Kira Belaya, an activist from Magnitogorsk, was fined 2,000 roubles (approx. US$22) because of an emoji in her Telegram nickname featuring the cover of a Pink Floyd album. She was accused of displaying extremist symbols (Article 20.3 of the Administrative Code). Kira Belaya told this to Mediazona.
The case against the activist was initiated over an emoji showing the convergence of light, when a rainbow passes through a prism and forms a single ray. According to Belaya, on 17 May she travelled to the village of Askarovo in Bashkortostan, where a hearing was due to take place on the construction of a mining and processing plant. Local residents are opposed to the project.
She was not allowed in to the hearing, but officers took her documents for inspection. The very next day, police came to see her in Magnitogorsk, an industrial city in the Urals. They took Belaya to the police station, where a report was written up.
At the 20 May court hearing, Belaya argued that the drawing of a triangle with a flag refers to the cover of the album Dark Side of the Moon and “is not identical to LGBT symbols.”
The judge, however, considered Belaya’s arguments to be simply a “defence strategy” and stated that the emoji could be “identified with the symbols of the LGBT movement, which is banned in the Russian Federation.”
In her appeal against the decision of the Abzelilovsky District Court of Bashkortostan, she pointed out that she “has no connection to the LGBT movement,” “does not share” its ideology, and is in a relationship with a man, with whom she is raising a child.
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Asya Sokolova for OVD-Info