Russian gay
rights activists held a small, scattered protest in Moscow
on Sunday, flouting repeated refusals from city
authorities for permission to hold parades or
demonstrations.
Activists
repeatedly have tried to hold parades and rallies in the
Russian capital to call attention to gay rights. Mayor Yuri
Luzhkov, who has called homosexuality ''satanic,'' has
rejected all requests to hold them.
On Sunday, about
three dozen protesters gathered outside the famed
Tchaikovsky music conservatory, chanting ''No to
Homophobia'' and other slogans, organizer Nikolai
Alexeyev told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Meanwhile, just a
few blocks away, hundreds of riot police, journalists,
and onlookers thronged a square in front of Moscow's City
Hall in anticipation of a larger, promised protest
that never materialized. Several people brandished
religious icons and crosses and at least one gay
rights supporter was assaulted while uniformed police
officers stood by and watched.
Activists
unfurled a banner from a building by the square reading
''Rights for Gays and Lesbians!'' and ''Take Mayor Luzhkov's
Homophobia to Court'' before police pulled it down.
An Associated
Press photographer saw several people detained by police.
Ekho Moskvy said up to 15 people were detained and the
Interfax news agency said all were nationalists.
A city police
duty officer, however, said 13 people were detained in all
but they were detained for jaywalking, not connected to the
protest. He refused to give his name since he was not
authorized to speak to the media.
For the past two
years, gay activists have sought permission to publicly
mark the date in 1993 when homosexuality was decriminalized,
but city officials repeatedly have refused.
In 2006, gay
activists trying to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier just outside the Kremlin wall were arrested by riot
police and violently harangued by religious and
nationalist extremists.
Among Russian
gays and lesbians, the push for greater visibility has been
met with ambivalence and outright opposition in some cases,
particularly by gay entrepreneurs and some
entertainers.
Kiril Frolov, a
leader with the Union of Orthodox Citizens, asserted that
Russians' attitudes toward homosexuality have only gotten
harsher.
''What is
democracy? It is rule of the majority and the majority of
people in Russia, civil society in Russia, will never
recognize the support of sodomy,'' he told Ekho
Moskvy. (Mike Eckel, AP)
