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Moscow City Court Upholds Ban on Gay Pride Parades in Russian Capital for Next 100 Years

Source: HRO.org (info), 07/06/12

· The Courts  · Sexual minorities

The court has dismissed an appeal by the founder of Moscow Gay Pride Nikolai Alekseev against a 100-year ban on Gay Prides in Moscow. Alekseev plans to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

GayRussia.ru writes that on Wednesday 6 June Moscow City Court rejected the appeal by Nikolai Alekseev, the founder of the Moscow Gay Pride movement, against a ruling by Tverskoi district court that the Moscow city government's ban on public gay pride demonstrations from March 2012 to May 2112 was lawful.

The Moscow City Court's Collegium for Civil Cases has only announced the operative part of its decision; the full text will be made public in the near future.

Alekseev announced on 7 June that he planned to appeal the decision in cassation before the Moscow City Court Presidium, after which he will bring his appeal against Russia before the European Court of Human Rights.

On 23 August last year the organisers of Moscow Gay Pride took advantage of a loophole in current Moscow city legislation on holding mass cultural and educational events. They submitted requests to the Moscow municipal government and the Moscow Central Directorate of Internal Affairs to hold public gay pride demonstrations in 2012, and for the next hundred years.

While the Federal Law on Assemblies, Rallies, Demonstrations, Processions and Pickets fixes both the earliest and latest dates by which organisers can give notice for holding public events, in the capital it is the Mayor of Moscow's order dated 5 October 2000 which regulates the holding of mass cultural and educational events in the city, and this stipulates only the latest date for notification as no later than 30 or 45 days.

The gay rights activists, who virtually paralysed the work of the Mayor of Moscow's document intake window at 13 Tverskaya for an hour, submitted requests to the capital’s government to hold Moscow Gay Pride parades from 2012 to the year 2112. The organisers’ intent is to hold all of the events on Bolotnaya Square.
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