Gay and lesbian activists eluded riot police in a five-hour game of cat and mouse on Saturday to hold the first gay protest in Moscow not to be broken up by the police.
After luring hundreds of riot police and undercover officers to the building housing the European Union's delegation to Moscow, about 25 activists held a short demonstration on the Arbat, a pedestrian street lined with shops and cafes.
They marched for about 10 minutes, holding banners and shouting slogans such as "No discrimination on the grounds of orientation." Some observers waved and laughed, and there were no signs of hostility.
Police did not try to disperse the march, but when the demonstrators saw a line of uniformed officers blocking the street ahead of them, they scattered.
A few hours later on Leningradsky Prospekt, a smaller, international group including British activist Peter Tatchell unveiled a long rainbow flag and chanted "Russia without homophobes!" and "Equal rights, no compromise!"
Police arrived soon after the brief protest, which Moscow city authorities had refused to permit, but the activists scattered.
Mayor Yury Luzhkov has said gay protests are satanic, and previous attempts to hold such events ended in multiple arrests and clashes with ultra-Orthodox believers who say gays should be punished or treated in psychiatric hospitals.
Just days before last year's Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow, police arrested at least 40 gay and lesbian activists at a similar protest.
Gay activists had asked Western embassies to host this weekend's protest, but they said their proposal was either ignored or turned down by envoys from the United States, Canada and major European Union states.
"The EU and Western embassies are hypocrites," Tatchell said. "We are being hounded and hunted by the police and the FSB security service all because we want to hold a peaceful gay rights protest."
Moscow police declined comment. A spokesman for the Federal Security Service also declined comment and asked for questions in writing, which he said would not be answered before Monday.
Asked whether he felt a thaw in official attitudes toward gays, protest organizer Nikolai Alexeyev said after the protests Saturday that there had been no change, and no detentions had been made because the activists had simply given the police the slip.
"Our military planning was why there were no arrests. We had to organize these parades under strict secrecy. We turned away anyone we didn't know," he said, claiming that the authorities were attempting to infiltrate the organizers.
(Reuters, AP)