Moscow March Put Down by Police
In defiance of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s ban on gay rights protests, 30 activists took the to the streets in Moscow today for “Slavic Gay Pride.”
Moscow put an end to the event before it could get started, however, arresting all 30 participants, including Peter Tatchell, who had offered to meet with Luzhkov and to find a “cooperation and an amicable solution” to the protest ban.
During his arrest, Tatchell, who was severely beat up at a 2007 Moscow march, said, “This proves that Russian people don’t have freedom.”
Rather than organize in one central location, this year the protesters decided to spread themselves out at various places around Moscow State University in order to avoid confrontation. The protest was held during the Eurovision 2009 song contest, an event popular in the gay community. Yesterday, the mayor’s spokesman dismissed the rights march as threatening to “destroy the moral foundations of our society.”
This was to be the city’s fourth “Moscow Pride” organized by LGBT activist Nikolai Alekseev. Previous marches sported greater attendance, but ended in violence.
A counter-demonstration was held in the central part of the city earlier in the day by conservative nationalists.