Tweet
UPDATE (8:30 PM ET: We have video courtesy of Andy Thayer of Gay Liberation Network, who is in Moscow with Dan. He said “A few hours ago we recorded this video of support for GayRussia.”
10:15 AM ET: I just spoke to Dan Choi, who is in Moscow for Gay Pride, scheduled for May 28, 2011. It would have been the first legal Pride, but Moscow city officials rejected an application for a gay pride parade, citing a risk of public disorder
The decision by Moscow’s city council ignores a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which said that the city had illegally banned three pride events between 2006 and 2008.Alexeyev told the Associated Press that this was the sixth time authorities had refused the request for a rally, and that activists would go ahead with a peaceful demonstration despite the ban.
“Of course it is illegal because the [European] court decision, which was clear in its interpretation of article 11 of the European convention, and which we are quoting as the basis for this. It doesn’t even have any basis in Russian legislation,” Alexeyev told The Moscow News.
Dan reports that he, along with about 20 activists from the U.S. and Europe attended Russia’s version of Meet the Press. Russian LGBT rights activist, lawyer and journalist Nikolay Alexeyev debated their version of Maggie Gallagher, and the opposition (anti-gay) side was stacked with government officials and a “sexologist” demonizing LGBTs.
According to Dan, the first two segments were very contentious; at the end of the second segment it became so heated that Alexeyev stormed off of the set — actually damaging part of the set — and refused to come back for the third segment.
Instead, Alexeyev and all of the pro-LGBT attendees left the set and audience. This program aired live, so I’m sure clips will surface. Dan will have a report later; they are also planning direct action in protest of the cancellation of Pride by homophobic officials and it’s likely there will be arrests.
Dan and these activists want to shed more light on the defiance of the European court by Moscow officials; I’ll bring you more updates as I receive them.
12 Comments
I hope …Choi and Thayer are prepared to get an ass whooping as these homophobic bastards over there don’t kid around not to mention getting arrested and put into their prison and judicial system.
This isn’t like protesting at the fence of the White House as Nikolay and Peter Tatchell can attest to.
If nothing else it should show just how much of a man Choi actually is instead of a spotlight seeking drama queen.
Know what else it’s not like?
Fifthteen months of combat duty in Iraq.
I think Dan fully understands what he’s getting himself into.
And I am proud of him. If he is arrested it is very likely to spur an international conversation about LGBT human rights. Right now the international community “says” they support us. Like when the European court “says” we can have this march.
Problem is, when countries defy it, they pay no price. So there is no disincentive for abusing their LGBT citizens.
What if Uganda passes it’s kill the gays bill? Will the international community actually take action? Or will they just issue a press release, and forget about it?
Dan knows he has the Human Rights Court of Europe behind him. He is challenging Europe to decide if that actually MEANS anything. If Dan goes down he brings the credibility of that Court with him.
By placing himself in danger, Dan is using his fame and popularity to force people to stand behind their words of support. Many other activists could well be locked up and forgotten. But not Dan. He should be commended for his courage and conviction.
Andy Thayer has been to Russiafor Pride and was arrested.
I’m sure that he filled Choi in on all of that.
I hope…That they’re at least frightened enough of international attention that they’ll try to be a bit more civilized than normal.
Communism is absolutely the most damaging form of oppression, because it relies so heavily on propaganda and paranoia. The system can go away in a night, but the attitudes…
The Orthodox Church is hugely powerfulbecause of a position fo prominenc givn to it by the West when it was a force against communism. The West forgot that for a thousand years it was a force against human rights, dissent and dignity and one of the pillars of another form of totalitarianism, the Russian Empire.
Further, they oppose even the possibbility of choices other than the rigid guidlines of eastern Othodoxy
From an older essay of mine
Uhh… Russia hasn’t been communist for decadesThe real problem is that Russia has a culture and tradition of extreme brutality at the hands of absolute despots, reaching back to at least the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Even today, people in power are not merely above the law, they are the law, start to finish. That attitude was certainly embraced by the Soviet Union’s elite, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with communism.
I don’t understand your comment about CommunismCommunism, while a goal (and even claim) of several governments, has never, to my knowledge, been successfully implemented above the scale of a small village. My understanding is that’s because the communications and exchanges required for communistic behavior become very difficult beyond a few dozen people, and those communication and exchange difficulties increase super-linearly with size.
Any hope of Communism in Russia (or even a vague approximation of it) was stamped out by the late 1930′s, when they sentenced most of the old, powerful Marxists (and others) to death. https://secure.wikimedia.org/w…
As for propaganda and paranoia, any fascist or totalitarian regime uses these tools extensively; I’m not clear that Russia was substantively different (save for its size). See Mubarak’s Egypt as a recent example upon which some light has recently been shed. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl…
It was more the west ‘s exalting the conservative churchand helping it regain its staus as a major force.
And the remainder of your point is in fact my point, that the Orthodox Church has been a force of repression for centuries; the west ought not have made common cause with it in the 1980′s and 90′s
“The west’s exalting the conservative church”?The tradition of absolute rule goes back centuries before the Bolshevik Revolution; the total power of the Tsars is why the revolution occured in the first place. During the Communist period, the Party held to that same tradition of absolute power; with the fall of the Soviet Union, the elite of modern Russia carry on that tradition.
While the Russian Orthodox Church certainly fans the flames of hate, the real problem is that the Mayor of Moscow, like all Russian leaders, holds himself as an absolute ruler whose whim is law, damn whatever the constitution or anyone else has to say.
Uhm…1. I pointed out that the communist system was gone, and
2. The same attitudes are pervasive in nearly all nations that were communist in the 20th century.
3. It can’t be communism’s fault because it’s been gone for decades, but Ivan the Terrible is really…
Oh, forget it.
Really? Egypt is the perfect example of exactly my point.In Egypt, people are fighting for their rights. In Russia, the general population seems rather eager to hand them right back to a wildly corrupt and authoritarian government.
I will never understand why some people feel the compulsion to defend a one-party of system of government.
And isn’t the Russian Revolution itself…evidence that the Russian people were, at one time, incredibly willing to, you know, rebel against the power structure?
No, no. I gave up already. Must… not… continue…