Gay Activists Beaten by Extremists, Jailed by Police

Gay rights activists were pummeled by right-wing protesters and detained by police Saturday, preventing them from putting on a display of gay pride in defiance of a city ban.

Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov had warned Friday that gay parades were “absolutely unacceptable for Moscow, for Russia.... As long as I am mayor, we will not permit these parades.”

Police detained the rally’s main organizer, Nikolai Alexeev, as he attempted to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a symbol of Russia’s victory against fascism in World War II, just outside the Kremlin wall.

“We are conducting a peaceful action. We want to show that we have the same rights as other citizens,” Alexeev had said at a news conference a few hours before the rally was to have begun.

But police closed the entrance to the garden where the tomb is, and the first half a dozen activists who arrived were set upon by about 100 religious and nationalist extremists who kicked and punched them.

“Moscow is not Sodom!” they shouted. Women wearing head scarves held up religious icons while men in Cossack white sheepskin hats stood by.

“We were expecting this. It’s the authorities that are allowing this to happen,” said a woman who identified herself only as Anna.

Riot police rushed in to separate the assailants from the activists but detained Alexeev “as the ringleader,” said British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, who was in the group.

Police later said they had detained 120 anti-gay protesters and gay activists.

Saturday was the 13th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality in Russia, and a number of foreign activists traveled to Moscow for an unprecedented forum on gay rights in Russia and the Russian capital’s first gay and lesbian pride parade.

By the time of the start of the rally, more than 100 youths were standing in the square opposite the mayor’s office, chanting: “Glory to Russia!”

A member of Germany’s Bundestag, Volker Beck, was giving an interview before TV cameras when about 20 youths beat him, bloodying his nose. Volker Eichler, a gay activist from Berlin who witnessed the beating, said police did not intervene.