Nikolai Alexeyev was among the roughly
dozen activists arrested Sunday attempting to hold a Gay Pride parade
in downtown Moscow.
The administration of Moscow Mayor
Sergey Sobyanin had rejected the activists' application to hold a Gay
Pride event in the city for the seventh year in a row. Organizer
Alexeyev said the rally would be staged without the city's
authorization.
The event was supposed to celebrate the
19th anniversary of the decriminalization of gay relations
in Russia, RIA-Novosti
reported.
The activists were arrested outside the
Moscow City Duma (City Council). The
Moscow Times reported that three of those arrested were
Orthodox Christian activists who planned to disrupted the protest.
Other reports showed a man holding a
rainbow flag being physically attacked by an anti-gay rights
demonstrator. (Raw video of the altercation is embedded in the right
panel of this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
Former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov
aggressively shut down any unauthorized pro-gay demonstrations, which
he called “Satanic acts” and “one of the factors in the spread
of HIV infection.”
The City Duma in currently debating an
ordinance which would ban “homosexual propaganda” similar to one
already in effect in St. Petersburg.
(Related: Madonna
threatened with fine if she violates St. Petersburg anti-gay law.)