f1f818f0b6 - United States Department of State (2024)

Women

Rape and Domestic Violence: Rape is illegal, and the law provides the same punishment for a relative, including the spouse, who commits rape as for a nonrelative. Rape victims may act as full legal parties in criminal cases brought against alleged assailants and may seek compensation as part of a court verdict without initiating a separate civil action. While members of the medical profession assisted assault survivors and sometimes helped identify an assault or rape case, doctors were often reluctant to provide testimony in court.

The penalty for rape is three- to six-years’ imprisonment for a single offender and four to 10 years if a group of persons commits the crime or the assailant had prior convictions for sexual assault. Violations are punishable by eight to 15 years in prison if the victim was between the ages of 14 and 18 and by 12 to 20 years in prison if the victim died or was under 14. According to NGOs, many law enforcement personnel and prosecutors did not consider spousal or acquaintance rape a priority and did not encourage reporting or prosecuting such cases. NGOs reported that local police officers sometimes refused to respond to rape or domestic violence calls unless the victim’s life was directly threatened.

According to NGOs, many women did not report rape or other violence, especially when committed by spouses, due to social stigma and the lack of government support.

Domestic violence remained a major problem. There is no significant domestic violence provision in the criminal code and no legal definition of domestic violence. The laws that address bodily harm are general in nature and do not permit police to initiate a criminal investigation unless the victim files a complaint. The burden of collecting evidence in such cases typically falls on the alleged victims. Federal law prohibits battery, assault, threats, and killing, but most acts of domestic violence did not fall within the jurisdiction of the prosecutor’s office. According to NGOs police were often unwilling to register complaints of domestic violence and frequently discouraged victims from submitting them.

In February the Duma adopted legislation that removed beating and some other offenses from the criminal code, making them administrative offenses instead. The law’s drafters made an exception for so-called “close relatives,” keeping beatings of children by parents, between spouses, and between other close persons a criminal, rather than administrative, offense. In June, Children’s Rights Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov indicated that the legislative changes providing continued criminal liability for beatings between relatives was “absurd,” stating he received a number of complaints from family-focused organizations.

The government does not gather comprehensive data on domestic violence. Ministry of Internal Affairs statistics for 2013 showed that, while women were the victims of 43 percent of all crimes, they were the victims of crimes committed in the home (63 percent), among family members (73 percent), and by a spouse (91 percent) at disproportionately high rates. Additional data from 2013 showed that 60-70 percent of victims did not seek help; and that 97 percent of domestic violence cases did not reach court. According to the BBC, there were 30,600 domestic violence cases in 2014, a 10 percent increase from 2013.

The NGO Center for Women’s Support asserted that a majority of domestic violence cases filed with authorities were either dismissed on technical grounds or transferred to a reconciliation process conducted by a justice of the peace, whose focus was on preserving the family rather than punishing the perpetrator. Civil remedies for domestic violence include administrative fines and divorce. Physical harm, property, and family rights cases, such as divorce, asset division, and child custody, cannot be heard in the same case or the same court. No unified court considers civil and criminal cases jointly.

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C): FGM/C is not specifically prohibited in the criminal code. Local NGOs in Dagestan reported that FGM/C was occasionally practiced in some villages. In August the mufti of the North Caucasus region of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Ismail Berdiyev, stated that FGM/C was a “Dagestani ritual” and was necessary to “limit unnecessary energy” of future brides. Berdiyev’s statement came days after Moscow-based NGO Legal Initiative released a report on FGM/C in Dagestan, which cited some clerics who supported and some who condemned the practice. Later in August, Berdiyev retracted his comments after they resulted in a public outcry and backlash from the country’s top Muslim cleric and the Ministry of Health, although some, including a former spokesperson of the Russian Orthodox Church, came out in support of the earlier remarks.

Other Harmful Traditional Practices: According to human rights groups, so-called honor killings of women in Chechnya, Dagestan, and elsewhere in the North Caucasus district continued. Human rights groups further reported that such killings were underreported and rarely prosecuted because of community collusion to cover up such crimes, although there were instances in which such killings led to convictions. According to Interfax, a criminal case was initiated on March 23 against a man in Dagestan accused of stabbing and killing his two daughters for “amoral behavior.” According to law enforcement authorities, the man killed his daughters in December 2015 because they came home too late at night. The case was still pending.

In some parts of the North Caucasus, women continued to face bride kidnapping, polygamy, forced marriage (including child marriage), legal discrimination, and enforced adherence to Islamic dress codes. In February a police officer in the North Caucasus was stabbed when he attempted to prevent a bride kidnapping of a 17-year-old girl, according to the Investigative Committee. When the girl’s family attempted to prevent the kidnapping, the family of the bride kidnapper would not allow them to enter the home. There were cases in some parts of the North Caucasus where men, claiming that kidnapping brides was an ancient local tradition, reportedly abducted and raped young women, in some cases forcing them into marriage. Police in Dagestan claimed that many cases of women being abducted were in fact voluntary. NGOs reported that, while the overwhelming majority of bride kidnappings were not voluntary, women in the North Caucasus sometimes agreed to be abducted to avoid an arranged marriage, often to an older man or to a man with multiple wives.

Sexual Harassment: The law does not specifically prohibit sexual harassment in the workplace, which remained a widespread problem. Instead, the criminal code contains a general provision against compelling a person to perform actions of a sexual character by means of blackmail, threats, or by taking advantage of the victim’s economic or other dependence on the perpetrator. As of April there were 16 successful prosecutions for “compulsion to perform sexual actions” with adults and 34 with minors.

Reproductive Rights: The government recognizes the basic right of couples and individuals to decide the number, spacing, and timing of their children; manage their reproductive health; and have access to the information and means to do so. While there are no legal restrictions on access to contraceptives, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Muftis Council continued their opposition to family planning initiatives, and access to family planning in the country was limited, especially outside big cities. In June authorities banned the leading condom brand in the country, the British brand Durex, for “not being registered in the proper manner.” Durex condoms made up one-fourth of the condom market in the country. The ban came just after a government-sponsored study asserted that the main reason for the spread of HIV in the country was condoms (see section 6, HIV and AIDS Social Stigma). Senior government leaders explicitly encouraged women to have as many children as possible to counteract the country’s declining population, particularly among ethnic Russians.

Discrimination: The constitution and law provide that men and women enjoy the same legal status and rights. Men and women have an equal right to obtain a bank loan, but women often encountered significant restrictions. There were reports that women encountered discrimination in employment (see section 7.d.).

The law upholds equal ownership rights for women and men. The civil code provides equal rights to access to land and access to other property for men and women. Unless their marriage contract states otherwise, all property acquired during a marriage is the couple’s joint property, and it is divided into two equal shares in the event of divorce. Each spouse retains ownership and management of property acquired before marriage or inherited after marriage.

Traditional practices in the North Caucasus award the husband custody of children and all property in divorce cases. As a result, women in the region were often unwilling to seek divorce, even in cases of abuse.

Children

Birth Registration: By law citizenship derives from parents at birth or from birth within the country’s territory if the parents are unknown or if the child cannot claim the parents’ citizenship. Newborns generally were registered at the local civil registry office where the parents live. A parent must apply for registration within one month of the birth. Birth certificates were issued on the basis of the medical certificate of the hospital where a baby was born.

Education: Education is free and compulsory through grade 11. Regional authorities frequently denied school access to the children of persons who were not registered as residents of the locality, including Roma, asylum seekers, and migrant workers.

Child Abuse: Children’s Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov reported an increase in crimes against minors in 2015. The number of minors recognized as victims in 2015 was 102,608, an 8 percent increase over 2014. The number of crimes against the life and health of minors increased 11 percent to 33,525, while the number of sexual crimes against minors increased to 12,175, a more than 20 percent increase over 2014. According to Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin, there was an increase in child victims of crime in 2015 over the prior year. There were almost 17,000 child victims of crime in 2015, more than 4,600 of whom were under the age of 10. In 2015 authorities filed 10,500 criminal cases involving crimes against minors, 25 percent more than in 2014. Markin reported that 2,300 criminal cases were filed for crimes against children during the first quarter of 2016. In those cases, 4,477 children were identified as victims, 477 of whom had been killed.

During the first quarter of the year, 519 minors were victims of criminal abuse by relatives, including 322 cases of abuse by parents. The Ministry of Internal Affairs published data on 576,000 criminal proceedings filed against parents in 2014 for crimes against children. These included 440,000 cases of negligence, 1,400 for enabling alcohol or drug abuse, and 11,900 cases of physical child abuse, which resulted in more than 2,500 fatalities. In addition 946 of these crimes were cases of pedophilia, 380 of which a parental guardian committed, according to Astakhov. Astakhov reported 8,000 convictions for child abuse in 2015.

According to a 2011 report published by the NGO Foundation for Assistance to Children in Difficult Life Situations, 2,000 to 2,500 children died annually from domestic violence. A 2013 estimate by the Ministry of Internal Affairs indicated that one in four children in the country was subjected to abuse by a parent or foster parent.

Early and Forced Marriage: The minimum legal age for marriage is 18 for both men and women. Local authorities may authorize marriage from the age of 16 under certain circ*mstances, and even earlier in some regions. In May 2015 the newspaperNovaya Gazetareported that a 17-year-old girl had been pressured into marrying the 57-year-old police chief in Chechnya’s Nozhay-Yurt district who was already married. Chechnya head Kadyrov attended the wedding while Children’s Ombudsman Astakhov publicly defended such practices in the Caucasus.

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: See information for girls under 18 in the women’s section above.

Sexual Exploitation of Children: The age of consent is 16. Children, particularly orphans and those without homes, were exploited for child p*rnography. While authorities considered child p*rnography to be a serious problem, the law does not criminalize its possession or provide for effective investigation and prosecution of it. The law prohibits the manufacture, distribution, and possession with intent to distribute of child p*rnography, but possession without intent to distribute is not prohibited by law. Manufacture and distribution of p*rnography involving children under 18 is punishable by two to eight years in prison, or three to 10 years in prison if it involves children under 14.

In June a definition of child p*rnography came into force for the first time. The new definition states that child p*rnography is a whole or partial image or description of the genitalia of a minor, made with “sexual intent,” as well as the portrayal of a real or simulated sexual act with a minor or an adult who presents him or herself as a minor. Materials used for educational or medical purposes are not considered child p*rnography, nor are materials that have historical, artistic, or cultural value. Investigation of child p*rnography cases are to be turned over from the Ministry for Internal Affairs to the Investigative Committee. In the past courts often dismissed criminal cases because of the lack of clear standards or definitions, and authorities had not determined how the new legal provisions defining child p*rnography would be enforced in the coming year.

The Investigative Committee reported filing charges in 1,645 cases of rape against children in 2015 as well as in more than 5,300 cases of sexual assault of children. According to Ministry of Internal Affairs statistics, in 2014 the ministry opened 274 investigative cases into child p*rnography and referred 80 of these to the courts. In addition to its authority to regulate websites containing extremist materials, Roskomnadzor has the power to shut down any website immediately and without due process until its owners prove its content does not include child p*rnography. In 2014 approximately 15 percent of the 45,700 links Roskomnadzor shut down were related to child p*rnography.

Displaced Children: Official statistics on the numbers of orphans and displaced children in the country were conflicting and of questionable reliability. In 2014 the Ministry of Education and Science estimated there were 96,000 orphans in the country, down from a previous estimate of 120,000. In May 2015 Children’s Ombudsman Astakhov announced that the number of orphans without parental supervision had declined from 106,700 in 2009 to 61,600 in 2014. In March, Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets announced there were 53,100 homeless children who had run away from home in 2014, a 22 percent increase from 2013. No recent official statistics on the number of parentless migrants were available. A 2011 study conducted by the Ministry of Education’s Center for Sociological Research indicated that 45 percent of homeless and unaccompanied children in Moscow were migrant children from member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Homeless children often engaged in criminal activities, received no education, and were vulnerable to substance abuse. Some children on the streets were forced into prostitution. Law enforcement officers reportedly abused street children, blamed them for unsolved crimes, and committed illegal acts against them, including extortion, detention, and psychological and sexual violence.

Regional ombudsmen for children operated in all the country’s regions. They had the authority to conduct independent investigations involving violations of children’s rights, inspect all institutions and executive offices dealing with minors, establish councils of public experts, and conduct independent evaluations of legislation affecting children. A number of schools in the Moscow and Volgograd oblasts had school ombudsmen to deal with children and families and identify potential conflicts and violations of children’s rights.

Institutionalized Children: In January media reported accusations by students in a boarding school in Bratsk, Irkutsk Region, of physical abuse by guards, including the use of electric shocks. There were other reports of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse in state institutions for children.

According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, graduates of state orphanages and boarding schools faced grim futures. The office reported that only 10 percent of graduates adapted successfully, while 40 percent committed crimes, 40 percent become addicted to alcohol and drugs, and 10 percent committed suicide. The office reported that 300,000 “socially dangerous acts” were committed by children each year, of which 100,000 were committed by children under the age of criminal responsibility (14).

International Child Abductions: The country is a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. See the Department of State’sAnnual Report on International Parental Child Abductionattravel.state.gov/content/childabduction/en/legal/compliance.html.

Anti-Semitism

The 2010 census estimated the Jewish population at just over 150,000. In February 2015, however, the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia stated that the actual Jewish population was nearly one million.

A number of leading figures in the Jewish community reported the level of anti-Semitism in the country was decreasing and that anti-Semitism was primarily manifested in anti-Semitic rhetoric on state television channels. There was also anti-Semitism reported in the security services, and anti-Semitic literature could be found distributed around the country.

According to a report by the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, eight cases of aggressive anti-Semitism were recorded in the country in 2015. The Kantor Center also noted, however, that anti-Semitism in the country was mainly expressed in the form of propaganda. The center identified the newspaperKomsomolskaya Pravdaand the state-funded RT television network as a “main stage for virulent anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli propaganda.” The conflict between Russia and Ukraine in particular led to a rise in anti-Semitic propaganda, with “each side blaming the other for using it as a political tool.”

Rabbi Alexander Boroda, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, condemned as anti-Semitic the RT channel’s June 27 airing of Palestinian allegations that an Israeli rabbi approved the poisoning of Palestinian wells. In June the SOVA Center reported on a series of anti-Semitic articles published in Saratov that attempted to discredit stories of Jewish heroism during the Second World War and arouse hostility towards Jews.

On April 10, Vladislav Vikhorev, a candidate for Putin’s United Russia party, who was campaigning for a seat in the Chelyabinsk Oblast legislative assembly, was quoted by the news websiteApostrophas stating that Jews in the 1990s were behind a “Jewish revolution that put Russian sovereignty itself on the brink of extinction.” He claimed Jews had “a well-planned, well-designed program of destruction of national culture, national education, national production, and the national financial system.” In response, Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar called on the government to stamp out hate speech against Jews. The local election committee issued Vikhorev a warning but allowed him to maintain his candidacy.

On October 2, police arrested a man who attacked a synagogue in Moscow, injuring a guard and attempting to set fire to the building while shouting anti-Semitic slogans.

On June 12, in one of a series of attacks on social media network users of VKontakte, unidentified men attacked a VKontakte employee known for his occasional antigovernment posts. The attackers broke three of his fingers and called their victim a “traitor,” a “Jew,” and a member of the “fifth column”–a term frequently used by Russian state media to describe the opposition.

In November the Levada Center published a survey, conducted in Russia in 2015, indicating that 8 percent of respondents expressed negative feelings about Jews, compared with 13 percent in 1992 and 16 percent in 1997.

Nationalist marches on November 4 included banners in support of national socialism along with imagery and slogans that were implicitly linked to Nazism.

The government investigated anti-Semitic crimes, and some courts placed anti-Semitic literature on the Ministry of Justice’s list of banned extremist materials.

Trafficking in Persons

See the Department of State’sTrafficking in Persons Reportatwww.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/.

Persons with Disabilities

While several laws prohibit discrimination against persons with physical, sensory, intellectual, and mental disabilities in employment, education, transportation, access to health care, and the provision of state services, the government generally did not enforce these laws. No laws prohibit discrimination in air travel.

Persons with disabilities continued to face discrimination and denial of equal access to education, employment, and social institutions. Persons with mental disabilities were subject to severe discrimination in education and employment (see section 7.d.). In addition the conditions of guardianship imposed by courts deprived them of almost all personal rights. Under the family code, individuals with mental disabilities were at times prevented from getting married without a guardian’s consent. According to HRW, although the government has begun to implement inclusive education, most children with disabilities did not study in mainstream schools due to a lack of reasonable accommodations to facilitate their individual learning needs. The lack of reasonable accommodations left tens of thousands of children with disabilities isolated at home or in specialized schools, often far from their homes. Most children with disabilities in orphanages had at least one living parent, and many faced violence and neglect, including inadequate health care, education, and opportunities to play, according to HRW.

In July local registry officials in Nizhny Novgorod denied a marriage license to a blind couple arguing that neither the bride nor groom could independently sign the documents.

On March 29, the ECHR, in a landmark ruling, found that the government should not have denied Vitaliy Kocherov custody of his daughter for the first six years of her life solely because both he and his wife have mental disabilities.

Conditions in institutions for adults with disabilities were often poor, with unqualified staff and overcrowding. Institutions rarely attempted to develop the abilities of residents, whom they frequently confined to the premises and whose movements they sometimes restricted within the institutions themselves.

On January 1, new amendments to the law for the social protection of persons with disabilities became effective. The amendments broaden the criteria for establishing a person’s disability, introduce a federal register of persons with disabilities, require barrier-free accessibility, and access to social services. Under the previous system introduced by Ministry of Labor and Social Protection in 2015, grant benefits for the persons with disabilities were changed based on the type of medical condition and the extensiveness of the symptoms. The changes affected hundreds of thousands of individuals who were denied disability benefits during the year based on the new requirements. Under the system only persons deemed to have lost at least 40 percent of one of their body functions could apply for financial assistance. The January amendments restored many of the previous categories of disabilities.

Federal law requires that buildings be accessible to persons with disabilities, but authorities did not enforce the law, and many buildings were not accessible. In a 2013 report, HRW noted that, in apartment buildings constructed before 2001 (that is, prior to the development of minimum accessibility standards for new construction), doorways and elevators were too narrow for wheelchairs and buildings lacked elevators or appropriate ramps. In some cases buildings constructed after 2001 also lacked these accommodations. This lack of building access was an insurmountable barrier to employment, education, and social engagement for the vast majority of wheelchair users interviewed in the report. The report also noted that critical public facilities and emergency services remained largely inaccessible to persons with disabilities. Disability rights NGOs confirmed that accessibility remained a problem, noting that only a handful of Moscow’s 200 subway stations had elevators to accommodate patrons with disabilities.

In July a man with disabilities from Krasnoyarsk committed suicide after local authorities refused to install a wheelchair ramp at his residence. According to media reports, the man had been confined to his home for the previous three years due to lack of accessibility. His mother told media that authorities continually denied requests for the ramp and told her son the city could not install the ramp until 2038.

Most children with disabilities remained isolated from other community members and were unable to attend public schools, since only 3 percent of schools could accommodate them. According to a 2014 HRW report, nearly 30 percent of all children with disabilities lived in state orphanages, where they faced violence and neglect. Some children interviewed by HRW reported that orphanage staff beat them, injected them with sedatives, and sent them to psychiatric hospitals for days or weeks at a time to control or punish them.

HRW reported that at least 95 percent of children living in orphanages and foster care had at least one living parent, although children with disabilities who entered institutions at a young age were unlikely to return to their birth families, mostly due to the practice of local-level state commissions recommending continued institutionalization of children. Staff working in institutions that HRW visited occasionally discouraged visits or other contact with family members, claiming that such contact “spoiled” children by getting them accustomed to too much attention. Within orphanages, HRW documented the segregation of children whom staff deemed to have the most severe disabilities into “lying-down” rooms, where they were confined to cribs and often tied to furniture with rags. Many of these children received little attention except for feeding and diaper changing.

According to Ministry of Internal Affairs data, more than 45 percent of the country’s total population of children with disabilities were institutionalized. While the law mandates inclusive education for children with disabilities, authorities generally segregated them from mainstream society through a system that institutionalized them through adulthood. Graduates of such institutions often lacked the necessary social, educational, and vocational skills to function in society.

There were numerous cases of child abuse in state facilities. The Prosecutor General’s Office requested a criminal investigation into a youth facility in Dagestan after allegations of abuse surfaced in March. According to media, former orphanage pupils reported that children, many with disabilities, were forced to sleep on the floor and that they received injections from staff to make them sleep. There were also allegations that children were forced to shower as a group in cold water.

There appeared to be no legal mechanism by which individuals could contest their assignment to a facility for persons with disabilities. The classification of children with mental disabilities to categories of disability often followed them through their lives. The official designations “imbecile” and “idiot,” assigned by a commission that assesses children with developmental problems at the age of three, signify that authorities considered a child uneducable. These designations were almost always irrevocable. The designation “weak” (having a slight cognitive or intellectual disability) followed an individual on official documents, creating barriers to employment and housing after graduation from state institutions.

During the World Ice Hockey Championship in May, police in St. Petersburg refused to allow a man with cerebral palsy into the match because they did not like his manner of walking.

Election laws do not specifically mandate that polling places be accessible to persons with disabilities, and the majority of polling stations were not. Election officials generally brought mobile ballot boxes to the homes of voters with disabilities.

National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities

The law prohibits discrimination based on nationality, but government officials increasingly subjected minorities to discrimination. According to the SOVA Center, as of July racial violence resulted in the death of at least one person, while 32 others were injured, and two received death threats. Incidents were reported in eight regions, although the violence tended to be concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Skinhead groups and other extreme nationalist organizations fomented racially motivated violence. Racist propaganda remained a problem, although courts continued to convict individuals of using propaganda to incite ethnic hatred.

As was the case in 2015, there were fewer reports of skinhead violence than in previous years. The Ministry of Justice added a number of skinhead videos found on social media, as well as skinhead, ultranationalist, and xenophobic publications, to theFederal List of Extremist Materials.

Nationalist organizations held a number of rallies throughout the year, but due to continued law enforcement pressure on nationalist groups, there were drastically lower levels of public activity. A May 2 demonstration in Moscow held by the nationalist group Committee of January 25 to commemorate clashes in 2014 between Euromaidan and anti-Maidan protesters in Odessa, Ukraine, drew between 250 and 300 persons. Most nationalist events during the year, however, drew significantly fewer participants. On July 7, the National-Conservative Movement and the Union of Orthodox Banner Bearers held a rally in Moscow in memory of the Russian royal family executed in 1918. The campaign attracted no more than 20 participants from Orthodox and monarchist groups.

Incidents highlighted longstanding discrimination against Roma and tensions between the Romani community and authorities. On March 17, residents of a Romani settlement in Tula clashed with riot police over access to a gas pipeline running through their community. Romani residents had been siphoning gas illegally from the pipeline for years because authorities had refused to give Romani families legal title to their land and allow them to register for gas service. The overwhelmed pipeline eventually broke down, and when engineers came to repair it, Romani residents attempted to block them so they would not cut off their access to gas. The incident turned violent, with children wielding sticks at police, who put down the protest with force.

In some cases authorities held perpetrators responsible for xenophobic violence, and there were at least 16 convictions for such acts as of July, resulting in the sentencing of 40 persons to prison terms for hate crimes. This included 12 members of the Moscow neo-Nazi group 14/88 who were sentenced to prison terms of between four and 10 years for racially motivated murder and other violent crimes.

Police and migration officials continued to engage in anti-immigrant raids in markets, factories, the subway, and city streets. GAMI/the FMS organized civilian patrols in which volunteers could sign up to participate in such raids under the supervision of migration service officials.

Grassroots ultra right activists also conducted raids during the year targeting suspected irregular or undocumented migrants. On July 22 in St. Petersburg, six or seven individuals belonging to a Cossack group entered a construction area that was home to migrant workers from Central Asia, broke down the doors, dragged 40 persons outside, and turned them over to police. In April in Moscow, the National-Conservative Movement conducted a raid in which its members checked shawarma sellers for their registration and certificates of production.

Right-wing activists capitalized on the high-profile killing of a five-year-old girl by her Uzbek nanny to promote prejudice against Muslims and anti-immigrant policies. On February 29, Gulchekhra Bobokulovaya decapitated the child in her care and waved the severed head at a busy metro station while shouting, “Allahu akbar” and threatening to blow herself up. In addition to the incident’s exploitation by right-wing groups, the Moscow City council of the Communist Party put the graphic image of the event on a party poster and called for several discriminatory measures, including a visa regime with Central Asian countries and a lifetime entry ban on foreigners who have committed a crime in Russia.

Indigenous People

The constitution and various statutes provide support for “small-numbered” indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Far East, permitting them to create self-governing bodies and allowing them to seek compensation if economic development threatens their lands. The government granted the status of “indigenous” and associated benefits only to those ethnic groups numbering fewer than 50,000 and maintaining their traditional way of life. Small-numbered indigenous groups throughout the country (including the Udege in the Far East, the Khanty in Siberia, and the Chukchi in the North) continued to work actively to preserve and defend their cultures as well as their right to benefit from the economic resources in their regions. The majority of small-numbered indigenous communities believed that a combination of overlapping legal codes and authorities’ lack of political will to enforce existing laws prevented them from fully exercising their rights.

Most members of indigenous communities asserted that they received the same treatment as ethnic Russians, although some more vocal activists claimed they were either unrepresented or underrepresented in regional governments and that the government failed to address seriously the problems of indigenous communities in recent decades. Small-numbered indigenous groups also expressed concern that they lacked adequate representation in the federal government. In 2015 responsibility for indigenous issues shifted from the Ministry of Culture to the newly created Federal Agency for Nationalities. During the year the government introduced fishing restrictions and eliminated special quotas for indigenous peoples throughout the country, endangering some communities in Khabarovsk and Kamchatka that depend on fishing.

The Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON), the country’s largest NGO for indigenous persons, represented 41 groups spread across the country with approximately 250,000 members. In 2013 government pressure led to the rejection of the candidacy of respected activist Pavel Sulyandziga to become RAIPON’s president and to a subsequent political purge of RAIPON’s leadership. Although Sulyandziga agreed to stay on as first vice president, a Duma member from the ruling United Russia party, Grigoriy Ledkov, was installed as president. Sulyandziga stepped down in early 2016 over disagreements with Ledkov over indigenous policy and corruption.

Indigenous contacts reported an increase in state-sponsored harassment, including interrogations by the security services, as well as employment discrimination (see section 7.d).

Since 2015 the Ministry of Justice has added several NGOs focusing on indigenous issues to the foreign agents’ list. In November 2015 the Center for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North, an NGO headed by Rodion Sulyandziga, the brother of Pavel Sulyandziga, was added to the list. According to the ministry’s website, the center engaged in political activity while receiving foreign funding from the World Bank, the UN Democracy Fund, and the Danish-based International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. On March 11, the Ministry of Justice designated the Batani International Foundation for the Development of Indigenous and Small Numbered Peoples of the North, Siberia, and Far East (aka Batani Fund) as a foreign agent. The Batani Fund was headed by Pavel Sulyandziga and listed its mission as protecting the rights of indigenous and small numbered peoples.

Pavel Sulyandziga told media outlets that his confrontations with officials from the Ministry of Regional Development over his attempts to enforce the rights of indigenous persons to receive their hunting and fishing quotas were the reason his organization was added to the foreign agents’ list. Pavel Sulyandziga criticized the government’s approach to supporting indigenous people as simply providing funding for indigenous festivals and holidays but not allowing them the use of rivers or traditional land sites. In August the Tengri School of Spiritual Ecology in the Altai Republic, which promoted environmental protection and ethnic culture in the region, was also forced to register as a foreign agent.

Acts of Violence, Discrimination, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

The law criminalizes the distribution of “propaganda” of nontraditional sexual relations to minors and effectively limits the rights of free expression and assembly for citizens who wish to advocate publicly for rights or express the opinion that hom*osexuality is normal. Examples of what the government considered LGBTI propaganda included materials that “directly or indirectly approve of persons who are in nontraditional sexual relationships.” Antidiscrimination laws exist but do not explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Authorities rarely investigated cases of physical violence against LGBTI persons as hate crimes.

During the year there were reports of killings motivated by the sexual orientation or gender identity of the victim. On March 31, a journalist and well-known arts and theater critic, Dmitriy Tsilikin, was found dead with multiple stab injuries in his home in St. Petersburg. Police arrested suspect Sergey Kosyrev, who admitted that he had met Tsilikin online and planned to blackmail him for his presumed hom*osexuality, but killed him in a quarrel. Media reports indicated that Kosyrev, who was charged with Tsilikin’s killing, had expressed support for neo-Nazi ideology on social media.

On February 1, a transgender woman named Angela Likina was stabbed to death by one of her neighbors in Ufa. Likina came to prominence after a video on social media showed a traffic police officer laughing uncontrollably with his partner after examining her documents and releasing her upon discovering that she was transgender. Likina expressed dismay about the release of the video and the attention it garnered. The alleged perpetrator was detained.

Human rights groups reported continuing violence against LGBTI individuals. Openly gay men were particular targets of attacks, and police often failed to respond adequately to such incidents. On June 12, a group of nine soccer fans savagely beat visitors to the Mono gay club in Yekaterinburg; one victim suffered a concussion and a broken leg. Police responded to the scene but failed to search the surrounding area for the attackers, even though witnesses told police where to look. Yekaterinburg authorities stated they were investigating.

There were reports that police abused and harassed individuals whom they perceived to be LGBTI. A report released by the LGBT Network in March documented 21 cases of alleged violations of LGBTI person’s rights by law enforcement officials during 2015. In one case, on July 11, police in Krasnodar reportedly harassed, detained, and threatened a man with rape based on his presumed sexual orientation. Authorities subsequently charged him with refusing to obey police orders and sentenced him to pay a fine. Human rights groups were appealing the court’s decision.

On June 13, police arrested two men, Islam Abdullabekov and Felix Glyukman, after they placed a sign that read “Love wins” at a memorial in Moscow for the victims of the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Authorities charged the men with holding an unauthorized demonstration and questioned them for three hours before releasing them. If convicted, they each face up to 10 days in prison or a fine of 60,000 rubles ($900).

LGBTI activists experienced threats and attacks by private individuals. On August 6, a private sports event organized by the Russia LGBT Sports Federation at a campground in Nizhny Novgorod was attacked by persons who beat participants with sticks while shouting hom*ophobic insults. Three persons were injured in the attack. Police opened an investigation.

LGBTI individuals often declined to report attacks against them due to fears that police would subject them to mistreatment or publicize their sexual orientation or gender identity. In May the newspaperMeduzareported that a criminal gang in St. Petersburg lured gay men on fake dates in order to beat and rob them. The robbers correctly presumed that few victims would report the crimes to police.

On July 7, LGBTI activist Violetta Grudina complained to the ECHR that authorities failed to carry out an effective investigation into an attack on the Maximum Center for Social, Psychological, and Legal Assistance to Victims of hom*ophobia and Discrimination in Murmansk (“Maximum”). In April 2015 assailants sprayed suffocating gas into the center, injuring two persons. Police refused to open a criminal investigation. “Maximum” was liquidated in October 2015 after being designated a foreign agent.

There were reports that authorities restricted the freedoms of expression, association, and assembly of individuals who expressed support for the human rights of LGBTI persons. Authorities invoked the law prohibiting the distribution of propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors to restrict the free speech of LGBTI persons and their supporters, which contributed to an environment of self-censorship among media outlets, rights organizations, and others on LGBTI problems. For example, on January 18, a Murmansk court fined the former leader of the LGBTI organization “Maximum,” Sergey Alekseyenko, 100,000 rubles ($1,500) for violating the “propaganda” law by posting positive views of LGBTI persons and relationships on the organization’s website on the social network VKontakte. One of the postings deemed “propaganda” was a poem by the 19th century Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov that described a sexual scene between two young men. The other posting was nearly an exact quote from a complaint that Roskomnadzor filed against the LGBTI group Deti 404 that read, “Children! To be gay means to be a person who is brave, strong, confident, persistent, who has a sense of dignity and self-respect.” Alekseyenko was the fifth LGBTI activist prosecuted under the “gay propaganda law.”

On March 1, the Ministry of Justice added the St. Petersburg NGO Sfera, which provided social and legal services to members of the LGBTI community, to the list of foreign agents. Sfera was at least the third LGBTI organization placed on the foreign agents’ list. Two other groups were listed in 2015: “Maximum” and Rakurs, an LGBTI advocacy organization based in Arkhangelsk.

Many events planned by members of the LGBTI community were officially unsanctioned and conducted in private due to security concerns. Nevertheless, the LGBT Network reported that in at least four cases during the year LGBTI-related events were disrupted, sometimes through anonymous calls alleging bomb threats.

Moscow authorities refused to allow a gay pride parade for the 11th consecutive year, despite a 2010 ECHR ruling that the denial violated the rights to freedom of assembly and freedom from discrimination. In February the ECHR agreed to review two cases brought by representatives of the country’s LGBTI community on the prohibition of more than a hundred public events across the country between 2009 and 2015.

On May 1, police in St. Petersburg detained approximately 20 LGBTI activists after they unfurled a rainbow flag at the annual May Day parade. Authorities had banned LGBTI groups from participating in the event two days prior to the march. This was the first time that authorities had prohibited LGBTI groups from taking part in the event; an estimated 600 demonstrators marched with LGBTI groups during the 2015 parade. According to the organizers, Roskomnadzor blocked access to the group’s official website and VKontakte page ahead of the event.

A hom*ophobic campaign continued in state-controlled media, in which officials, journalists, and others called LGBTI persons “perverts,” “sodomites,” and “abnormal” and conflated hom*osexuality with pedophilia.

LGBTI persons reported heightened societal stigma and discrimination, which some attributed to increasing official promotion of intolerance and hom*ophobia. Activists asserted that the majority of LGBTI persons hid their sexual orientation or gender identity due to fear of losing their jobs or homes as well as the threat of violence. Medical practitioners reportedly continued to limit or deny LGBTI persons health services due to intolerance and prejudice. There were reports that high levels of employment discrimination against LGBTI persons persisted (see section 7.d.) and that LGBTI persons continued to seek asylum abroad due to the domestic environment.

Although the law allows transgender individuals to change their names and gender classifications on government documents, they faced difficulties because the government had not established standard procedures and many civil registry offices denied their requests. When their documents failed to reflect their gender accurately, transgender persons often faced harassment by law enforcement officers and discrimination in accessing health care, education, housing, transportation, and employment. In one case in February, a transgender woman named Alina Davis was sentenced to two months in a men’s prison for driving with a fake license because her documents identified her as male. Transgender activists advocated for authorities to take steps that would fully legalize sex reassignment surgery and clarify procedures for changing gender identity on official documents.

There were some isolated positive developments during the year for the LGBTI community. For the first time in its eight-year history, the international LGBTI pride festival of Russia, Queerfest, took place in St. Petersburg in September without attacks or harassment. The event drew more than 1,500 persons. Other LGBTI-related events, such as an annual sports festival in St. Petersburg in March and a photography exhibit in Moscow in August, were held throughout the country.

There were rare instances in which courts found in favor of LGBTI persons seeking to exercise their human rights. In March the Kostroma City Court ruled that the city should pay Nikolay Alekseyev, founder of the Moscow Gay Pride Parade movement, 6,600 rubles ($99) in compensation for banning a gay pride parade there in 2014. On July 29, a Novosibirsk court ruled that Anna Balash had been subjected to discrimination by the company Sib-Alians, which had twice refused her employment on the grounds of “nontraditional sexual orientation.” The court ordered Sib-Alians to pay Balash 1,000 rubles ($15) compensation.

HIV and AIDS Social Stigma

Persons with HIV/AIDS faced significant legal discrimination, informal stigma-based barriers, and employment discrimination (see section 7.d.) and were prohibited from adopting children. In addition, intravenous drug users in particular faced informal barriers to accessing antiretroviral treatment. Regional AIDS centers often demanded that drug users complete drug addiction treatment, which was severely lacking or nonexistent in most areas, before starting antiretroviral treatment.

According to NGO activists, men who have sex with men were discouraged from seeking antiretroviral treatment, since treatment exposed the fact that these individuals have the virus, while sex workers were afraid to appear in the official system due to threats from law enforcement bodies. Economic migrants also concealed their HIV status and avoided treatment due to fear of deportation. By law foreign citizens who are HIV positive may be deported. The law, however, bars the deportation of HIV-positive foreigners who have a Russian national or permanent resident spouse, child (including adopted children), or parents (including adoptive parents).

Prisoners with HIV/AIDS experienced regular abuse and denial of medical treatment.

Although the law provides for treatment of HIV-positive persons, drug shortages, legal barriers, and lack of funds caused large gaps in treatment. Regional AIDS centers continued to force patients to take “vacations” from antiretrovirals for three months due to drug shortages, according to the NGO Patients Control. In September 2015 a Moscow court ruled that the Moscow AIDS Center could refuse to provide antiretroviral drugs to temporary residents in the city. According to NGOs, temporary residents were often told to return to their location of permanent residency for treatment (changing one’s permanent residence is administratively difficult and often requires property ownership or family ties).

In May a government-backed study by the Russian Institute for Strategic Research asserted that condoms are the main reason for the HIV epidemic in the country. The study’s scientists suggested that the best way to protect against HIV is to “be in a heterosexual family where both partners are loyal to each other.”

The Ministry of Justice cracked down on HIV-related NGOs, adding seven to the foreign agents’ list, effectively shutting them down. In one example, in August the Ministry of Justice added Panacea, a youth NGO dedicated to combatting the spread of HIV, to the register of foreign agents. Based in Kuznetsk, Penza region (approximately 150 miles west of Samara), Panacea focused on youth HIV prevention by providing condoms and clean syringes to “at risk” residents. Prosecutors alleged that Panacea’s activities, including the distribution of condoms and syringes, conflicted with public policy on drug abuse and AIDS prevention. The prosecutors asserted that the activities could not be considered humanitarian or ideological and were “political” in nature. Panacea worked closely with the NGO ESVERO, a union of organizations involved in HIV prevention, that was added to the list of foreign agents in June.

Other Societal Violence or Discrimination

The lack of an internal passport often prevented homeless citizens from fully securing their legal rights and social services. Homeless persons faced barriers to obtaining legal documentation.