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Feral:
Court to hear complaint by gay parade organizers


--- Quote ---Moscow, August 21, Interfax - Moscow's Tagansky Court will hear on Tuesday a complaint by gay parade organizers against an official ban, imposed on the May 27 gay parade in downtown Moscow.

The court adjourned the hearings from July 19 at the request of the city's Central Administrative District officials, who said they were busily involved in another litigation matter, although the claimants had insisted on hearings in the defendants' absence.

The organizers of the gay parade, who "applied for an official permit to hold a picket on Moscow's Lubyanskaya Square on May 27 in support of tolerance towards the gay community in Russia and the observance of their rights," were denied permission to stage their action.

The district prefecture argued that, "the picket could spark public resentment, given the requests to ban this public event, laid down in numerous letters from government and parliamentary officials, religious confessions and individual citizens."

The prefecture also expressed fear that the picket might provoke "a wave of protests leading to massive disturbances and breaches of the peace." The freedom of association, set forth in the European Convention on Human Rights, could be restricted to safeguard public peace and to prevent unrest, Moscow officials said.

Dmitry Bartenev, a claimant, said that the district prefecture's decision was illegal. "The prefecture motivated its decision by the letters conveying a negative attitude to the event and by the fact that it was incapable of guaranteeing security to its participants in a city where events involving thousands are held daily. This one would have been attended by not more than several dozen people," Bartenev told Interfax.
--- End quote ---

Mogul:
19. July 2006 Russian LGBT activist have managed to perform a legal demonstration in front of the Iranian embassy: 

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.


--- Quote ---“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.

--- End quote ---

Source: http://gayrussia.ru/en/news/detail.php?ID=6374

Interestingly, the "concurrent" portal Gay.Ru didn't report on this demonstration, but instead published an article preaching the successes of the gay amusement industry in St. Petersburg, with a poisonous remark that "irresponsible provocations from gay activists from Moscow" are to be blamed for gay pogroms preceding the gay pride on 27. May 2006. I would say, this article uncovers at least the riddle with "shadowy bar owners" who resisted the gay pride initiative.

Source:  http://gay.ru/news/rainbow/2006/07/19-7894.htm (in Russian).

P.S. My comments on Gay.Ru were consequently deleted (twice) so it must be assumed that the people working there are attempting to ban any notice of Mr. Alexejev and his political actions from their forum. This has nothing to do anymore with gay activism, that's pure commerce at gay people's expenses.

Mogul:

--- Quote from: Feral on Wed, Jun 14, 2006, 01:23 ---Unfortunately, I do not think "politics" is quite what Mr. Ireland is suggesting. I think the proper word might be "krysha."

--- End quote ---

Certainly, the "Gay Pride" (we call it here a "Christopher Street Day") is not the most important thing in our life, but it is of course better when this particular event is controled by a "roof" committee from local activists, instead of mafia. However, I have the impression that cooperation with bar owners is necessary for any kind of successfull show event, which the prides are now at most places. For a political demonstration, one hardly needs much money.

Actually, I am not sure that financial fears from "shady bar owners" were decisive for the campaign against Mr Aleksejev - I would rather suspect that personal vanity among the self-appointed "gay national leaders" has played the main role. It also seems that Mr Aleksejev did not entertain sufficient efforts to win the others for his idea - which, of course, in no way justifies the highly irrational and destructive campaign against him.

But we shall not forget that any movement goes through similar childish phases in beginning - it remains the task of the near future to clarify positions and learn to fight against the enemy, not against each other.

Feral:
Unfortunately, I do not think "politics" is quite what Mr. Ireland is suggesting. I think the proper word might be "krysha."

Mogul:
Oh, to explain this story one must go one year back in time, when Nicolay Aleksejew first has announced his plans to perform the 2006 "Gay Parade" in Moscow. It seems that he made the mistake of starting his project without getting an "OK" from a small group of LGBT activists,publishers and businessmen in Moscow who previously regarded themselves as the only rightfull "leaders of the LGBT community in Russia". This group consists in first line out of the following persons:


* Ed Mishin, editor and owner of gay.ru and the printed magazine "Kwir",
* Ruslan Zujew, editor of gayclub.ru,
* Igor Petrov, also from gayclub.ru,
* Olga Suvorova, lesbian activist from lesbi.ru.
These four persons actively agitated against the Parade planned by Mr Alexejev, namely by issuing two manifestos (with various other semi-activists) and made everything possible to discreditate the idea of the parade and its initiator. In the 10 - 11 monthes preceeding the parade, numerous critical to vicious articles were published both on gayclub.ru and on gay.ru, mentioning that Mr Alexejev was receiving "grants" from mysterious western sources and sugesting he were a paid provocator. These personal insults did not remain unanswered, as Mr Alexejes's own portal Gayrussia.ru has published several severe statements on the assumed enemies in turn. Step by step, the confrontation escalated so much that the critics were apparently not permitted to the press-conferences of Mr Alexejev etc., so I suppose that the contrahents do not speak to each other anymore.

The few commercial activities are controlled, as far as I can judge, primarily by Ed Mishin (print magazine + a shop for books, videos, lubricants) and few other individuals who are, of course, not interested in excessive PR. At least some of them must have good connections to the police, because the only one time when the popular and overpriced club "3 monkeys" was picketed by homophobes, the protesters were quickly collected by the riot police, a luck uncommon in Moscow for gay business. By the way, "3 monkeys" was the club which cancelled the party of MR Alexejev's festival just 2 h before opening - a perfect sabotage.

From all the actors, only Olga Suvorova appears suitable for any constructive activities in the future - onlike others, she did not participate in the smear rumors about the "grants" but restricted herself on criticism based on different analysis of necessary activities. She is apparently also the integrative person behind the recent attempt to achieve a unification of russian LGBT activists. Another integrative person might be Vladimir Averin, but he belongs rather to the pro-parade faction so I don't know whether he will be invited by Ms Suvorova to join the unification efforts.

Ed Mishin seems to restict himself to commercial activities nowadays; whereas Ruslan Zujew and his staff (gayclub.ru) show a remarkable degree of profanity and unprofessionalism so far, so it is doubtfull they can be regarded as serios political acters in the near future. We shall hope that more russian gays will decide to get involved in LGBT politics and push the agenda forwards.

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