First post gay pride public action of gays and lesbians in Russia
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Nikolai Baev during the demonstration. Photo GayRussia.Ru |
July 19th marked the first anniversary of the hangings of two gay teenagers in the north of Iran. At the initiative of Project GayRussia, one of the leading gay advocate group in Moscow, Russian gays have answered the appeal launched by the “International Day Against Homophobia” (IDAHO) Committee and OutRage! Similar events took place around the world in San Francisco, London, Paris, Washington, Toronto or New York”
The event was the first public action of the Russian gay and lesbian community after the May 27th banned gay pride.
“We applied for this picket a week in advance and the next day, we received a positive answer from the local authorities” said Nikolai Baev, an activist from Project GayRussia. Asked how he explains this change of attitude from the Moscow authorities --a City Hall official declared last May that Moscow government will always forbid any demonstration supporting homosexuality-- Baev explains the strategy followed by his group "We did not tell them that it will be connected with LGBT rights". Ultimately, the authorities allowed the picket because they did not really know the topic. A similar strategy could not be used for a gay pride.
Around 20 gays, lesbians and human rights activists from different groups attended the event. Similar to the Gay Pride in May, the main Russian Human Rights Groups declined to join. Some individuals were also seen supporting the demonstrators. Organizers explained that they decided to remain discreet after they got the positive reply from the authorities. The event was not advertised in the medias to avoid a cancellation by the authorities.
The police protected the activists. Baev explains that “At the beginning, they were 5 policemen and by the end of the picket, they were 20”. Despite the limited information dispatched about the picket, a group of 10 young facists showed up. The police carefully kept them away from the group of activists. “They were silent and did not say anything” explains Baev. “But at the end, when they started to get closer to us, we asked the policemen to take our group to the closest metro station”.
“Today we have shown that the Moscow police is able to protect a peaceful demonstration organized by gays and lesbians. This fact now contradicts with the words of the mayor who always said that the safety of such event cannot be guaranty” declared Nikolai Alekseev, one of the gay pride organizer, last May.
Several posters, banners and flags asking Iran to stop execution of minors and homosexuals were shown to the dozen of journalists who covered the event. TV, news agencies, photo reporters but also radios interviewed the activists.
Over the last weeks, some discussion took place in the international LGBT community about the real motives of the court which sentenced to death the two boys last year. Iran government claims that they were not minors and, that they had raped a young child. But a report relayed by Peter Tatchell claimed that the two boys were minors and that they were sentenced on the basis of their homosexuality and “mutual love”.
Baev prefers to keep away from polemic : “It was a barbarian execution and Iran authorities did not have any rights to execute minors in such barbarian way. Our answer was very right. Things like this cannot exist in a modern society”.
Overall, gays and lesbians are very satisfied. “This was a very successful action. We know that we will always have problems because Moscow authorities are very homophobic. We will always need to be very inventive to get permission for our actions”. But it does not prevent the activists to plan some new actions over the next months before the second Moscow Pride that is scheduled for May 27th, 2007.
Russian support to Iran started last year when Project GayRussia organized a press conference to inform the Russian medias of the hangings of two children. It followed a letter of protest addressed both to the Russian President and the Ambassador of Iran in Moscow. Up to now, both letters remained unanswered. At the same time, an exclusive interview organized by GayRussia with the activists of MAHA --a local group editing an LGBT e-magazine in Iran-- was relayed all over the world.
The picket started at 1pm and last for half an hour as planned in the application.
GayRussia.Ru
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