Moscow police violently break up gay pride rally
Moscow police violently broke up gay rights demonstrations Saturday,detaining more than 20 protesters who denounced what they calledRussian homophobia hours before the finals of a major international popmusic competition.
About 30 activists gathered near auniversity in southwestern Moscow to protest discrimination againstgays and lesbians in Russia. The group, which included British gayrights advocate Peter Tatchell, waved flags and chanted slogans,including: “Homophobia is a disgrace of this country!” and “We aredemanding equal rights!”
About a minute after the protest began, riot police charged into thegroup and began to grab demonstrators, dragging them to waiting buses.Tatchell was talking with reporters when police hauled him away.
“This shows the Russian people are not free,” he said.
Moscowis hosting the Eurovision song contest finals later Saturday. Europe’smost prestigious pop music contest has drawn attention to gay rights inRussia, with some singers threatening to boycott the event if the gaypride parade was not allowed to happen.
Russian gay rights movement leader Nikolai Alexeyev was among those detained Saturday.
Afterthe protest was over, riot police seized other gay activists whostarted to speak with reporters. Police ripped the shirt and bra offone woman, who identified herself as Ksenia Prilebskaya, and roughlypushed her into a police bus.
Eduard Murdin, 40, a humanrights activist from the Russian city of Ufa, was flanked by twoofficers who pinned his arms behind him and marched him, head bentover, to a waiting bus. “All we wanted was a legal protest,” he said ashe was led away. “But we were blocked. What else could we do?”
“Freedomof expression for homosexuals,” shouted Nikolai Bayev, 34, a gay rightsactivist from Moscow, as police took him away. Among those detained wasAndy Thayer of Chicago, co-founder of the Gay Liberation Network.
Policedetained about six other gay rights activists at a separatedemonstration across town and several anti-gay protesters rallyingnearby.
City authorities had barred Saturday’s rally sayingit was morally wrong. Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov has describedhomosexuality as “satanic.”
Luzhkov’s spokesman Sergei Tsoiwas quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying Saturday that gaypride events “not only destroy moral foundations of our society, butalso purposefully provoke disturbances that will threaten the lives andsafety of Moscow residents and guests.”
At an earlier rallyclose to the center of Moscow, about 50 demonstrators from nationalistand Orthodox Christian organizations denounced homosexuality. One manwas detained when he accused officials in the Kremlin of being gay.