Two reports via Pink News...

1)  http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-1597.html

Peter Tatchell's eye-witness reports...
28-May-2006
Comment

The human rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell of gay rights group OutRage! offers his own personal account of the Moscow gay pride march.

The Mayor of Moscow said gay pride would never happen while he was alive. He mobilised a quarter of the Moscow police, over 1,000 officers, to prevent the gay parade. Despite all his efforts, lesbian and gay Russians — and their international supporters — gathered by the Kremlin in Manezhnaya Square.

We were immediately set-upon by about 100 fascist thugs and religious fanatics who began pushing, punching and kicking us.

They snatched flowers out of our hands and abused us with chants of 'No sodomy in Moscow' and 'Put the pederasts on the iron' and 'Russia is not Sodom'. We were pushed and carried like corks on a sea of fascist pushing and shoving.

Russian gay leader Nikolai Alekseev was arrested and put in a police van. The rest of us were forced out of Manezhnaya Square by lines of militia and police. Some individual protesters were surrounded, abused and attacked by gangs of fascists.

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2) Arrests as actvists defy ban....

 http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-1596.html

27-May-2006
Marc Shoffman and Benjamin Cohen

Over 120 people including a German MP have been arrested in Moscow after campaigners attempted to hold the capital's first gay rights rally.

Moscow’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, and a Russian court, had rejected applications for the event claiming it would cause violent protests, but gay campaigners from all over the world converged in the Russian capital this afternoon.

They were met by religious and nationalist protesters chanting anti gay slogans and 1000 riot police aiming to stop demonstrations in the Red Square.

The arrests were made after a group of activists, including event organiser, Nikolay Alexeyev, attempted to lay flowers at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a war memorial, equating the struggle for gay rights with fighting fascism.

Eyewitnesses said gay activists were beaten by protesters, Sebastien Maria told Reuters, "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.”

Volker Beck, a Green member of the German parliament was attacked by 20 religious protesters and punched in the face whilst he was giving a television interview.

“There was no aggression from our side, we were simply there,” Herr Beck told the DPA press agency. “It is unacceptable that the police offer no protection to gays on the streets.”

Around 100 religious and fascist extremists dressed in black kicked and punched gay activists. “Moscow is not Sodom!” shouted a group of Russian women clutching religious icons.

"We are Russians. We are Orthodox. These soldiers died so we could live like Russians, not so these people could come here and tell us what to do," one Christian protester told Reuters.

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