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.

Source: Telegraph
Photo: Flickr

This weekend Moscow will host the Eurovision Song Contest finals. As musicians face off this Saturday, another contest of sorts will occur between gay rights activists and city Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

The activists are fighting for their right to hold a march this Saturday, which Luzhkov banned for the third year in a row. The mayor is notorious for his anti-gay stance, calling homosexuals “satanic.” At an AIDs conference in 2008, he said the protests have not been permitted because “they could turn out to be one of the factors in the spread of HIV infections.”

Previous protests in 2006 and 2007 ended in violence. The annual marches, known as “Moscow Pride,” have all been banned by Luzhkov but held anyway. The organizer, Nikolai Alekseev, is a journalist. A documentary chronicalling his attempts to hold a march was released in 2008.

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