Fridae

Moscow police arrested about 50 gay rights supporters and some 20 anti-gay protesters after gays and lesbians attempted to stage Moscow's first gay pride parade on Saturday despite a ban by city authorities. Police said most of those detained were later released.

Several gay rights activists were also injured in attacks by religious and xenophobic extremists.

More than 1,000 police officers were put on full alert Saturday in response to activists saying they would ignore the ruling.

According to various media reports, a Moscow court on Friday upheld a ban by city authorities on what would have been the Russian capital's first gay and lesbian pride parade. Opposition to the planned event has been strong in Russia, especially from the Russian Orthodox Church and other religious leaders.

Activists however took to the streets despite the ruling which upheld Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's decision not to issue a parade permit. The march was intended to coincide with the 13th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Russia.

The key organiser of the event, 28-year-old Nikolai Alexeyev, said in an interview before the rally began, "We can't keep living in the shadows; we deserve the same rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly as anyone else."

Organisers had urged supporters to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - a symbol of Russia's victory against fascism in World War II - before marching to a square opposite Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's office. But when they arrived, they found that authorities had closed the entrance to the park where the tomb is located, and hundreds of riot police blocked their path.

Alexeyev was stopped by police as he attempted to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, just outside the Kremlin wall.

Several news reports noted that while gay activists were dragged away by riot police when they began speaking to reporters, opponents of the parade, including a nationalist member of parliament, were allowed to speak and chant "Moscow is not Sodom."

Gay rights supporters were met with more than 100 anti-gay protesters --including skinheads, Russian nationalists and Orthodox Christian fundamentalists - holding up religious icons. Gangs of skinheads reportedly attacked a number of gay activists, kicking and beating them.

"We came here to lay flowers at this anti-fascist memorial, but the mayor is so terrified of us that he took the step of ordering the gates closed," said Peter Tatchell from the British gay rights group OutRage.

While giving an interview to television cameras, a Green Party member of Germany's Bundestag, Volker Beck, was attacked in a clash with alleged extremists. Police stood back during the violence, he said.

"There was no aggression from our side, we were simply there," Beck told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "It is unacceptable that the police offer no protection to gays on the streets."

The politician was detained but was later released with an apology when officers saw his parliamentary credentials.

Merlin Holland, the heterosexual grandson of 19th century gay British writer Oscar Wilde, who has long been a champion of homosexual rights in Russia, was also reportedly beaten up.

About 20 people broke into the hall of a library when Holland was giving a speech prior to the march, shouting nationalist slogans and throwing eggs. Police ordered the hall be evacuated and detained the demonstrators while the lecture resumed in another part of the library.

The gay pride march was to have been part of an international LGBT conference being held in Moscow.

Supporters of the march said the government's refusal to sanction the event had sent a clear signal to police and extremists.

"It was shocking and disturbing. What I saw was a complete failure of police protection that was directly linked to the mayor's banning of the march," said gay-rights activist John Fisher, co-director of the ARC International gay lobby group in Geneva.

By banning the march, authorities gave "free rein to those who would perpetrate acts of violence," Fisher said. "We can only hope that what we saw was representative of only a small segment of society."

Last month, ultranationalists and Russian Orthodox activists attacked two Moscow gay nightclubs, throwing bottles, rocks, and eggs at partygoers and chanting homophobic insults.