Following a complaint filed by the Russian prosecutor's office, the suspended sentence of a transgender woman was overturned, and the regional court sent the case back for a retrial. Prosecutors in the case are now requesting that the defendant be handed a real prison term in a male penal colony, the transgender rights group Center T reports.
The woman, referred to in the case under the pseudonym “Yulia,” received a five-year suspended sentence over nude photographs (which the court classified as pornography) and depressive poetry (which the court classified as encouragement towards suidice). The proceedings lasted four years, during which the defendant changed her documents and altered her gender marker from “male” to “female.”
Investigators noted that at the time when the alleged offenses had been perpetrated, Yulia’s passport had listed her as male, leading the prosecution to request a real prison sentence in a male colony. The cassation court upheld the prosecution’s position and returned the case for a retrial.
According to Yulia’s lawyer, her case is unprecedented. In the past in Russia, gender markers had been changed in order to protect transgender people from abuse in male colonies. In this instance, however, the authorities are attempting to forcibly reverse Yulia’s gender marker against her will in order to incarcerate her in a male facility.
The defense stated that “transgender identity is effectively being used as an aggravating circumstance, which is not provided for by law.” The new hearing is scheduled for Jan. 29 and will be held behind closed doors.
The law fully banning “sex change” (the term Russian authorities use to describe gender transition) through surgery and passport changes was passed in the summer of 2023. By the second reading, the bill had been extended to stipulate that a marriage would be annulled if either spouse underwent a transition. Trans people were also prohibited from adopting children and from undergoing gender-affirming surgeries or hormone therapy.
