The drawings by Yulia Tsvetkova were sent for verification to the center, according to whose examinations the historian Yuri Dmitriev was convicted and Memorial was liquidated

The drawings, for which LGBT activist Yulia Tsvetkova faces 6 years in prison, were submitted for examination to the ANO Center for Sociocultural Expertise. On January 18, the Central District Court of Komsomolsk-on-Amur gave the corresponding instruction. About it on Facebook wrote Tsvetkova’s mother, artist Anna Khodyreva.

“The court itself, without the help of the prosecution, found this expert institution,” Khodyreva said. – Prior to this, the initiators of the appeal to the CSE were the bodies of preliminary investigation. So this is a precedent. And this is also an admission of the inability to convict Yulia on the basis of the available evidence after twenty-six months of investigation and trial. This is the recognition of her innocence, no matter how tough the upcoming court decision is.”

Human rights activists call the “Center for Sociocultural Expertise” a pocket expert organization, “experts to call the investigation.” It was the center’s expertise that formed the basis of the claim for the liquidation of Memorial. It was compiled by math teacher Natalia Kryukova and translator Alexander Tarasov.

Also, Kryukova and another specialist of the center, Doctor of Cultural Studies Vitaly Batov, are the authors of the expertise in the case of Memorial historian Yuri Dmitriev. Kryukova and Batov concluded that the pictures of Dmitriev’s daughter, which he took to monitor the health of a girl with enuresis, were pornographic.

Now this center will look for pornography in the body-positive drawings of 26-year-old activist Yulia Tsvetkova. About how the experts of the center do it, earlier told professor, doctor of medical sciences, president of the National Institute of Sexology Lev Shcheglov, commenting on the examination of the case of Dmitriev, who, thanks to Kryukova and Batov, received 15 years in prison.

“On formal grounds, this expertise is outside the competence, it’s just insane,” says Shcheglov. “But in terms of content, it is completely different. Pornography is always actions with someone, in extreme cases – with something. They write about it, but in the final part they conclude that the photos are pornographic. It’s like I say: you are a woman, but actually a man. Article 242 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation does not contain the very definition of “pornography”, they are indicated in the comments to the article. This suggests that this is a very subjective matter. There are a number of criteria: what is depicted, what is described, what is staged. And it’s either sexual intercourse or some kind of sexual activity. Based on this, not a single nudity is pornography, otherwise all museums in the world should be closed and everyone should be held criminally liable.”

Recall that on November 20, 2020, Yulia Tsvetkova said that a case was opened against her for distributing pornography because of the public “Vagina Monologues”, where drawings on the topic of body positivity were published. Her apartment and the children’s theater studio, where the activist used to work, were searched.

The police also opened another administrative case on propaganda of homosexuality among minors for a picture on VKontakte with the inscription “Family is where love is. Support LGBT+ families.”

Tsvetkova faces six years. The Human Rights Center “Memorial” recognized her as a political prisoner. She has been waiting for the end of the investigation for three years already – first under house arrest, then under house arrest. Former activist, writer Daria Serenko informedand that Tsvetkova and her mother were left practically without a livelihood, significant funds are spent on a lawyer who flies to Yulia in Komsomolsk-on-Ural from Moscow. Flights are expensive, the price range for a ticket is from 30 thousand to 170 thousand rubles.