He was tricked into conversion therapy in Siberia

On a remote farm in Siberia, a man gives Ada a knife. Before them was a pig.

He said: “Cut it out.” “If you want to continue surgery, you need to understand what castration means.”

Ada was 23 years old and transgender – she had been tricked into going to a conversion therapy center after coming out to her family.

He says that at the beginning of the summer of 2021, his relative asked him to accompany him to Novosibirsk, where he was going to undergo heart surgery.

Ada says that a man met them at the airport and after driving for a long time, the car stopped, Ada's relative got out, the driver turned to Ada, asked her to give him her smart watch and phone, and told her bluntly: “Now we have arrived. He will heal you in your repentance.”

“It wasn't until a package of warm clothes arrived two weeks later that I realized that I was only gone for two months or a month,” he added, saying that he was forced to take testosterone, pray and do handicrafts, like this. like chopping wood.

Faced with the pig, he panicked and did not do as he was told.

Nine months later, he managed to escape. There was a person who had left the phone lying around and used it to call the police.

They sent officials to the center, and said that Ada must be allowed to leave as she is being held against her will.

The BBC contacted the center but the person we spoke to denied any knowledge of conversion therapy programs. We also contacted Ada's relative but did not receive a response.

Ada's time marked a low point in the battle she says she has been fighting all her life – first with her family, then with the wider community, and now Russia's LGBT laws are getting stronger.

Transgender people in Russia are having their human rights systematically eroded by the government's broader political strategy to target vulnerable minorities, according to UN independent expert Graeme Reid.

One year after Russia passed a law banning gender reassignment surgery, he says transgender Russians were deprived of their “basic rights to legal identity and access to health care”.

The new law also stopped people from changing their details on documents – Ada was one of the last people to have her name officially changed before the law comes into effect in July 2023.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has lashed out at the West and LGBT rights, saying he is fighting for traditional Russian values. At a cultural forum in St Petersburg last year, he dismissed transgender people as “transformers or trans-something”.

And at the end of 2023, the minister of justice in Russia announced another new decision, declaring the “international LGBT movement” as an extremist organization.

It didn't matter that there was no such organization. Anyone found guilty of supporting what is now considered a “dangerous act” faces up to 12 years in prison. Even displaying the rainbow flag risks a fine, as well as a four-year prison sentence for repeat offences.

In one of the first prosecutions under the new law, two tearful and panic-stricken young people appeared in the Orenburg city court in March. Their crime was running a bar that was often closed to the LBGT community. Their case is still ongoing.

After escaping from a Siberian camp, Ada moved to a small apartment in Moscow where she gave other transgender people a safe place to live. But the new rules were the last draft for him.

“I didn't live anymore…I had to go to Russia,” he said from his new home in Europe.

For Francis, who left Russia in 2018, the new rules mean he will likely never return home. Even before they were introduced, the authorities in his hometown of Yekaterinburg had taken action against him.

He says: “I've always known that I wasn't a girl. But by 2017, she had married Jack, had three children, and adopted two more.

“I said to my husband, 'Maybe I'm wrong but I think I might be transgender.'”

They agreed that Francis would see a doctor. “They said, 'You're transgender, 100%.' I felt much better. Everything is arranged in a way… I understood – this is who I am.”

He started a change plan, but before long the local authorities intervened. Their two adopted children were taken into care, and Francis was told that their own children would follow.

The family moved from Russia and has been living in Spain ever since.

Ally, who is non-binary and uses the pronoun “they”, left Russia in 2022 after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was a political decision, unrelated to the pressures of the LGBT community, but those pressures have had serious consequences.

When Ally was 14, someone asked: “Are you a girl or a boy?”

“It gave me such a sense of happiness – I was so happy that he couldn't see what I looked like on the outside.”

Some years later they told their friend: “'I don't think I'm a girl, but I don't think I'm a boy either.'

“He looked at me and said: 'Oh, OK. You're going out.' Then we continued to eat soup. It was one of the happiest times of my life.”

Ally has been living in Georgia for the past year and decided to have a hysterectomy. Close family members don't know.

“If I had just come to my parents and said, 'Mom, dad, I'm a lesbian,' it would have been easier than saying, 'Mom, dad, I cut off my breasts and I want you to do it.' call me.'”

Although Ally was diagnosed before the new Russian law banning gender reassignment, and has chosen a new gender-neutral name, it is no longer available to change passports and other important documents.

Francis has the same problem. All his documents include his old name, which causes confusion when he is asked for ID or has to fill out forms. But he says life in Spain is good. He got a job in a textile factory that he likes.

Like Ally, Francis admits that the climate of intolerance fueled by the new anti-LGBT laws has strained relationships with family.

He says: “My mother doesn't talk to me anymore. “You think that I have disappointed my family, you are ashamed to look your neighbors in the eye. It is as if I am a strange person, or a thief, or if I have killed someone.”

And living in a foreign country as a Russian while the war rages on in Ukraine can add another complication, says Ally: “In Russia the authorities and conservative sections of society don't like us because we're transgender. Even abroad, people don't like us because we are Russians.”

All the trans community really wants, says Ada, is that “people can dress the way they want and not be afraid of being beaten… I want people to stop thinking about how to survive”.