The following commentary by GayRussia.ru was written a year ago.  Has the situation changed?  The stark answer is: “Not really”. 

Ludmila Alekseeva of the Moscow Helsinki Group and Lev Ponomarev of the Movement for Human Rights have both declined to come, just as last year.

About the only change this year is the participation of Human Rights Watch – this weekend, they have TWO representatives in Moscow to observe and report – Scott Long and Boris Dietrich.  It remains to be seen if there is any interest from the Russian human rights groups in Tverskaya in a few hours when a protest letter to Mayor Luzhkov signed by many international politicians  is to be handed in at City Hall at 12 noon (Moscow time (UCT + 4)

MOSCOW, May 27, 2006 (GayRussia.ru)  – Shortly after the attempt to hold the first, unauthorised, gay pride in Moscow , Alexander Brodt, director of the Moscow Human Right Bureau told Interfax: “Bearing in mind public feelings, the action in Moscow on Saturday should not have been held.”

This was a surprising change of position as earlier in April, Brodt’s organisation sent a letter to the Mayor of Moscow in which he clearly supported the gay pride.

In fact, support for gay rights from Russian Human Rights campaigners has not only been poor, one could even consider it non-existent.

“They basically came at the last minute when they understood that they have no other choice than to show slight support and not to loose credibility from foreign donators,” Nikolai Alekseev, the organizer of Moscow Gay Pride 2006, suggests.

As a result, they came.  The Moscow Helsinki Group sent a representative to the May 16 press conference that announced the schedule for the Moscow Pride festival.

Ludmila Alekseeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, did no take part personally in what many consider in Russia as a non-traditional topic.

But the next day, she explained that she “does not understand what use it is to have a Gay Pride in Moscow”.

This double game of “looking nice to the west” but “not too open minded” reminds us of the roulette player that places a bet on red and black simultaneously, knowing that he will win and loose, just to make sure that he can stay in the game longer.

What matters is that at the end of the year, people remember that they saw them in the casino.  It no longer matters if one or the other played, rather they stayed in the casino.

In the future they will probably remind us how they supported gays in their first “Stonewall”, especially when it comes to the renewal of their foreign grants.

Ludmila Alekseeva was in Berlin at the invitation of Angela Merkel and the Volker Beck case was discussed.  She said: “We value very much the participation of German politicians in the demonstrations in Russia”, even though Ms. Alekseeva who herself did not take part to the march.

She took the opportunity to immediately appeal to the deputies of Christian Democratic Union to support Russian non-governmental organisations.  The head of the Moscow Helsinki group probably meant her own organisation which did absolutely nothing for gay rights and protection of Herr Beck in Moscow.

“We have no one else but Angela Merkel who we can ask for help,” Ms. Alekseeva said.

In Moscow, these words have provoked the anger of the organisers of the Moscow Gay Pride.

Some still don’t even consider gay rights as human rights.  This problem is not only a Russian one and many activists in other countries face the same problem.  Everyone knows it.  Is it due to homophobia or pressure from authorities?  Probably both.

As in France, where closeted gay conservatives were demonstrating against the partnership (PACS), Russia also has its “in the closet politicians” shouting against gay rights.  Nothing very new, in fact just look at America.

Human Rights Watch was the ONLY non-exclusive LGBT organisation to support the last year’s Moscow Gay Pride before the event.  And this support was strengthened when they sent a representative from New York – Scott Long – to Moscow to monitor the events and to report.

In fact, it seems as if many human rights defenders were out of Moscow for the week-end of the Pride.

None of the major Russian Human Rights groups were on Tverskaya to condemn the anti-gay violence on that day or later on.

POSTSCRIPT

After the publication of article, we finally managed to find out the names of all the organizations and movements which supported the gay pride march and participated by giving their aid on May 27 after the arrests of a number of activists.

We must mention that representatives of a number of human rights organizations (in particular Youth Human Rights Movement, InterRegional Human Rights Group and Youth Network Against Racism and Intolerance) helped a lot to overcome the consequences of the events of that day.

They found out the location of those gay activists, antifascists and greens who were detained, conducted informational work and helped in the release those who were arrested.

Nevertheless, the issue of LGBT recognition as a human rights topic is still very difficult.

We also specially thank the movement GROZA and movement “Russian Radicals” for their support and participation in the events of the first Moscow gay parade.