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Moscow Gay Pride Group Appeals to French and EU Presidents on Eve of EU-Russia Summit
 

MOSCOW, November 13, 2008 (GayRussia.ru)  –  The group of gay activists who organise Moscow Pride has written to the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso ahead of the European Union-Russia ‘summit’ which opens in Nice tomorrow (November 14).

France currently holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union.

The activists are asking that the European Union discusses the human rights issue in Russia with President Dmitry Medvedev during the summit, which is expected to focus mainly on the Medvedev-Sarkozy six-point plan of August 12, 2008, which was designed to solve last summer’s crisis between Russia and Georgia.  The summit is also expected to further discuss the proposed EU-Russia basic treaty which is set to replace the 1997 Partnership and Cooperation Agreement.

“Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association is breached every day by Russian authorities,” says the letter from the gay activists to Presidents Sarkozy and Barroso.

“Russian gays have no other rights than silence.  We refuse this silence.”

The activists also point out that they have been denied permission to conduct a gay pride march, demanding equal rights for sexual minorities, every year since May 2006.

“The mayor of Moscow considers such marches as satanic,” says the letter.

By the end of the year, activists will have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg all of the 164 banned gay marches that they attempted to organise in Russia over the last three years.

“We demand you to remind Russian authorities that EU should ask all its partners to respect essential human rights,” conclude the activists.

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