Lena Klimova Wins Appeal

On 25 October 2016, the Kaluga Regional Court passed a judgement with respect to LGBTI rights defender, Ms Lena Klimova’s appeal, regarding the Kaluga District Court’s decision to block access to the Children-404 group on social media. The Kaluga Regional Court overturned the previous  ruling, in favour of Lena Klimova.

Lena Klimova is a journalist based in Nizhny Tagil, and is the author of a series of articles on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) teenagers. In 2013, she set up an online community on Facebook and on the social media site Vkontakte named Children-404, which provides a space for teenagers to discuss LGBTI issues and support each other. The community also organises online discussions with leaders of the LGBTI movement. Lena Klimova has been subjected to homophobic threats, including death threats, for her peaceful and legitimate human rights work in support of LGBTI teenagers in the Russian Federation.

On 20 January 2016, the Kaluga District Court found Lena Klimova guilty of ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations’ among minors and, as a consequence, the page Children-404 was blocked on the social media website Vkontakte. In her appeal against the decision of the Kaluga District Court, the human rights defender highlighted that she was not notified of the court proceedings.  Consequently, Lena Klimova was not able to defend herself against the allegations of propaganda issued against her. Furthermore, the Kaluga Regional Court found that the Kaluga District Court, in its proceedings, did not examine the content of the page Children 404, and made their decision based solely on the Prosecutor’s demand. To date, the page remains blocked on social media.

This is the second time that the Children-404 group has been blocked by a court ruling. In September 2015, by the decision of the Barnaul City Court, access to the group was blocked. However, in that case, the appeal against that decision issued by Lena Klimova was not satisfied, and so a second Children-404 group was created on social media.

Front Line Defenders welcomes the ruling of the Kaluga Regional Court, and urges authorities of the Russian Federation to unblock access to the group Children-404 on social media and to restrain from further harassment, judicial or otherwise of Lena Klimova.

In the evening of 7 November 2014, three policemen from the local police station in Nizhny Tagil arrived at Lena Klimova's home to question her in relation to Children-404. They asked her specifically about her project and the reason that she used social network site Vkontakte to discuss these issues, suggesting that inappropriate images of children were being published on the site. Among other documents, the police brought a copy of a letter from the assistant of the Russian Ombudsman for Children which was addressed to the General Prosecutor and which accused Children-404 of “forming a positive attitude to homosexuality among minors”. The letter urged the authorities to block the Children-404 group on Vkontakte.

On 10 November 2014, Lena Klimova received a telegram from the Central Federal Department of Roskomnadzor stating that the authorities found evidence that the Children-404 group on Vkontakte was involved in spreading “non-traditional sexual relationships propaganda among minors”. Lena Klimova was summoned to the Roskomnadzor department in Moscow on 18 November 2014 in order to draw up a report of the administrative offence. However, she refused to travel to the Roskomnadzor offices in Moscow as where she lives in Nizhny Tagil is approximately 1770 kilometres from Moscow.

On 17 November 2014, the Roskomnadzor department stated that it had received approximately 150 petitions from individuals as well as organisations demanding an enquiry into the legality of the Children-404 group's activities. On 18 November 2014, the department filed an administrative case against Lena Klimova and the Children-404 group. According to the administrative case report, Children-404 published materials that may cause minors to associate “being gay as being a courageous, strong, confident, persistent person, having dignity and self-respect”. The administrative case is due to be submitted to the First Instance Court. A date for the court hearing has not yet been scheduled. If found guilty, Lena Klimova could receive a fine of up to 100,000 Russian roubles (approximately 1720 euro) and all Children-404 publications and social media accounts may be banned or blocked by the authorities.

On 31 January 2014, the Nizhny Tagil department of the Ministry of the Interior launched an administrative case against Ms Lena Klimova for 'propaganda of non traditional sexual relations among minors' under Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation.

The complaint against Lena Klimova as initiator of the Children-404 page was lodged by Mr. Vitaly Milonov, a member of St. Petersburg City Parliament who sponsored the adoption of the 'propaganda law' at the municipal level in 2012. Lena Klimova was informed about the opening of the administrative case against her on 31 January 2014. She was previously summoned by police and interrogated in relation to Milonov's complaint on 17 January 2014. The date of the trial is yet to be set.

In March 2013, Lena Klimova published a series of articles on the situation of teenagers who are aware of their homosexuality. She began to receive a large number of responses from adolescents and teenagers with stories of their experiences and the discrimination they faced. She set up the project Children-404 as a result of this response, to provide a forum where these letters could be shared.

In June 2013, the Russian Parliament adopted a federal law banning ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations’ among minors. The text does not provide a definition of ‘non-traditional relations’, which are only described in opposition to ‘traditional family values’, but the bill was passed in its first reading under the headline ‘propaganda of homosexuality among minors’. Propaganda is broadly defined as spreading information in order to form non-traditional sexual desires in children, describing such relations as attractive, promoting a distorted understanding of the social equality of traditional and non-traditional relations and through unwanted exposure to information that could provoke interest in such relations.