The owner of a bar in
Russia has been arrested under the country’s ‘LGBTQ+ extremism’ legislation, just days after two of the venue’s staff were held under the same law. On Sunday (31 March), independent
Human Rights defence and media group said the owner of Pose, in Orenburg, a city close to the border with Kazakhstan, had been detained. follow Russia’s
Supreme Court outlawing the towards the end of last year. The owner, who has not been named, was reportedly arrested three days ago at
Moscow airport. Prosecutors are accusing him of conspiring with supporters of the “international LGBT movement”. If found guilty, all three men could face up to 10 years in jail. The two earlier arrests followed a
police raid last month, footage of which appeared online. Independent news website Mediazona named the pair as Alexander Klimov, the art director of the club, and manager Diana Kamilyanova. Russia declared the “international public LGBT movement” an extremist organisation in November 2023, despite no such group existing. The court’s vague language leaves LGBTQ+ people in the country at risk of lengthy
prison sentences simply for being queer. Since the law came into force, police have , a for supposedly promoting queer propaganda, and anti-riot officers stormed what state media called an ” meeting near St Petersburg.