The Russian Interior Ministry is planning to launch an electronic database of LGBTQIA+ Russians, with anonymous sources telling independent Russian news outlet, Meduza, that the plans had been in motion since last year.
This follows the Russian Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw the “international LGBT movement”, which they labelled an “extremist organisation” in 2023.
Dmitry Chukreyev, an official with the Civic Chamber of Yekaterinburg, confirmed the plans.
“Records have been kept since the Supreme Court ruling came into force,” he told Meduza. “Everyone is being recorded and put on record.”
News outlet Current Time and human rights organisation, the Sfera Foundation, documented 42 raids of LGBTQIA+ related clubs and spaces during 2024.
A heavy raid on two of Moscow’s gay bars in October saw more than 50 people detained.
The raids are often accompanied by beatings, threats of rape, indecent assault, and other humiliations. A witness caught in one of the raids told Meduza police forced people whose identities they weren’t sure of to show their surgical scars or genitals.
Police are also regularly collecting data on potential queer people. An employee at a Siberian queer establishment told Meduza that police “copied the entire database from the computer where we keep track of reservations”, obtaining information about hundreds of clients. Another source said fingerprints and mouth swabs were collected from visitors at a Chelyabinsk club.
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Meduza also reported police attempts to collect medical records from doctors.
Yael Demedetskaya, who founded a clinic for transgender people in the early 2000’s, was forced to burn more than six thousand records in 2019. She told the outlet that she kept her records on paper rather than digitally “from the very beginning, with a purpose”, in case they needed to be destroyed.
Police are hoping to find government employees among the raids. An organiser of an erotic masquerade event said forces immediately demanded guests take off their masks.
“I was told that they were hoping to ‘find’ deputies and other important people at the orgy,”
Russia is becoming increasingly hostile towards LGBTQIA+ people. During 2024, the country banned all forms of gender transition whether through medical affirmation surgeries or legal methods, and banned books with LGBTQI+ themes.