An attempt to stage Moscow’s first-ever Pride march ended with violence, injuries and mass arrests May 27.

Activists took to the streets even though Mayor Yuri Luzhkov had banned the march and was backed up by the Tverskoi District Court.

Among those arrested were co-organizers Nikolai Alekseev and Eugenia Debryanskaya.

The injured included German Member of Parliament Volker Beck, Homosexual Initiative Vienna Secretary-General Kurt Krickler and Merlin Holland, who is Oscar Wilde’s grandson.

The first of two main confrontations occurred when gay activists approached the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near the Kremlin, intending to lay wreaths.

They were halted by riot police, neo-fascists and hymn-singing Christian militants.

“We were immediately set upon by about 100 fascist thugs and religious fanatics who began pushing, punching and kicking us,” said British gay leader Peter Tatchell. “Some individual protesters were surrounded, abused and attacked by gangs of fascists.”

The counterprotesters, some wearing masks, also tossed flares. Riot police eventually separated the two groups and arrested some members of both groups.

“This is a great victory, an absolute victory – look at what’s happening,” Alekseev said as he was dragged away by police.

A second large-scale confrontation occurred across from City Hall.

“Soon after [our] reassembling … another line of riot police came and drove us out of the square, straight into an oncoming posse of fascists,” said Tatchell.

In all, at least 120 people were arrested. Most were later released, but police said they would “draw up … administrative protocols” against the organizers of the march.

Police said the gay marchers and their supporters numbered around 200. About 1,000 police officers, a quarter of Moscow’s force, were assigned to prevent the march from happening.

England’s Tatchell said Mayor Luzhkov’s “homophobia created the atmosphere which gave a green light to the fascists to attack the Moscow Pride participants.”

Luzhkov had repeatedly denounced the parade and insisted he would never allow it to proceed.

Activists also put blame for the violence on Talgat Tadzhuddin, chief mufti of the Russian Muslim Central Directorate. In February, he said: “Under no circumstances should something like this [parade] be permitted. And if they come out into the streets anyway, they should only be beaten up. Any normal person would do that – Muslims and Orthodox Christians alike.”

In the days before the ill-fated march, activists gathered in Moscow for an anti-homophobia conference and other events.

On May 25, Russian nationalist protesters violently disrupted a lecture by Holland at the State Library of Foreign Literature. About 20 demonstrators shouted “Russia free of faggots!” and threw eggs and shot off mace canisters. Police evacuated the hall and the lecture resumed in a different room.

A United Nations committee rejected consultative status May 17 for the Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany (Lesben-und Schwulenverband in Deutschland) and the European branch of the International Lesbian and Gay Association.

The groups had sought access to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

The status was opposed by Cameroon, China, Iran, Ivory Coast, Pakistan, Russia, Senegal, Sudan and Zimbabwe. It was supported by Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Peru, Romania and the United States. India and Turkey abstained from the vote.

“We believe this completely unfair decision is motivated by prejudice and ignorance,” said ILGA-Europe Executive Director Patricia Prendiville.

In January, the same ECOSOC Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations also turned down the main ILGA organization as well as Denmark’s National Association for Gays and Lesbians (Landsforeningen for Bøsser og Lesbiske). That time, the United States sided with the anti-gay faction.

The main ILGA organization had ECOSOC status from 1993 to 1994 but was stripped of it following a scandal, orchestrated by the U.S. right wing, in which a small number of ILGA’s member organizations were accused of not taking a strong enough stance against pedophilia.

Achieving consultative status is the only way nongovernmental organizations can participate in discussions among member states at the U.N. Nearly 2,900 groups have the status.

Norway’s immigration agency will grant automatic residency to Iranian asylum-seekers who say they are gay, the newspaper Aftenposten reported May 19.

Iran has a death penalty for the crime of engaging in gay sex and apparently has used it several times in recent years.

For details, see new research by the London gay organization OutRage! at http://petertatchell.net/international/iranstatemurder.htm.

The man who killed leading Jamaican gay activist Brian Williamson in 2004 was sentenced to life in prison last month.

Dwight Hayden, 25, will be eligible for parole after 15 years.

Williamson was stabbed and chopped 77 times in the attack in his apartment.

Jamaica is widely considered to be one of the world’s most overtly anti-gay nations.

Costa Rica’s Constitutional Court ruled 5-2 May 23 that same-sex couples do not have a right to marriage.

At the same time, the court urged legislators to grant same-sex couples justice and legal security by creating a way to regulate stable, loyal same-sex unions.

Plaintiff Yashín Castrillo, a gay lawyer, sought to have the Family Code’s heterosexual definition of marriage declared unconstitutional. He said he will appeal to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Assistance: Bill Kelley