Thursday, 25 May 2006(111th anniversary of Oscar Wilde's conviction for "gross indecency", ie, private consensual sexual activity with another adult male, and sentence to 2 years imprisonment with hard labour)

At about 6:30 pm at the Library of Foreign Literature, Mr. Merlin Holland, a heterosexual man who is the grandson of Oscar Wilde, began giving a lecture on the effect of Oscar Wilde's imprisonment on his wife and children. After about 10 minutes, the lecture was disrupted by 15 to 20 neo-fascist Russian nationalists, who stood up and chanted "homosexual propaganda", and "Russia, Russia, Russia". I heard one woman say: "ЭТО НАША СТРАНА!" (This is our country!"). One of the nationalists released a gas as they left the lecture theatre. The gas caused people still in the theatre to choke and cough. The lecture had to be moved to another room.

Friday, 26 May 2006

At about 10:45 am, a judge of the Tverskoy District Court (ТВЕРСКОЙ РАЙОННЫЙ СУД) heard the appeal of Nikolai Alexeyev (chief organiser) against the decision of the Mayor's Office of Moscow (МЭРИА ГОРОДА МОСКВЫ) to refuse permission for the 1st Lesbian and Gay Pride March in Moscow, on exactly the same route as an approved anti-fascist march held in December 2005. I attended the hearing with Mr. Alexeyev, his lawyer Dmitri Bartnev, and John Fisher of ARC International. The judge listened sympathetically, but (after about 50 minutes) she issued an order (with reasons to follow) upholding the decision of the Mayor's Office.

It is not yet clear why she thought that the decision could be justified despite the guarantees of freedom of assembly in Russian legislation, the Russian Constitution, and Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Mayor's Office argued that they could not provide security for the march because there are only 400 police (militia) in Moscow (available for this purpose?). This was hard to believe, because Moscow has a population of over 10,000,000 and recently applied to host the 2012 Olympic Games. The Mayor's Office also argued that the December 2005 march against fascism was approved, and security provided, because the march was supported by the majority of the population. The trial judge's decision will be appealed to the Moscow City Court. If that appeal is rejected, no further appeals will be possible and the case will proceed to the European Court of Human Rights.

Saturday, 27 May 2006(13th anniversary of the decriminalisation of same-sex sexual activity in Russia)

It had been decided that the participants in the Moscow Pride 2006 World Conferences ("International Gay and Lesbian Cultural Network" on 25 May and "International Day Against Homophobia" on 26 May) would go to the Tomb of the Unkown Soldier, in the Alexander Garden outside the wall of the Kremlin, at 2:30 pm to lay flowers in memory of past victims of fascism. They would then walk from the Garden across Manezh Square and up Tverskaya Street to the Mayor's Office of Moscow. At 3:00 pm, a short demonstration would be held in the small square across the street from the Mayor's Office. Participants would display rainbow flags, a few signs and a large banner reading: "СВОБОДА МЕНЬШИНСТВ - СВОБОДА КАЖДОГО! ГОМОФОБИЯ СОСТАВНАЯ ЧАСТЬ КСЕНОФОБИИ" ("Freedom of minorities - Freedom of everyone! Homophobia is a constituent part of xenophobia!").

To prevent the laying of flowers, police closed the Alexander Garden and locked the gate to the entrance from Manezh Square. When I arrived, there was a crowd around the entrance, including Nikolai Alexeyev, Merlin Holland and Ed Murzin (a heterosexual member of a Russian regional legislature), who were attempting to lay their flowers. They were surrounded by journalists with television cameras, and opponents of the Moscow Pride (neo-fascist Russian nationalists and members of the Russian Orthodox Church). There was a scuffle. I saw two police officers pull Mr. Alexeyev from the crowd and lead him (one officer was on each side of him holding one of his arms) to a police van. (He looked like Oscar Wilde being taken away to prison.)

After the arrest of Mr. Alexeyev, I remained in Manezh Square. I saw nationalists running away (one removing a black balaclava mask as he did so), chased by OMON riot police (OMOH was written in Cyrillic on the backs of their uniforms, which ironically is HOMO spelled backwards). I saw religious protesters with crosses and icons. Some were chanting: "МОСКВА НЕ СОДОМ!" ("Moscow is not Sodom!"). Because it was raining, I opened my rainbow umbrella. Maxim Anmeghichean of ILGA-Europe suggested that I close it, because nationalists nearby were looking at it. I did so, but journalists asked me to open it so that they could take my picture with it. It remained open as I walked across Manezh Square to the south end of Tverskaya Street (one of the main shopping streets of Moscow, comparable to Oxford Street or Regent Street in London), where nationalists were releasing tear gas and setting off flares. I saw the riot police arrest 20 or 30 nationalists and put them in a police van. (For video coverage, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5023466.stm; "Scenes from the streets of Moscow").

I walked up Tverskaya Street with Merlin Holland. Sophie in 't Veld (a Dutch Member of the European Parliament) said that I should put away my rainbow umbrella. I asked how it was different from the rainbow flag carried by Volker Beck (a Member of the Bundestag in Germany) and his partner Jacques Tessier, who were a few feet ahead of me. I said that I was in a European capital city on a main street on Saturday afternoon, that there were police around, and that it was only an umbrella.

A few minutes later, a gang of 30 to 50 nationalists ran up the street. (I would estimate that there were between 200 and 500 nationalists at large, compared with 50 to 100 Moscow Pride participants). One of the nationalists (a tall, well-built man) seemed to recognise Merlin Holland from the attempt to lay flowers and kicked him in the back. I shouted: "Leave him alone!" Merlin and I moved out of their way and stayed at the edge of the pavement by the street. I put away my rainbow umbrella and took off my Moscow Pride 2006 badge. There were no police in the area.

Once things had calmed down, we continued up the street and watched the attempt to hold a demonstration in the small square opposite the Mayor's Office. The demonstration consisted mainly of journalists with television cameras conducting interviews with participants. The protest signs and the large banner could not be seen. (At one point, a nationalist punched Volker Beck in the eye as he was giving an interview, resulting in a bleeding cut below his eye and a black eye. This assault was caught on video and broadcast by EuroNews that evening. Volker's partner, Jacques Tessier, told me that nationalists grabbed their rainbow flag, snapped in two the stick to which the flag was attached, threw the flag on the ground, and stamped on it.)

Eventually, the OMON asked people to leave the square. We were pressed onto the pavement to the north of the square, on the east side of the street. I was asked to give an interview via mobile telephone to a journalist working for Agence France Presse. I told him what I had seen. (See http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3214,36-776936,0.html.) A group of nationalists began walking towards me. I told the journalist that they were approaching and said: "I've got to leave." One of the nationalists had singled me out and walked towards me. I tried to avoid him by leaving the pavement and walking into the street. He backed me up against a parked car and stood a few inches from my face, shouting: "ПИДАРАСЫ ВОН НЗ РОССИИ!!! ("Pederasts/queers/faggots get out of Russia!!!"). I pointed to the 10 or so OMON officers who were standing a few feet away (hoping that their presence would deter the nationalist from beating me up), and also gestured at the officers (hoping that they would help me). Finally, one of the officers got the nationalist to move away.

However, another officer was soon trying to get me and other Moscow Pride participants nearby to move back onto the pavement, into the middle of the group of nationalists. I said to the officer, "It's not safe", and asked Maxim (who was nearby) to translate this. We were allowed to stay where we were until the nationalists had been cleared from the pavement. We were then moved onto the pavement, and found ourselves unable to move north or south, because there were nationalists in both directions. While we were waiting there, a group of Russian Orthodox women approached, wearing headscarves and carrying icons. One of them squirted water on us from a large bottle of mineral water.

Eventually, we crossed to the west side of Tverskaya Street and sought refuge in a branch of КОФЕ ХАУЗ (Coffee House). Merlin Holland was with us and told me that, in addition to being kicked, he had had an egg thrown at him, as well as a potato, which had knocked off his glasses.

This experience of "Chaos on Tverskaya Street" left me feeling shaken. In my sheltered life, I had never seen such a breakdown of law and order: gangs of thugs running wild on Saturday afternoon on one of the main streets of a European capital city. The man who shouted in my face, his own face contorted with anger and hatred, gave me a small taste of what it must have been like to be Jewish and facing a pogrom in 19th-century Russia, or a Nazi officer during World War II. All I could think was: "You don't know me. What have I done to you?"

But this experience was also an inspiring visit for a human rights academic to the front lines of the struggle to defend human rights. It was obvious that the Moscow Pride participants, carrying flowers and flags, were trying to defend democracy in Russia, which requires that groups of private citizens be allowed to demonstrate peacefully to draw attention to problems in society. The nationalists were there to attack democracy, and impose censorship by force. We could have been in the closing stage of Germany's Weimar Republic. The most shocking feature of the events of 27 May 2006 was that the Mayor's Office of Moscow, and (as Sophie in t' Veld pointed out in her letter of 29 May 2006 to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso) the protesting members of the Russian Orthodox Church, chose to align themselves with the violent and anti-democratic nationalists.

We will be back in Moscow next year for the 2007 Pride. And we will be looking forward to a strong statement from the European Court of Human Rights, in cases from Poland, Moldova and Russia, that public officials who ban Lesbian and Gay Pride Marches are violating Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and undermining their own democracies.