Queer people live more and more dangerously in Russia (symbolic image). © Frank Rumpenhorst/dpa
A bill in Russia calls for a ban on sex change surgery – apparently to crack down on conscientious objectors.
Moscow – Nearly 400 members of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, backed the proposed amendments to existing legislation. The bill, introduced in Russia on Tuesday (30 May), aims to ban "medical interventions to change a person's gender". This was announced by one of the co-authors of the draft, Pyotr Tolstoy, on his Telegram channel.
The bill provides for an exception only for operations for the treatment of congenital anomalies in children. The proposal was submitted in part due to "mobilization obstacles" for Russia's army. This is reported by the independent Latvian news agency Meduza, among others.
Gender changes to avoid war: Russia responds
Russian state officials have indicated that such operations could affect the country's defense capability amid the Ukraine war. An anonymous member of the State Duma told the Russian newspaper Kommersant on May 3 that there are probably "repeated incidents" in which men wanted to change their gender in order to avoid conscription.
"Many young people have turned to private clinics to apply for sex reassignment surgery to avoid conscription," the lawmaker said. The independent news service Mediazona, citing data from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, reports that the number of Russians who received a new passport after a surgical sex change operation actually increased drastically in 2022.
Russia: Change of gender in passport rose sharply in Ukraine war
In 2020, 428 new passports were issued in connection with a gender change, 554 in 2021 and 936 in 2022, according to the report. There was a remarkable increase from March 2022, immediately after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Alexander Bastrykin, the chairman of the Russian investigative committee, also suspects that some people change their gender "on paper" in order not to have to fight in Ukraine, according to a report in the online newspaper Newsweek. "A sex change on paper is a deception, a fraud. If we are talking about fraud, then this fraud violates the interests of the state, our defense capability," Newsweek quotes Bastrykin as saying.
Russia could completely prevent gender change – even on paper
However, a letter issued by a medical organization confirming the gender change is currently used as a justification for correcting official documents. However, surgical intervention was "not necessary to receive this letter," Russian Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko told the Russian news agency Tass in April.
A law prohibiting gender change – or gender reassignment – would mean that both acts could be punished as punishable by law: change on paper could then be interpreted as an attempt at fraud, and surgical intervention could be prohibited per se. Without medical intervention, allegations of fraud could be difficult to refute. The already prevalent repression of the LGBTQIA community and their rights in Russia could thus accelerate even further. (na)