You are in:
- Archives » 2007 » May 2007
From Russia With Hate
Gay protestors beaten, arrested in Russia
Gay rights activists claim that Russian riot police allowed Neo-Nazi counter protesters to attack their march in Moscow on Sunday - and then arrested the gay protesters, allowing the attackers to go free.
Several European parliamentarians were among those arrested.
The Guardian has a particularly in-the-thick-of-it photo of a thug about to punch veteran British campaigner Peter Tatchell. The pair are surrounded by press and camera crews, in what must have been one of the most public assaults in recent months.
However, Tatchell said, "The police stood there while people knocked me to the ground and kicked me. Four or five neo-Nazis attacked me. The police watched. At a certain point the police then arrested me and let my neo-Nazi attackers walk free."
Reports said that skinhead gangs chanted "death to homosexuals" as the parade passed. Some protesters claimed they had stones and eggs thrown at them.
Russia has an appalling record on gay rights. Homosexual relationships were decriminalised only in 1993, and Moscow's mayor Yuri Luzhkov has banned previous Gay Pride marches, describing them as "Satanic."
Sunday's march was organised to deliver a petition pleading for a Gay Pride march to take place. As 30 protesters were arrested on the way to the Mayor's office, the petition was not delivered. Three were charged with "disobeying police orders."
As a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, Russia is supposed to allow protests and the right to assembly. However, gay rights activists say that the clampdown is further evidence that human rights are threatened in Vladimir Putin's Russia.
