Russian Gay Leaders Released From Jail
(Moscow) Nikolai Alekseev and two other Moscow Gay Pride organizers were released from jail Monday afternoon but ordered to appear back in court on June 9 for a hearing on criminal charges they were staging an illegal demonstration.
Three European lawmakers and British LGBT rights advocate Peter Tatchell were released on Sunday, hours after they were detained.
In all about 20 people were arrested by heavily armed riot police as gay rights campaigners attempted to deliver to Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov a petition which had been signed by about 40 members of the European Parliament supporting a gay pride parade.
The governments of Germany and Italy have officially protested the arrests of their representatives to the European Parliament.
Luzhkov earlier had banned the pride celebration and rights groups said they would march anyway. The petition was to have been a last ditch effort to avoid a confrontation with city authorities.
About 120 gays and their supporters gathered in a part across from the City Hall while the petition was to be delivered.
Waiting for them were members of extreme right nationalist groups, Russian Orthodox churchgoers, and young militants.
The crowd pelted the gay group with eggs and started a number of skirmishes until police moved in arresting the gay leaders.
A woman threw a bottle of water on Tatchell and then a young man in military fatigues hit him in the head as the British rights leader was led away by police.
“There is no rule of law in Moscow. The right to protest does not exist. This is not a democracy,” said Tatchell following his release.
Last month a Moscow court tossed out a lawsuit accusing Mayor Lushkov of libel over claims he made that gay rights marches were “satanic.”
The court ruled that Moscow Pride leaders had failed to prove that the remarks were incendiary or intended to vilify gays in general.
In January during a Kremlin meeting before leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church Lushkov said that gay rights marches were “satanic,”The speech was broadcast on Moscow television.
Lushkov then went on to blast gay unions.
“Some European nations bless single-sex marriages and introduce sexual guides in schools,” Lushkov said in the speech broadcast on Moscow television. “Such things are a deadly moral poison for children.”
Moscow Pride called Lushkov’s remarks a “smear campaign” against gays and lesbians and filed the lawsuit.
Last year, Lushkov also refused to give a permit for the gay parade citing security concerns.
Despite the ban, marchers attempted to hold a parade. Police quickly moved in arresting marchers and counter protestors.
Most of the 200 people detained were gay. Charges against them were later dropped.
A gay pride parade this year also has been banned in St Petersburg.
Source: 365gay.com