On Documenting War Crimes Against LGBTQ+people in Kherson Oblast during March-September 2023
From the beginning of March till November 11, 2022, the Kherson city and the right-bank part of the Kherson region were under occupation by the Russian Federation. Considering people who were able to escape from the occupation at that time and provided evidence along with testimonies, it is known that the Russian militaries were specifically looking for people related to the LGBTIQ+ community, especially males. During various checks, the Russian military forced men to undress and searched for tattoos of a rainbow image, were checking smartphones about using applications for same-sex dating. However, such testimony did not reach the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine due to the distrust of citizens to them and the memories of «Soviet approach,» which ridiculed the victim of the crime and convinced victim to be guilty.
The staff of NGO «PROJECTOR» and the charity organization «Insha» with the support of OutRight International interviewed 107 people who belong to the LGBTQI+ community and became either victims or witnesses of war crimes committed by Russian militaries during the occupation of Kherson city. Their testimonies are raising the issue of gender-based and war crimes against the LGBTQI+ community and emphasize the problem of fixation gender-based persecution and violence towards LGBTQI+ within the context of armed conflict. In two cases after persons interviewing, lawyers helped to file application about criminal offense committed against them, and in one of these cases the indictment was transferred to the national court.
It is worth paying particular attention to Russian narratives, in particular about MSM, as for a long time these narratives have been forming public opinion in the Russian Federation on LGBTIQ+ community. Therefore, this research draws attention to the development of Russian legislation on LGBTIQ+, which, according to the project’s documenters, is one of the foundations of Russian propaganda and one of the motivational factors for war crimes committed specifically against MSM.
As a result of the continuous application of these narratives, the Russian military subjected LGBTIQ+ people to inhuman torture, including those inside the torture chambers which at least 300 Ukrainians had gone through. However, this number is not ultimate, since the fate of about 800 Ukrainians is still unknown, of which at least 69 people are the representatives of LGBTIQ+ community who stayed on the right-bank part of the Kherson region during the Russian occupation.