Moscow Police Smother Rally for Gay Rights as It Begins

MOSCOW — Police officers in Moscow quickly suppressed a gay rights demonstration on Saturday, detaining dozens of protesters who hoped to showcase discrimination in Russia ahead of the Eurovision song contest final on Saturday evening.

The approximately 40 people rounded up face misdemeanor charges for trying to hold what a police spokesman, Anatoly Lastovetsky, called “unsanctioned” demonstrations.

Such demonstrations have become an annual headache for the Moscow authorities, who refuse to grant permission to organizers to hold the events despite constitutional guarantees protecting freedom of assembly. At previous gay rights events, police officers have often stood by as neo-fascists and radical Orthodox Christian groups attacked protesters.

While there were no reports of violence on Saturday, the crackdown on this year’s protest could prove an embarrassment as thousands of European visitors enter the city for the Eurovision final, a huge pop music spectacle that Moscow is hosting for the first time after Dima Bilan, a Russian pop star, won last year’s contest in Serbia. See Moscow Police Smother Rally for Gay Rights as It Begins New York Times