モスクワ・プライド：ロンドン市長が暴力を批判するメッセージを発表

Press Release
Moscow Gay Pride - Mayor of London issues statement
30-5-2006 280

London Mayor Ken Livingstone today said:

'The Russian people suffered greater casualties than any other country from Nazism - whose targets were not only Jews and Soviet citizens but also homosexuals. To see open fascists parading in Moscow, and assaulting gay and lesbian people, is to trample on the memory of all those who fought against Nazism and particularly the 27 million Soviet citizens who died in the fight against fascism.

'The support given by the Russian Orthodox Church, the Grand Mufti, and the Chief Rabbi to a ban on a peaceful gay pride march is reactionary and the Mayor of Moscow should uphold the right of gay men and lesbians to demonstrate peacefully.

'I strongly oppose the positions of both the Mayor of Moscow and the former Mayor of Warsaw, now the president of Poland, in banning gay rights marches and the support to this given by a number of religious authorities. I strongly endorse the European Parliament resolution of 18 January 2006 calling on all to "firmly to condemn and oppose homophobic hate speech or incitement to hatred and violence" and to treat lesbian and gay people with "respect, dignity and protection".'

Notes to Editors

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上記の要約 (at HODGE's PARROT)

PinkNews.co.uk
London Mayor criticises Moscow Gay Pride violence

Ken Livingstone said: 'The Russian people suffered greater casualties than any other country from Nazism - whose targets were not only Jews and Soviet citizens but also homosexuals"

30-May-2006
Marc Shoffman

The Mayor of London has condemned the violence and religious and nationalist protests that marred gay pride celebrations in Moscow last weekend.

Gay activists who chose to defy a gay pride ban in the Russian capital were met with violence from religious and nationalist protesters chanting anti gay slogans and 1000 riot police aiming to stop demonstrations in the Red Square.

Ken Livingstone said: 'The Russian people suffered greater casualties than any other country from Nazism - whose targets were not only Jews and Soviet citizens but also homosexuals. To see open fascists and Nazis parading in Moscow, and assaulting gay and lesbian people, is to trample on the memory of all those who fought against Nazism and particularly the 27 million Soviet citizens who died in the fight against fascism.

“The support given by the Russian Orthodox Church, the Grand Mufti, and the Chief Rabbi to a ban on a peaceful gay pride march is reactionary and the Mayor of Moscow should uphold the right of gays and lesbians to demonstrate peacefully.

“I strongly oppose the positions of both the Mayor of Moscow and the former Mayor of Warsaw, now the president of Poland, in banning gay rights marches and the support to this given by a number of religious authorities. I strongly endorse the European Parliament resolution of 18 January 2006 calling on all to "firmly to condemn and oppose homophobic hate speech or incitement to hatred and violence" and to treat lesbian and gay people with "respect, dignity and protection.”

The Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov banned the gay parade claiming it would protect gays and lesbians from potential violent protests

A statement from the Mayor‘s office said: “This march could provoke a wave of protests which could lead to mass breaches of public order and disturbances, therefore the application for the march has not been successful.”


Gay.com UK
Shameful violence at Moscow's Pride
Tuesday 30 May, 2006 11:43

Moscow’s first ever gay pride parade on Saturday May 27th was marred by rampant homophobic violence. The march was timed to coincide with the 13th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality in Russia.

What should have been a celebration, descended into chaos as skinheads and militant Orthodox Christians attacked gay and lesbian marchers. Organisers had tried to keep the route secret after the march was banned by the authorities in Moscow, who called Saturday's parade "an outrage".

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov was unapologetically frank when he explained why he banned the parade. Such events “may be acceptable for some, in some sense, progressive countries in the West, but not for Russia”.

Peter Tatchell of Outrage was in Moscow for the event and witnessed the shocking events:

"The Mayor of Moscow said gay pride would never happen while he was alive. He mobilised a quarter of the Moscow police, over 1,000 officers, to prevent the gay parade. Despite all his efforts, lesbian and gay Russians - and their international supporters - gathered by the Kremlin in Manezhnaya Square."

Observers of the events which unfolded last Saturday, claim the police stood by as thugs attacked gay activists. Some of the worst scenes unfolded as they attempted to place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, just outside the Kremlin wall.

On orders from the mayor, police closed the entrance to the garden where the tomb is located. Tthe first half-dozen activists who arrived carrying flowers were set upon by about 100 religious and nationalist extremists who kicked and punched them.

“Moscow is not Sodom!” they shouted. Women wearing orthodox headscarves held up religious icons while men in Cossack white sheepskin hats and black-and-red tunics looked on. “This is a perverts’ parade,” said one protester holding an icon of the Madonna. “This is filth, forbidden by God. We have to cleanse the world of this filth,” said one of the women in the crowd.

Merlin Holland the heterosexual grandson of Oscar Wilde, who has long been a supporter of homosexual rights in Russia, was also beaten up.

28-year-old Nikolai Alexeyev, leader of the gay and lesbian activists, was dragged from the gates of the monument, and detained by police.

“We are conducting a peaceful protest. We want to show that we have the same rights as other citizens,” Alexeyev had told a news conference a few hours before the rally started.

But the mayor said last Friday the pride march would never take place, at least not as long as he held office, and a local court upheld the ban.

Peter Tatchell commented on the weekend's dramas: "This first Moscow Pride took place, but not as we had planned it - thanks to the combined opposition of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and the neo-Nazis. The Mayor's homophobia created the atmosphere which gave a green light to the fascists to attack the Moscow Pride participants.

"The repression of a handful of lesbian and gay protestors signifies the fear and weakness of the Russian state, said Tatchell in a statement to the press.

"We had a moral and political victory, forcing the Moscow authorities to unleash forces of repression comparable with the bad old days of the Soviet era."

London's Mayor, Ken Livingstone has also condemned the violence in Moscow last weekend.

Livingstone said: 'The Russian people suffered greater casualties than any other country from Nazism - whose targets were not only Jews and Soviet citizens but also homosexuals.

"To see open fascists and Nazis parading in Moscow, and assaulting gay and lesbian people, is to trample on the memory of all those who fought against Nazism and particularly the 27 million Soviet citizens who died in the fight against fascism."


Sexual minorities plan to hold annual gay rallies in Moscow

Moscow, May 30, Interfax - Sexual minorities plan to hold another gay rally in Moscow next year and to make it an annual event in the future, Nikolay Alexeyev, leader of the GayRussia.Ru project told Interfax on Tuesday.

‘The 27th of May has been for us so far an anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1993 in Russia. But the gay parade in 2006 in Moscow and the situation in which it was held has given much more weight to this date’, the agency’s interlocutor said.

Thus he said people of non-traditional sexual orientation plan ‘to raise rainbow flags over Moscow again’ on May 27, 2007, as symbols of gay community.

The next year Alexeyev reported will be used by Russian gays and lesbians to challenge in courts of various instances up to the Strasbourg one the ban imposed on the ‘queer march’ in Moscow. To this end, they intend to hire lawyers from abroad, including the well-known London-based gay Professor Robert Wintmute who is said to succeed in a great deal of cases on behalf of sexual minorities.

Alexeyev said he does not regard non-traditional sexual orientation as deviation from norm. ‘Homosexuality is the same norm as heterosexuality, and it is only pseudo-doctors who disagree with it’, he noted.

The organizer of the gay rally also expressed disagreement with those who see in such actions an insult to public morality. ‘It is absolutely all the same to me what the patriarch and all this followers think about it. He can preach it in his church. We are a secular state, and I live according to the law of a secular state, not according to the Bible’, he stressed.

He said ‘even if 99% of the Russians are against gay parades, it does not matter at all, as there is a minority whose rights are to be respected just as the rights of the rest’.


German Stance on Moscow Gay Crackdown Under Debate