Photo: CC BY-SA 2.0 / Flickr / Oltre l’Occidente
A Moscow court fined an Italian man 50,000 rubles (€445) on Monday for “discrediting” the Russian military by carrying a rainbow flag with the word “peace” written on it, independent Russian news outlet Mediazona reported on Tuesday.
According to the court, Ermanno Rizzo expressed his “negative attitude towards the Russian armed forces” by carrying a rainbow flag featuring an image of a peace dove and the Latin word “pace” as he walked around central Moscow on Saturday.
The image of the dove was a symbol of the “international peace movement prevalent in Europe”, the court ruled.
Having “attracted the attention of an unrestricted audience” by displaying the flag, Rizzo was found guilty of carrying out “public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”, participating in an “unauthorised protest” and disobeying police orders, the court concluded.
Rizzo, who lives in Russia with his wife and their young child, pleaded not guilty to the charges, telling the court that he and his wife had “various flags” at their home and that he had simply decided to go for a walk and take photos with one of them that day.
The case comes amid an increasingly severe crackdown on any expression of LGBT identity in Russia, with 12 people reportedly arrested for “petty hooliganism” on Tuesday following a series of raids on Moscow queer venues on Saturday.
During the raids, clubbers were forced by police to lie face-down on the floor for hours as the premises were searched, while some were interrogated about their connection to the LGBT community, and others still were issued with military call-up papers.
Russia’s Supreme Court ruled the “international LGBT movement” constituted an “extremist organisation” in November 2023. Since then, six criminal cases have been opened against club owners in various Russian cities, according to Parni+, a Russian LGBT website.
