Out in the World: Russia hits snag in first attempt to shutter LGBTQ rights organization
ebar.comA court has stopped, for now, Russia's attempt to shut down the parent organization to the country's largest LGBTQ organization.Russia's Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit February 8 against the Sphere Foundation, the parent organization of the Russian LGBT Network, in the Kuibyshev Court of St.
Petersburg, according to the St. Petersburg Courts' Press Service.The network is the country's leading LGBTQ organization with a coalition of LGBTQ organizations throughout 13 of Russia's 49 regions.
The court, which covers the St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region jurisdiction, suspended the review of the complaint from the ministry due to a lack of specifying what laws the foundation and the network violated, NBC News reported.The ministry has until February 28 to revise the complaint.Activists believe Russia's lawsuit against the foundation and the network is just the beginning of the government's attempts to shutter the organization.Tanya Lokshina, associate director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division, told NBC News she expects Russian officials to ask the court to reconsider the case. "It's good news for the immediate future," Lokshina said of the court's decision not to act on the lawsuit. "Their first step failed, but I don't think they're going to give up, because what happened is in sync with the ongoing, very disturbing trend of stifling independent voices in Russia." Sphere Foundation spokesperson Dilya Gafurova told the media outlet that Russia's attempt to liquidate the foundation and network "can become the biggest case about LGBT+ in Russia.
About our very right to exist."In the lawsuit, the government claimed it wants to liquidate the foundation and network because the institutions go.
