Russian lady interrogated and fined for photograph of bag saying, ‘Intercourse is cool, however Putin’s demise higher’

A Russian lady claims she was interrogated and fined only for sharing a photograph of a tote bag that mentioned Vladimir Putin’s demise could be “higher” than intercourse.

Aleksandra, who declined to provide her surname, was ordered to pay 30,000 rubles, or about $317, for “discrediting” the Russian army below an article of the Code of Administrative Offenses, in accordance with an interview with independent local news outlet Mediazone.

She mentioned the fees stemmed partly from a sequence of screenshots of her private Instagram, which included a photograph of a cotton bag emblazoned with blue textual content studying in English, “Intercourse is cool, however Putin’s demise higher.”

The pictures additionally featured a bag inscribed with the phrases “No to conflict” and related graffiti protesting Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Plainclothes officers got here to her residence in Krasnodar on June 28 and took her to the division of the Ministry of Inner Affairs, the place they questioned her about LGBTQ+ “propaganda” on her tattoos, she mentioned.

She says she was pressured to indicate officers her tattoos, together with one on her higher arm of a canine sporting a rainbow scarf alongside phrases that translate as “The canine is homosexual.”

“They advised me to boost the sleeves of my T-shirt, examined all my tattoos, requested me to translate what the inscriptions in English imply, and in addition took pictures of my face and tattoos,” she mentioned of the harrowing interrogation.

The officers prevented Aleksandra from contacting a lawyer and taunted her by asking how her mom, a trainer, “‘had such an ill-mannered daughter,’” according to the human rights group Sphere.

Lastly, in late July, the Justice of the Peace’s Court docket fined her over $2,000 for “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” along with the cost for “discrediting,” Mediazone mentioned.

Even in courtroom, the police had hassle explaining precisely why Aleksandra’s tattoos had been offensive. 

“He mentioned some incoherent issues: ‘Propaganda, propaganda,’” Aleksandra, who additionally goes by Sasha, lamented.

“Clarify the place the violation is right here.” He’s like, ‘Properly, I believed it was a violation.’”

“I’m unhappy that now, even on my small web page in social networks, it has change into objectionable and unsafe to precise my opinion,” she told SOTA.

“I can not know precisely how they discovered me and why they had been , however I believe that somebody wrote a denunciation, seeing that the web page was open.”

Aleksandra declined additional remark when reached by The Put up on Thursday, solely asking for her face to not be proven via ongoing security fears.