In St. Petersburg, police called activist Anush Panina to draw up a report on the demonstration of prohibited symbols. She told MR7 about this.
The reason was a post with a six-color rainbow flag, pinned on Panina’s page on VKontakte. She wrote it in November 2023, on the day of the Supreme Court hearing on the lawsuit to ban the “international LGBT social movement.”
The article on the demonstration of prohibited symbols (Part 1 of Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses) implies a fine of up to two thousand rubles or arrest for up to 15 days. After the ban on the “LGBT movement,” the article was already used because of rainbows. Thus, a Nizhny Novgorod resident was arrested for five days because of rainbow earrings in the shape of a frog, and a photographer from Saratov was fined 1.5 thousand rubles because of a photo with rainbow flags on Instagram.
Activist Anush Panina often goes to court hearings of St. Petersburg residents persecuted for political cases. She wore a clown nose to the trial of the artist Sasha Skochilenko, who was convicted because of price tags at Perekrestok with anti-war inscriptions.
At one of the meetings, the bailiff took her away, twisting her arms and dragging her along the ground. The reason for the detention was that Panina refused to immediately leave the court after the end of the hearing. A protocol was drawn up against her regarding disobedience to the bailiff (Part 2 of Article 17.3 of the Administrative Code).