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Brittney Griner’s trial scheduled to begin July 1

WNBA star detained in Moscow airport in February

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(Screenshot from Russian television)

A Russian court on Monday said detained WNBA star Brittney Griner’s trial will begin on July 1.

The Associated Press reported the Phoenix Mercury center and two-time Olympic gold medalist who is a lesbian and married to her wife, Cherelle Griner, will remain in custody through the duration of her trial. 

Officials at Moscowā€™s Sheremetyevo Airport in February detained Brittney Griner after customs inspectors allegedly found hashish oil in her luggage. The State Department has determined that Russia ā€œwrongfully detainedā€ her.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on May 14 spoke with Cherelle Griner. 

Officials with the State Departmentā€™s Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs and Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs on June 13 met with Brittney Grinerā€™s teammates to discuss her detention and efforts to secure her release.

Brittney Griner on June 18 was unable to speak with her wife on their fourth anniversary because the phone at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that she called went unanswered. A State Department spokesperson later admitted a ā€œlogistical errorā€ prevented Brittney Griner from speaking with Cherelle Griner.

Brittney Griner faces up to 10 years in prison if she is convicted.

The Human Rights Campaign and the Council for Global Equality are among the dozens of advocacy groups who signed a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris last week that urged them to do more to secure Brittney Griner’s release. 

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Transgender journalist who enlisted in Ukrainian military designated a terrorist by Russia

Sarah Ashton-Cirillo is from the US

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Sarah Ashton-Cirillo in D.C. on May 19, 2023. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

A transgender journalist from the U.S. who enlisted in the Ukrainian military has been designated a terrorist by Russia.

“The Kremlin added me to Russia’s official international terrorism list,” wrote Sarah Ashton-Cirillo in a Feb. 5 post on her X account.

Russia launched its war against Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. 

Ashton-Cirillo was a journalist when she began to cover the Armed Forces of Ukraineā€™s Kharkiv Defense Forces. She later enlisted and is now a junior sergeant. Ashton-Cirillo has also traveled to the U.S. several times on behalf of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

Shrapnel from a Russian artillery shell wounded Ashton-Cirillo last February while she was working as a senior combat medic in a trench near Kreminna, a city in eastern Ukraine.Ā 

“For Russia to name me as an officially sanctioned terrorist is laughable enough, however what was truly indicative of the hate coming from the Kremlin’s regime was that every press release and article in Russia about my being placed on Putin’s terrorism list was prefaced with the fact that I am trans,” Ashton-Cirillo told the Washington Blade on Friday. “The Russian government is genocidal and hate ridden and this is why it will collapse.” 

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Putin signs law banning transition therapy and surgery in Russia

Lawmakers approved measure earlier this month

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Russian President Vladimir Putin in July 2023. (Photo courtesy of the Russian government/Office of the Russian President)

Legislation that will effectively ban the existence of transgender Russians was signed on Monday as expected by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The new law, which takes effective immediately, was passed earlier this month by the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, and then last week by the Federal Council, which is its upper body.

The law now bans Russians from changing their gender on official government identity documents including internal and external passports, driverā€™s licenses and birth certificates, although gender marker changes had been legal since 1997.

Medical healthcare providers are now banned from ā€œperforming medical interventions designed to change the sex of a person,ā€ including surgery and prescribing hormone therapy.

The law, which human rights organizations have labeled draconian and barbaric, also bans individuals who have undergone gender reassignment from adopting children and annuls marriages in which one of the partners is trans.Ā 

LGBTQ activists have warned that the law will lead to a further increase in already high rates of suicide and suicide attempts among trans Russians. Worse, say sympathetic physicians and trans rights advocates, it will foment an underground market for surgeries and medications, which are dangerous as unproven drugs or outright fake drugs may cause irreparable harm.

LGBTQ activists also said that this law will lead to an increase in attempted suicides among trans youth unable to access medical care.

ā€œThe way how these people see their future is collapsing,ā€ Yan Dvorkin, the head of Center-T, a group that helps trans and nonbinary people in Russia, said in an interview with The Moscow Times earlier this month. 

During debate over the law, Deputy Duma Speaker Pytor Tolstoy, a co-sponsor of the legislation, pointed out that banning the ā€œpractice of transgenderismā€ was in the interest of national security.

The diagnosis of ā€œtranssexualism,ā€ he added, refers to gender identity disorders and is the basis for recognizing a citizen as unfit for military service. In addition, ā€œwe must not forget that by changing the sex of one of the partners, a homosexual couple gets the right to adopt a child. Unfortunately, there are already such cases in Russia,ā€ he said.

LGBTQ and human rights organization ILGA-Europe issued a statement condemning the actions of the Duma and offered support and solidarity with the Russian trans and queer communities.

ā€œWe firmly assert that such legislation flagrantly violates fundamental human rights standards and principles.

ILGA-Europe firmly believe in the inherent dignity and equal rights of all individuals, regardless of their gender identity or expression. International human rights standards, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, emphasize that everyone has the right to self-determination, privacy and the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Denying trans and gender diverse individuals access to trans-specific healthcare and legal gender recognition blatantly disregards the international human rights framework,ā€ ILGA-Europe wrote.

A young woman who only identified herself to Russian freelance journalist Sergei Dimitrov by the name Elena, told him in an interview in St. Petersburg earlier this month:

ā€œThere is no safety anymore, soon they will openly hunt us like swine, we no right to exist they say,ā€ she said.

The young woman also said that since the latest passage of laws including expansion of the Russiaā€™s ā€œgay propagandaā€ law to include adults last December, coupled with the crackdown by the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as Roskomnadzor, on any websites and on popular phone apps that cater to LGBTQ people, she has now begun efforts in earnest to leave the country.

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TransgenderĀ and gender diverse rights in Russia deteriorating rapidly

Lawmakers on Tuesday expected to give final approval to gender transition ban bill

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Russian President Vladimir Putin signs legislation this past Spring. (Photo courtesy of the Office of the President/Russian government)

In a scene eerily reminiscent of a 1960ā€™s cold war era novel, the young woman sat nervously at the outside table of the cafĆ© not far from the museum district and main railroad station in St. Petersburg, chain smoking French Gitanes and toying with the food on her plate in front of her. She kept nervously glancing around as if she expected to suddenly be swept up in a secret police raid.

The primary cause of her anxiety and discomfiture she explained to the journalist sitting across the table from her, was that as a transgender woman, she felt threatened and afraid. Unable to continue to live in her native region in the Sverdlovsk Oblast, [region] in the Ural mountains she had moved first to the Russian capital of Moscow. Then as tensions rose over the treatment of LGBTQ Russians she fled to St. Petersburg.

ā€œThere is no safety anymore, soon they will openly hunt us like swine, we no right to exist they say,ā€ she told Russian freelance journalist Sergei Dimitrov.

The young woman who only identified herself to Dimitrov by the name Elena said that since the latest passage of laws including expansion of the Russiaā€™s ā€œgay propagandaā€ law to include adults last December, coupled with the crackdown by the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as Roskomnadzor, on any websites and on popular phone apps that cater to LGBTQ people, she has now begun efforts in earnest to leave the country.

Last week the lower house of the Russian Parliament, colloquially referred to as the State Duma, passed on its final reading a bill that would outlaw gender transitioning procedures in Russia. The measure now heads to the Federation Council, or upper House where it is expected to pass in the scheduled vote on Tuesday and then transmitted to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his approval and signature which is expected.

State Duma [Parliament] Deputy Speaker Pytor Tolstoy, a co-sponsor of the legislation, pointed out that banning the ā€œpractice of transgenderismā€ was in the interest of national security. 

The diagnosis of ā€œtranssexualism,ā€ he added, refers to gender identity disorders and is the basis for recognizing a citizen as unfit for military service. In addition, ā€œwe must not forget that by changing the sex of one of the partners, a homosexual couple gets the right to adopt a child. Unfortunately, there are already such cases in Russia,ā€ he said.

The proposed law would bar Russians from changing their gender on official government identity documents including internal and external passports, driverā€™s licenses, and birth certificates, although gender marker changes had been legal for 26 years since 1997.

Medical healthcare providers would be banned from ā€œperforming medical interventions designed to change the sex of a person,ā€ including surgery and prescribing hormone therapy.

In a floor speech prior to the vote last month after the measureā€™s first reading, Tolstoy blamed the West for what he deemed a profitable medical industry:

ā€œThe Western transgender industry is trying in this way to seep into our country, to break through a window for its multi-billion dollar business,ā€ Tolstoy said. Then he claimed there is already a developed network of clinics in Russia, ā€œit includes trans-friendly doctors and psychologists, and all this operates with the active support of LGBT organizations. However, in the past six months they have changed their names to more, perhaps harmless ones,ā€ he said inferring that the recent expansion of the countryā€™s law banning LGBTQ propaganda was somehow responsible for those changes.

Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Pytor Tolstoy speaking during a session of the Duma. (Photo courtesy of the Russian government/Duma)

According to Tolstoy, gender reassignment surgery is ā€œa very profitable area of ā€‹ā€‹medical services. And itā€™s understandable why a number of doctors defend this area so fiercely, hiding behind academic knowledge, including those obtained abroad while studying in the United States and other countries,ā€ he said, ā€œrunning intoā€ Western medical education.

Provisions to the bill in its second reading, approved on Thursday, also ban trans people from adopting or fostering children, and force them to annul their marriages if one of the couple subsequently changes gender.

LGBTQ and human rights organization ILGA-Europe issued a statement condemning the actions of the Russian Duma and offered support and solidarity with the Russian trans and queer communities. 

ā€œWe firmly assert that such legislation flagrantly violates fundamental human rights standards and principles.

ILGA-Europe firmly believe in the inherent dignity and equal rights of all individuals, regardless of their gender identity or expression. International human rights standards, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, emphasize that everyone has the right to self-determination, privacy, and the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Denying trans and gender diverse individuals access to trans-specific healthcare and legal gender recognition blatantly disregards the international human rights framework,ā€ ILGA-Europe wrote.

Sympathetic physicians and trans rights advocates have warned that the ban is poised to create a black market for hormone substitutes, some of which likely will be dangerous and lead to an increase in attempted suicides among trans youth unable to access medical care.

ILGA-Europeā€™s statement also warned: ā€œFurthermore, the bill invalidates all certificates of legal gender recognition for individuals who have undergone transition-related surgery but not yet changed the gender marker in their passport. This is a violation of their right to privacy, places trans people in legal limbo, and creates unnecessary burdens on trans people, forcing them to disclose their private and medical history and exposing them to discrimination, harassment and violence.ā€

According to Dimitrov, that particular provision of the legislation is specifically applicable to Elena, who while having completed transition-related surgery has been unable to get the gender marker changed on her documents, which with the current war in Ukraine has further complicated her life. 

She told Dimitrov that demands for her to present herself for required military service, under her former name and gender, was yet another reason she had fled. Now she says, she is trapped and unable to legally leave, entertaining the option of illegally entering the EU and asking for asylum, most likely to neighboring Latvia, or Estonia. 

Independent news outlet Mediazona reported in February 2023 that the number of passports issued due to ā€œgender changeā€ has more than doubled in 2022 compared with two years earlier ā€” from 428 in 2020 to 936 last year, according to Russiaā€™s Interior Ministry.

In justifying the provision, lawmakers cited concerns that men are using the relatively simple procedure of changing gender in official documents to dodge the military draft.

Another point was raised by a lawmaker who asked what to do with 3,000-plus trans people who have already managed to change their gender and documents. Tolstoy responded noted that the law does not have retroactive effect.

State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin called gender transitioning ā€œpure satanism.ā€

Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin standing at the podium calls for the first vote on the proposed law to ban gender-affirming surgeries in Russia (Photo courtesy of the Russian government/Duma)

Akram Kubanychbekov, a senior advocacy officer for ILGA-Europe, this past week sent out a “dear colleagues” request for assistance detailing specific needs and actions that will be crucial to assisting trans and gender diverse Russians.

Kubanychbekov wrote: 

ā€œDiscrimination, violence and the enactment of oppressive laws have made it increasingly unsafe for trans people to live their lives authentically and without fear. In light of these circumstances, we have reached out local trans organizations to ask them of support trans community need at the moment.”

ā€œTo address the urgent needs of trans people who wish to leave Russia, there is a need in facilitating support for broadening the criteria for humanitarian visas. By expanding the eligibility criteria, we can ensure that those facing persecution and threats to their safety have a viable pathway to seek refuge in other countries. It is crucial to work together to advocate for this change with governments at the national level to extend our support to trans people seeking a safer environment in safer countries.”

ā€œIn addition to humanitarian visas, trans organizations [inside Russia] asked to assist in securing multi-entry, long-term (preferably Schengen) visas for activists, who will continue their important work within Russia but may need to swiftly leave in case of escalating danger. By facilitating the necessary visa support, activists are enabled to carry out their vital work with the knowledge that they have an emergency exit if required.”

ā€œWe would like to encourage you to stand in solidarity with the local trans organizations in Russia and support their requests.ā€

Political fallout

Yulia Alyoshina, the countryā€™s first trans politician, had made plans this past year to run for governor of Russiaā€™s Altay region, an area bordering the former Soviet republic and now independent nation of Kazakhstan.

Yulia Alyoshina (Photo courtesy of Yulia Alyoshina)

Alyoshina, who had been the head of the regional Civic Initiative party, resigned her post after Putin signed the expanded anti-LGBTQ law last December. With gubernatorial elections set for this September in the Altay region, party officials had urged her to consider running.

Alyoshina says she didnā€™t expect anyone in the Civic Initiative party to suggest that she run in the gubernatorial elections. But she figured ā€œwell, why notā€ and agreed. ā€œIā€™m sure that the fact that I was born in a different body is not as important to voters as my honesty, integrity, and sincere desire to make my native land better,ā€ she told Russian media outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe.

On the topic of Russian societyā€™s relationship to trans people, Alyoshina told Novaya Gazeta Europe the current political climate is quite bad. She described losing supporters after the Duma passed and Putin signed the anti-LGBTQ laws last December. She thinks people have been influenced by the authoritiesā€™ rhetoric on ā€œLGBT propaganda.ā€

In another interview with Russian language media outlet, Meduza, which the Putin government banned in January 2023, Alyoshina reflected on the effects of the bill. She told Meduza that her medical transition took about a year and a half. There were no private clinics in her region where should could go for gender care services, so she was seen at a state psychiatric hospital. It took another year and a half after she was first seen to get a certificate for changing gender markers [on legal documents.]

In a phone interview with the Moscow Times just prior to the Dumaā€™s impending vote, Alyoshina confirmed the post she had made on her Telegram channel that she had abandoned her effort to campaign as a gubernatorial candidate.

ā€œI was told by municipal deputies and village heads that the [gender reassignment ban] bill was being considered and that they couldnā€™t give me their signatures,ā€ Alyoshina told The Moscow Times.

ā€œThey told me: ā€™How can we publicly support a transgender person if the State Duma prohibits transgender people in Russia?ā€ she said.

ā€œBy putting our signatures in your support, we will go against the countryā€™s policy, and we have families and children, we donā€™t want to fall under repression,ā€ Alyoshina quoted the deputies as telling her.

Alyoshina said she was weighing ā€œvarious optionsā€ for her future, but said she would wait for the passing of the gender reassignment law.

ā€œIā€™m not ready to dive into [my future plans] until the legislation is passed,ā€ she said.

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