Russian woman jailed under anti-extremism law for wearing rainbow earrings

A woman in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod was jailed for five days on charges of displaying “extremist symbols” for wearing rainbow-colored earrings earlier this week, according to the LGBTQ+ rights group Egida.

On January 29, according to human rights activists, Anastasia Yershova was approached by a group of “aggressive people” who demanded she remove the “banned symbols” from her ears.

After a video of the encounter began spreading on local Telegram channels, the woman was called in to the regional branch of Russia’s Anti-Extremism Center, where she was arrested for “displaying extremist symbols.” The next day, a court sentenced her to five days in jail, citing the Russian Supreme Court’s designation of the “international LGBT movement” as an “extremist organization.”

Russian lawmaker Alexander Khinshtein, who co-authored the country’s law against “LGBT propaganda,” said that Russian law does not ban “classic” rainbows with seven colors, like Yershova’s earrings, and that it only prohibits “castrated” rainbows that don’t include light blue. He called the ruling against Yershova “very strange” and said it should be reversed.