- Title: RUSSIA: Russian gays elude police for first calm protest
- Date: 30th May 2010
- Summary: MOSCOW, RUSSIA (MAY 29, 2010) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF GAY PRIDE RALLY IN LENINGRADSKY PROSPECT RAINBOW FLAG, PROTESTERS CHANTING "EQUAL RIGHTS WITHOUT COMPROMISES" (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) NIKOLAY ALEKSEEV, GAY RIGHTS ACTIVIST, SAYING: "We are fighting, so to say, on all fronts at the same time. We are trying to attract the attention of the European public, to make the Europ
- Embargoed: 14th June 2010 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Domestic Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA8DM6Q1MAGG5X5CLJK3YRJPNT3
- Story Text: Gay and lesbian activists eluded Russian security services in a five-hour game of cat and mouse on Saturday (May 29) to hold the first gay protest in Moscow not to be broken up by riot police.
After luring hundreds of riot police and undercover officers to a different location, a group of about 25 gay and lesbian activists unfurled a rainbow banner on Moscow's main Leningradsky Avenue, chanting, "Homophobia is Russia's disgrace!".
They said the subterfuge was needed to avoid a repeat of the violence seen in previous years when Moscow police, nationalists and ultra-Orthodox believers broke up similar protests.
Gay rights activist Nikolai Alekseev criticised embassies of European countries and the EU mission in Moscow for refusing to hold the gay parade protest on their territory.
"We are fighting, so to say, on all fronts at the same time. We are trying to attract the attention of the European public, to make the European [Human Rights] court condemn what is happening in this country. We are fighting against the Moscow government and at the same time against those rival protesters who try to violently disperse our actions," he said.
Alekseev, who heads the Moscow Gay Pride organisation, said his group launched an unsuccessful appeal against Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's ban, but that it has now taken the case to a higher court.
"Today it's like the Soviet era in Russia. Those who seek to hold a peaceful protest are being hunted by the police and the FSB security like we were some kind of criminals or terrorists. We are not. We are peaceful gay human rights campaigners," said British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, who travelled to Moscow to join the protest.
Police arrived soon after the brief protest, which the city of Moscow had refused to permit, but the activists scattered.
Homosexuality could be punished with jail terms in the Soviet Union and though Russia decriminalised homosexuality in 1993, intolerance remains very widespread. Polls have shown more than 80 percent of Russians see homosexuality as immoral and there is little official tolerance of any public show.
Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has said gay protests are satanic and previous attempts to hold such events have ended in multiple arrests and clashes with ultra-Orthodox believers who say gays should be punished or treated in hospital for their "illness".
Just days before last year's Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow, police arrested at least 40 gay and lesbian activists at a similar protest.
Gay activists had asked Western embassies to host the protest but they said their proposal was either ignored or turned down by envoys from the United States, Canada and major European Union states.
The Moscow police declined to comment. A spokesman for the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, also declined to comment and asked for questions in writing which he said would not be answered before Monday.
The 5th Moscow Gay Pride was held under the slogan "Complicity in crime is also crime". Earlier this week, on May 27, gay activists blamed Moscow mayor Luzhkov of committing crimes against homosexuals over the past five years. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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