According to the prosecutor, the Russian artist Julia Tsvetkova is to be imprisoned for three years and two months for drawing female genitalia.
The 29-year-old is accused of producing and distributing pornography, as her mother Anna Khodyrewa announced on Facebook on Tuesday. The court in Komsomolsk-on-Amur in Russia’s far east intends to announce the verdict on July 17 after Tsvetkova’s final statement.
The feminist faces a maximum of six years in prison in the criminal proceedings, which international human rights organizations criticize as arbitrariness. The well-known activist Tsvetkova has been fined in Russia for years because she paints same-sex couples with rainbow motifs. And she receives mass death threats, as she told the German Press Agency before the start of the trial.
The images now at issue belong to a collection entitled “A woman is not a doll”, which she had spread on social networks. Many prominent Russians from the show and media business, human rights activists and politicians had condemned the actions of the judiciary against the artist. Violent arrests have repeatedly occurred during street protests.
Like many art experts who refer to paintings by great masters of naked women in museums around the world, Tsvetkova does not see her drawings as pornography. The activist from the Khabarovsk region is also known nationally for her commitment to the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people.
There is a lot of hatred against her and her mother, she once told the dpa. “It’s hard to bear. We are threatened to be shot or burned.”
The human rights organizations Memorial and Amnesty International have officially put Yulia Tsvetkowa on the list of those who were politically persecuted.
