Since early last year, Russia’s Interior Ministry has been considering the creation of databases to track both members of the LGBT community and sex workers in Russia, but has been hindered by the drain on resources caused by its staff leaving to fight in Ukraine, an investigation by Russian independent news outlet Meduza revealed on Monday. Citing anonymous sources both within the Interior Ministry and close to it, Meduza said that discussions had been taking place since spring 2024 on creating a “large-scale” system to track members of what Russia calls the “international LGBT movement”, which the country’s Supreme Court banned as an “extremist organisation” in 2023. The claims were corroborated by Dmitry Chukreyev, a member of the Civic Chamber of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth largest city, who told Meduza that police had been keeping informal lists of LGBT individuals since the Supreme Court ruling was announced. In 2024, police conducted at least 42 raids on queer-friendly venues across Russia, with patrons often forced to lie on the floor for hours while their documents were checked, an investigation by independent news outlet Current Time and human rights organisation Sphere found. According to human rights activists interviewed by Meduza, such raids are aimed at exposing queer individuals who hold posts in government structures, with the organiser of one queer-friendly event in the Urals region revealing that police who raided the venue hoped to “catch deputies and other significant individuals” at the event.
via Novaya Gazeta: Russia mulls creation of databases to track LGBT people and sex workers
