MOSCOW – A Moscow court has upheld the decision to ban Pride events for the next hundred years.
The Tverskoy district court stated it was lawful for the Russian capital’s municipal government to decline the 102 requests filed by gay rights activist Nikolay Alexeyev for Pride marches every year until 2112.
Alexeyev plans to appeal the decision at the European Court of Human Rights later this year.
“We wanted to see the reaction so we could show the European Court of Human Rights that it’s not just past events which are banned illegally but also the future events,” Alexeyev told Gay Star News. “It was a way for us to show the absurdity of the system for gaining permission for public events.”
Despite being banned by the mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, Alexeyev held the Moscow Pride 2011 event as planned. The parade lasted only a few minutes before an ultra-orthodox protest group attacked the parade. Moscow police arrested more than 30 participants, including prominent gay rights activists Dan Choi, Andy Thayer and Louis-George Tin.
