’s right to freedom of expression
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned Russia on Tuesday for violating the right to freedom of expression of a group of citizens who run websites that provide support and advice to LGBTIQ people.
The ruling came after six Russian citizens, who were accused in their home country of “promoting homosexuality to minors,” applied to the ECHR. They had applied to the court after being found guilty of administrative offences and having had access to their websites, pages and online groups blocked.
The ECHR said that the Russian courts had first found that the applicants’ online publications were “harmful to children” and noted that “promoting non-traditional sexual relations” among minors is a punishable crime in Russia.
In its ruling, the Strasbourg-based court disagreed with Russia’s attempt to restrict access to information that presents same-sex relationships as equivalent to heterosexual relationships.
The Court found that this measure violated the applicants’ freedom of expression, as enshrined in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The court also condemned Russia for failing to respect privacy rights when security services collected the data of one of the plaintiffs’ users of the social network VKontakte.
In another ruling published on Tuesday, the ECHR said Russia failed to take action after the personal details of three homosexual people, including their sexual orientation, were published on social media.
The ECHR called the incidents “motivated by homophobia.”
The ECtHR, which is part of the Council of Europe (CoE), is responsible for implementing the European Convention on Human Rights in the 46 signatory states.
In February 2022, after Moscow’s troops invaded Ukraine, Russia was expelled from the EC, and in September of the same year it left the convention. However, the examination of cases against Russia that were brought before that time still falls within the competence of the European Court.
