No Gay Activists Among the 70 Arrested at Moscow Demo
MOSCOW, September 1, 2010 – The fifteen gay activists who joined the ‘Strategy 31’ demonstration in Moscow’s Triumph Square yesterday escaped arrest, GayRussia is reporting today
It was the first time that gay activists joined the regular demonstration, held regularly of the 31 of appropriate months, organised by Russian opposition groups to protest the lack of official compliance of the country’s 31st article of its constitution..
However, there were mass arrests with the police detaining over 70 participants, including the organisers and prominent opposition politicians such as Boris Nemtsov, Eduard Limonov, Ilya Yashin and Sergei Udaltsov.
Moscow Gay Pride organiser, Nikolai Alekseev, said in an interview with GZT newspaper that the LGBT activists stayed on Triumph Square from the start of the action and up to the end, holding logos in support of the 31st article of the Constitution.
“Our participation was not coordinated and I was surprised to see that following our appeal many of our activists came on their own initiative to support the Strategy 31,” he told the newspaper.
Mr. Alekseev told UK Gay News by Email: “One of the positive result of our participation [yesterday] is that, going forward, it will be more difficult for the authorities to discredit the opposition and the organisers of ‘Strategy 31’ using the issues of sexual minorities because they both showed they were not scared of having gay activists demonstrating next to them.
“There was some discussion during the past week that the participation of LGBT activists to the action could be a provocation, but we proved today exactly the opposite.
“We showed that LGBT activists who have been fighting for freedom of assembly in Russia for more than five years are of the broader human rights movement in this country.”
Similar actions took place in several other Russian cities, and close to the Russian Embassy in London (BBC Russian Service video (in Russian) is HERE.
In St Petersburg, local Pride organisers, led by Maria Efremenkova, were among the participants in a similar protest.
Strategy 31 is a public demonstration which takes place every 31st day of each month on Triumph Square in Moscow and in other Russian cities. The demonstrations are never authorised by the authorities.
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