“I will have to leave this country,” Natalia*, a human rights lawyer, told openDemocracy. “Otherwise, there will most likely be legal consequences for me because what I’m doing can ‘spread banned propaganda’.”
Natalia is among the hundreds of thousands of trans people in Russia who face a choice between fleeing their home country or living with severely restricted rights after Vladimir Putin signed a new anti-trans law on 24 July.
The law, which violates the World Health Organisation’s recommendations for LGBTIQ people, bans sex-reassignment surgeries, gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy and legally changing a person’s gender on official documents such as birth certificates and passports.
