With news that a law banning the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ in Russia has passed its second reading, gay pride rallies being banned and officials saying they’re moving to ban foreign gay couple from adopting Russian babies, the massive country is certainly taking an increasingly homophobic course.

That’s now expanded to the LGBT film festival Bok o Bok (Side by Side), which started out in St. Petersberg but has since expanded to other cities, such as Moscow, Tomsk, Arkhangelsk, Perm and Novosibirsk. It has just been fined 500,000 rubles (about £10,000) after a judge ruled that it had taken donations from overseas, in contravention of a controversial new law.

The law says that any non Government organisation must register if they are in receipt of funding from foreigners. The organisers of Bok o Bok say they didn’t register because they haven’t received any foreign funding, and that the judge completely ignored them when they tried to argue they had not broken any laws.

Many are seeing this is yet more evidence of the Russian government trying to silence any dissent on their crackdown on homosexuality, and that the fine has been levied purely to try and stop the festival.

Russia is a signatory to the European Convention On Human Rights, with the organisation’s court telling them they must move away from stigmatising gay people. However the government has ignored this, and even claimed they have international or European commitment to preventing gay rights abuses.