A Russian court has sent a girl to jail for wearing rainbow-colored earrings shaped like frogs, according to multiple local reports.
The press service for the Sormovsky District Court in the Nizhny Novgorod region confirmed to RBC News that the girl has been jailed for five days on charges of publicly displaying “the symbol of an extremist organization.” The charges appear to stem from the Russian Supreme Court declaring the so-called “international LGBT public movement” an extremist organization last November, a baffling move that seemed to suggest some kind of worldwide conspiracy hatched by LGBTQ people everywhere.
The girl’s lawyer told the Aegis human rights group that the court had not bothered to specify what “symbol” she had displayed that was a violation of the law, but the Supreme Court’s ruling was cited.
“In the process [of the case], the earrings themselves were also examined, and it was determined that they are in the shape of frogs with the image of a seven-colored rainbow,” the lawyer was quoted as saying, adding that the police officers involved in the girl’s arrest didn’t seem to understand what she was in trouble for.
“We were sure that the case could be won. But the decision turned out to be unexpected,” the lawyer said.
No further details were immediately available on the girl who was arrested. But Aegis noted that her arrest came after the leader of a radical online hate group, the Male State, shared video on Telegram of the girl and her friend sitting in a local cafe when they were confronted by a group of men angrily demanding that she take off the earrings.
“In the process [of the case], the earrings themselves were also examined, and it was determined that they are in the shape of frogs with the image of a seven-colored rainbow,” the lawyer was quoted as saying, adding that the police officers involved in the girl’s arrest didn’t seem to understand what she was in trouble for.
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