26 June 2010
St Petersburg, WFMY News
Police prevented a Gay Pride action in St. Petersburg, reportedly detaining several activists who gathered at the Dvortsovaya Square in St. Petersburg.
The action which was to be held under the slogans “Homophobia is country’s disgrace”, “Equal rights without compromise” and “My gender is my choice” was not sanctioned by the city authorities.
The Russian Interfax news agency quoted a police source as saying that five gay activists had been detained, three organizers of the action among them.
According to the same source quoted by Interfax, 22 young suspects were detained for an attempt to interfere into Gay Pride action.
The alleged attempt to provoke clashes and to eventually beat the gay activists might have been an action of right wing radical groups, witnesses were saying.
A group of young men, some covering their faces with scarves, was approaching the gay and lesbian activists rally site but turned away as they saw special police unit officers.
Meanwhile, in Moscow a dozen of Gay Pride activists gathered at the representative office of St. Petersburg to demand freedom of meetings and speech and to express their support of the gays and lesbian action in St. Petersburg.
Police in Moscow didn’t allow the un-sanctioned action to be held.
“We won’t be allowed to hold a solidarity action, let us thank our law enforcement authorities for their vigilance,” said Gay Pride activist who introduced himself as Igor.
“I’m saying it figuratively, we’ll find another forms of expressing our views,” he added answering a remark from aside that the action was illegal.
The previous attempt to hold a Gay Pride march in Moscow on May 29, has also been declared illegal by the city authorities, so that the gay and lesbian activists had to elude Russian security services in a five-hour game of cat and mouse.
Homosexuality was illegal in the Soviet Union, and though Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993, intolerance remains very widespread.
Polls have shown more than 80 percent of Russians see homosexuality as immoral.
