LGBT community blacklisted on charges of propagating suicide and homosexuality
Russian officials have blocked the website and social media accounts of Deti-404 (Children-404), an online community that unites LGBT youths, following charges that it propagates homosexuality and suicide among minors. The crackdown comes roughly a week after a regional court convicted Elena Klimova, Deti-404’s founder, of violating Russia’s ban on so-called “gay propaganda” in the vicinity of minors, fining her 50,000 rubles (about $720).
On January 29, the group’s main site (deti-404.com) was added to a government registry of banned websites, on the grounds that Deti-404 violates an unspecified provision in the federal law on information technologies. Four days later, on February 2, Russian police also blocked Deti-404’s social media accounts, accusing the community of promoting suicide.
According to the news site Ura.ru, the reason for the latter action is a January 21 post on the group’s VKontakte and Facebook pages, featuring a photograph of a young girl’s forearm with several slashes and the numbers “404” inscribed in ink on her wrist. The image accompanies a short letter emailed to Deti-404, beginning, “I WANT TO DIE, TO PERISH, TO MELT AWAY, TO BE NO MORE.”
“I have no idea why the authorities detect instructions for committing suicide in this text,” announced Elena Klimova, the project’s founder and a Nizhni Tagil native. “Or are we now also banning a person’s very ‘declaration of suicidal intent’? ‘That’s right, just die quietly,’ the state is telling you.”
- Ironically, the government blocked Deti-404’s main website on the same day it added the group’s VKontakte page to its list of officially-recognized bloggers. (Deti-404’s now-banned VKontakte community still appears on the registry posted online.)
- Activists from Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard), the youth wing of United Russia, the country’s ruling political party, have taken credit for blacklisting Deti-404’s main website, saying they appealed to Roskomnadzor, the state’s media watchdog.
- On February 2, Klimova posted a sad but defiant update on Facebook, vowing to continue her work with Deti-404.