MOSCOW — Police and nationalist protesters forcefully prevented Russian and foreign gay activists from rallying in Moscow on May 27, where they had hoped to put on a display of gay pride despite the city government’s refusal to grant permission for a parade.
“We are conducting a peaceful action. We want to show that we have the same rights as other citizens,” the main organizer Nikolai Alexeyev said a news conference a few hours before the Saturday rally was to begin.
Activists had urged gay rights supporters to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, just outside the Kremlin wall, and then to gather in a square opposite Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s office.
But police had closed the entrance to the garden where the tomb is located, and as the first half-dozen activists arrived carrying flowers, they were set upon by about 100 religious and nationalist extremists dressed in black who kicked and punched them.
“Moscow is not Sodom!” they shouted. Women wearing headscarves held up religious icons while men in Cossack dress — white sheepskin hats and black-and-red tunics — stood by.
“We were expecting this. It’s the authorities that are allowing this to happen,” said a woman holding a limp red carnation who identified herself as Anna, a lesbian.
Riot police rushed in to separate the assailants from the gays but detained Alexeyev “as the ringleader,” said British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, who was in the group.
Police said later they had detained 120 anti-gay protesters and gay activists.
“Both the authorities and the fascists had the same objective — to suppress the Moscow Gay Pride,” Tatchell said later.
Shortly before the rally was to begin, scores of anti-gay nationalist youths raced toward the site, waving and throwing flares into Moscow’s main avenue, Tverskaya. By the start time of the rally, more than 100 youths were standing in the square opposite the mayor’s office, chanting: “Glory to Russia!”
“I came here to stop the gay parade. The authorities didn’t allow them and they came here anyway,” said a 22-year-old nationalist wearing a facemask who gave his name only as Oleg.
Police tried to clear the square but more demonstrators showed up. Several trampled a rainbow-colored ribbon — a symbol of gay rights — into the ground.
‘Perverts’ parade’
“This is a perverts’ parade,” said Irina, a protester holding an icon of the Virgin Mary who gave only her first name. “This is filth, which is forbidden by God. We have to cleanse the world of this filth.”
As Volker Beck, a Green party member of Germany’s parliament, was being interviewed before TV cameras, about 20 nationalist youths surrounded him and pummeled him, bloodying his nose.
Volker Eichler, a gay activist from Berlin who witnessed the beating, said police did not intervene.
“What happened today unfortunately is representative of the non-respect for human rights in Russia. You can’t express your point of view, and you are not protected from extremists,” said French gay activist Sebastien Maria.
The date of the march coincided with the 13th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality in Russia, and a number of foreign activists traveled to Moscow this week for an unprecedented forum on gay rights in Russia.
City authorities cited the potential for violence as the primary reason for banning the parade. But they also voiced disproval of the very idea of gay rights.
Luzhkov, the mayor, said in a radio interview May 26 that gay parades “may be acceptable for some kind of progressive, in some sense, countries in the West, but it is absolutely unacceptable for Moscow, for Russia.”
“As long as I am mayor, we will not permit these parades to be conducted,” he said.
The issue has split Moscow’s gay community, many of whom say that Russian society is still too conservative and that a parade would only provoke more violence from skinheads and radical groups.
Reaction to the march melee was swift from gay rights supporters, some of whom condemned Moscow’s mayor.
“The Russian people suffered greater casualties than any other country from Nazism — whose targets were not only Jews and Soviet citizens but also homosexuals,” London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone told PinkNews.
“To see open fascists and Nazis parading in Moscow, and assaulting gay and lesbian people, is to trample on the memory of all those who fought against Nazism and particularly the 27 million Soviet citizens who died in the fight against fascism.”
Eyewitness account
Scott Long, director of the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, observed the planning for Moscow’s first-ever Gay Pride Parade, and wrote blog posts exclusively to the Washington Blade.
On May 27, Long reported that planning for the march continued until marchers hit the streets.
“Nikolai had spent the morning negotiating in the hotel with police representatives,” Long said. “He’d described the afternoon’s plans; they’d assured him he would have adequate protection. One of them, I’m told, a Col. Vyacheslav specifically warned there would be right-wing demonstrators, but said they’d be kept separated.”
Long said gay marchers were greeted at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by protesters who arrived in “waves.”
“First there were the boys, the most numerous, mostly young — though some ranged into their late 30s — black-clad, short-haired though usually not shaven, thuggish and enraged. They were the shock troops,” he said.
“They were followed by the priests. These, fatter, older men carried crosses or icons. They had beards, often, leather jackets trimmed to look like orthodox cassocks, sometimes black T-shirts with crosses bent fascist-style as if ready to administer a black mass. They chanted. Chanted. Finally, in the rear, there were the grandmothers — old babushkas, kerchiefed, also carrying icons.”
Before the march, Long said he was apprehensive about repercussions gay Muscovites would face after the world’s media turned its attention to the next news event.
“The problem is, of course, that the foreigners — like me — will be there for the day and then go home,” he said. “We might spend a night or even a few nights in a Russian jail — an adventure to tell our nephews and nieces. It is the Russians who will have to deal with the longer-lasting reverberations, the results they can’t escape.”
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