MOSCOW (AP) – A feminist artist stood trial in Russia on Monday on charges of distributing pornography after sharing artwork online depicting female bodies. Human rights groups have linked her persecution to the Kremlin’s conservative stance that promotes ‘traditional family values’.
The charges against activist Yulia Tsvetkova (27) in the far eastern city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur have caused international outrage. She faces up to six years in prison on charges related to her group on the popular Russian social media network VKontakte, where stylized drawings of vaginas have been posted. Tsvetkova may not disclose the details of the criminal case against her.
The trial takes place a year and a half after she was first detained and eight months after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage and instructing the government to “preserve traditional family values”.
Tsvetkova’s lawyer Irina Ruchko told reporters after the trial that she had maintained her innocence and that the defense intended to prove it in court.
Tsvetkova ran a children’s theater and was an outspoken advocate of feminism and LGBT rights. She founded an online group called Vagina Monologues that encouraged followers to fight the stigma and taboos surrounding the female body, and posted others’ art in it.
Amnesty International last week called the case, which is being heard behind closed doors, a “Kafkaesque absurdity” and called on Russian authorities to drop all charges. It said Tsvetkova was simply “expressing her views through art.”
Tsvetkova’s mother, Anna Khodyreva, expressed this sentiment in an interview with The Associated Press.
‘Yulia has always been against pornography. “Feminists are against pornography because it exploits female bodies,” she said.
Tsvetkova was detained in November 2019 and spent the next four months under house arrest. Her house was razed, along with her mother’s education studio for children.
The activist has been fined twice for violating Russian law against spreading gay propaganda among minors. The court ordered Tsvetkova in December 2019 to pay a fine of 50,000 rubles ($ 780) for running an LGBT online group, and 75,000 rubles ($ 1,060) in July 2020 for a drawing in support of LGBT families. The second fine was later reduced to 50,000 rubles.
Many public figures expressed their support, including Russian state TV veteran Vladimir Pozner. Activists across Russia have protested her prosecution, artists have dedicated performances to her and an online petition demanding that the charges be removed has collected more than 250,000 signatures.
On Saturday, an exhibition of Tsvetkova’s paintings opened in St. Petersburg.
“The snowball of censorship has started to bother the artistic community a lot, and we understand that if we do not stand up for Yulia, do not support her, any other person can be the next,” said artist Alexei Gorbushin, who organized and participated in performances in support of Tsvetkova during the exhibition.
The European Union delegation to Russia tweeted that the bloc was closely following the case against Tsvetkova and that “her prosecution appears to be linked to her public position as an LGBT activist.” The delegation called on Russian authorities to suspend the prosecution.
In addition to pressure from the authorities over the past two years, Khodyreva says she and her daughter have received death threats and been repeatedly harassed by strangers. Khodyreva’s education studio for children has lost many clients. Tsvetkova’s children’s theater, Merak, no longer exists – regular visits by law enforcement were too upsetting for the children, so it closed, Khodyreva said.
“It’s scary. I’m still looking back at the door, “Khodyreva told the AP. “The police have stepped in so many times that … I’m not ready to get the kids involved in this chaos.”
Tsvetkova’s problems began when the children’s theater staged a play on gender stereotypes, entitled ‘The Blues and the Pinks’, in March 2019, at a theater festival she had organized.
The festival lost two places he found, Khodyreva said. Police questioned children involved in the play or whether Tsvetkova, who was directing, spoke to them about LGBT issues. The play had nothing to do with LGBT issues – the name referred to colors traditionally associated with boys and girls, but in the 1990s ‘blue’ and ‘pink’ were popular dialects for gay men and women in Russian.
According to Khodyreva, the police did not speak to the children’s parents, many of whom supported her and her daughter, and the contact with the police was traumatic for the young students of the theater.
“We saw how bad the kids were feeling. We saw the boy who came up with the name for the play crying and thinking it was his fault, ‘Khodyreva said, adding that another boy who was worried about telling the police something about her daughter was crying. .
Tsvetkova was repeatedly summoned for questioning. In March 2019, the activist said she was interviewed about a series of her drawings called ‘A Woman is Not a Doll’. The cartoon-like depictions of naked or half-dressed women bore captions such as ‘real women have hair on their bodies – and this is normal’, ‘real women have body fat – and this is normal.’ Police claim the images are pornographic, Tsvetkova said in a VKontakte report.
Months later, she was arrested and charged with distributing pornography.
Russia’s prominent human rights group Memorial has declared Tsvetkova a political prisoner. The group said her persecution was linked to ‘her civic involvement and feminist views which she did not conceal and promote by absolutely legitimate means as an activist and contemporary artist’ and the story of the defense of ‘traditional values’ that the Embracing Kremlin in an effort to tighten its grip on power.
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Alexander Permyakov in Komsomolsk-on-Amur and Yekaterina Krylova in St. Petersburg contributed to this report.