Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens veroordeelt Rusland wegens verbieden gay-pride evenementen (en)
EUOBSERVER i / BRUSSELS - The European Court for Human Rights on Thursday (21 October) ruled that Russia has violated international law by banning Moscow gay pride parades on the grounds of public order.
The case was filed by human rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev, the main organiser of Moscow's gay pride parade since 2005, which has been banned each year in turn.
The Strasbourg-based court said "the mere risk of a demonstration creating a disturbance was not sufficient to justify its ban."
"If every probability of tension and heated exchanges between opposing groups during a demonstration resulted in a demonstration's prohibition, society would be deprived of hearing differing views on questions which offended the sensitivity of the majority opinion, and that ran contrary to the [European]Convention[on human rights] principles."
Russia is a signatory of the convention and accounts for a considerable bulk of cases brought to the European Court. The verdicts are binding on Moscow and can involve financial compensations to victims - for instance for the Chechen war - as well as legislative changes.
Groups defending the rights of sexual minorities welcomed the verdict. Maxim Anmeghichean from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) said it is an "important legal victory" for their Russian colleagues.
"We believe they are now equipped with a very solid legal tool to fully exercise their constitutional right to organise public events and express their opinions."
"Today's decision reinforces the duty of the Russian state to provide full and adequate protection to LGBTI public events from any attempts to disturb them or from those who violently oppose these events," he added.
EU i diplomats have also begun to raise the issue of gay rights with their Russian counterparts in the twice-yearly behind-closed-doors EU-Russia human rights dialogue.
An internal EU report on the last round of talks, which took place in Brussels in April, says the EU side: "stressed the need to implement the March 2010 Council of Europe recommendation to combat discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity and pointed out two outstanding issues, namely undue limitation of the right to assembly of LGBT persons (Gay Pride marches etc) and the lack of aggravating circumstances in the Criminal Code for hate crimes committed on grounds of sexual orientation."
The paper, seen by EUobserver, added that: "The Russian Federation showed greater opennes on some issues such as discrimination based on sexual orientation" and "admitted increasing problems with extreme right groups (in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg) ... and with an increase in the dissemination of hate speech on the internet."
"The EU recognised positive trends in the Russian Federation as regards a decreasing number of hate motivated crimes and an increasing number of convictions," it said.
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