Moscow Pride
Russian Orthodox leaders echoed his views, declaring that homosexuality is a "sin which destroys human beings and condemns them to a spiritual death".
On May 27, several dozen Russian lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender protestors, accompanied by Russian and foreign supporters, including members of the European and Volker Beck, member of the German parliaments, sought to hold two successive protest rallies after a court upheld Mayor Yuriy Luzkhov's ban on a march they planned for that day to commemorate the 13th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality in Russia.
According to Human Rights Watch, at both events hundreds of antigay protesters, including skinheads and nationalists attacked the participants, beating and kicking many, while throwing projectiles and chanting homophobic slogans.
[8] Russian LGBT Human Rights Project Gayrussia.ru sponsored a documentary film showing the events that took place around the first Moscow Pride festival.
Its press conference and protest in front of the City Hall was attended by several high-profile supporters, including Marco Cappato, Vladimir Luxuria, Peter Tatchell, Volker Beck, Richard Fairbrass of Right Said Fred and the pop duo t.A.T.u.
Mayor of Rome Walter Veltroni said: "What happened in Moscow, leaves you speechless: to use or even tolerate violence against those who are demonstrating in a peaceful manner for the recognition of their human and civil rights is a sad sign.
[12] Organizers applied for five marches in different locations per every day in May, but Moscow Mayor banned all the 155 events saying that "they will endanger public order and cause negative reaction of the majority of the population".
President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, phoned the Prefecture of the Central Administrative area of Moscow and told him to authorise the gay demonstration, nevertheless, authorization was refused.
The event took place on Sunday June,1 in two locations : First, a flashmob protest which gathered around thirty LGBT activists led by Nikolai Alekseev in front of the Statue of famous Russian music composer Tchaikovsky and second they unveiled a banner quoting "Rights to Gays and Lesbians.
Protestors were arrested within minutes, while being filmed by television crews, including state-financed Russia Today, among them Nikolai Alekseev and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who exclaimed that "this shows the Russian people are not free" as he was taken away by police.
[23] Some EU Embassies (UK, Sweden, Netherlands, Finland) which had been invited by the organizers to monitor the events on the spot, concluded that they did not find any ground to make a diplomatic actions.
Samuel Žbogar, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Slovenia and chairman of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, expressed his concern about the action taken against the organisers of the Slavic Gay Pride parade in Moscow at the same night: According to the established case law of the European Court of Human Rights, peaceful demonstrations cannot be banned simply because of the existence of attitudes hostile to the demonstrators or to the causes they advocate.
[26][27][28] A press conference took place on May 27, speakers at the conference will be Nikolai Alekseev, Nikolai Baev, Volker Beck (First Whip of the Green Party in German Bundestag), Peter Tatchell, Louis-Georges Tin (President of the IDAHO Committee), Maria Efremenkova (Chairman Organizing Committee of St. Petersburg Gay Pride) and Andy Thayer (Gay Liberation Network Chicago).
Moscow police arrest over 30 participants, including three prominent gay rights activists: Americans Dan Choi and Andy Thayer; and France's Louis-George Tin.
[34] Yuri Luzhkov, who was mayor of Moscow until being dismissed in September 2010, consistently opposed gay parades in the capital for a variety of reasons.
[37] At an international AIDS conference in Moscow in 2008 Luzhkov said he would persist in banning gay pride parades in order to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
[38]Luzhkov's stance has received support from various religious groups, including the Russian Orthodox Church, Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar, and the Muslim Grand Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin.
On September 17, the European Court of Human Rights has given Russia until January 20, 2010, to answer the bans of the 2006, 2007 and 2008 Moscow Pride marches and pickets.
The Memorandum of the Russian authorities insists that all public activities of the prides were banned in full compliance with the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
The Memorandum indicated that the Moscow authorities were not able to guarantee the safety of the participants declared public events in connection with the fact that they had the opposition of the majority of the population.
Also, the Memorandum referred to several decisions of the European Court of Justice relating to the limitation of the right to freedom of expression on the grounds of violating "public morality", taken in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Court stressed that if the exercise of the right to peaceful assembly and association by a minority group were conditional on its acceptance by the majority, that would be incompatible with the values of the Convention.
Andy Thayer, of the Gay Liberation Network Chicago, spoke out both before and after the Moscow Pride 2009 event: The aim is to cause maximum embarrassment to the government if they attempt to arrest us or allow the neo-fascists to attack.
(...) All in all, it was a PR disaster for the Russian and Moscow authorities, ensuring that Eurovision 2009 will be forever associated with police brutality, government homophobia and the suppression of a peaceful protest.
[48]Possible consequences of ‘quiet lobbying’ instead was commented by Nikolai Baev in July 2009: In Vilnius, the Lithuanian Seimas passed a Bill banning any discussions on homosexuality in schools and making illegal any "gay propaganda" in the media.
Latvian and Polish activists had mounted a very hard legal and political battle against homophobic bans by local courts and authorities.
