MOSCOW, June 4 (Itar-Tass) — Actually the first legal gay parade called the March of Burning Hearts was held on the Taras Shevchenko Embankment in Moscow on Saturday. The organizers had to get down to some tricks to stage the parade and they agreed with the Moscow authorities to authorize a rally against all types of discrimination that actually focused on the rights of sexual minorities, the Kommersant daily reported. Meanwhile, the demonstrators demanded the freedom of assembly and “an opportunity to create their own organizations,” and criticized the organizers of the opposition rallies for cooperation with the nationalists quite in the spirit of the modern times.
The organizers, which included activists of the gay movement and even the socialists, held the action under the motto March of Burning Hearts as a response to a TV anchorman Dmitry Kiselev, who said in the TV program Historical Process on the Rossiya TV channel that the gays should be banned to be blood donors and their hearts should be burnt down instead of transplantations to other people. “The obscurants are burning from hatred and fear, and our hearts are burning with fury and indignation,” the organizers of the actions told the newspaper.
The Kommersant daily recalled that the LGBT organizations were seeking to authorize a gay parade many times and in vain. The officials explained this by the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muscovites oppose strongly any actions of sexual minorities. The case was even tried in the European Court of Human Rights, which found the gays entitled to the right of assembly. Meanwhile, the authorities continue to reject the applications of homosexual activists under the pretext that, for instance, the ultra-rightists can beat them up.
The rally lasted about two hours and the police did not hamper the speakers. The law enforcers turned out to be so benevolent that they even proposed to the participants in the rally to bring to the metro in the police reprimand cars just for their safety.
The Sobesednik newspaper reported that the organizers of the action acted as the LGBT organizations, the Feminist Initiative forum, the Committee for International of Workers, the Leftist Socialist Movement and anarchist groups.
The police reported that ten people in jogging suits and in masks were detained at the rally. The police believe that “they were probably planning to hamper an action authorized with the authorities.” Meanwhile, the police did not make up administrative protocols and just held preventive talks.
The newspaper recalled that a rally of sexual minorities, which was held at the Moscow Mayor’s Office last week with the demands of equal rights, was not authorized, and the police detained participants in the rally and their adversaries, including Orthodox activists, many of which engaged in fistfights with the supporters of equal rights.