Moscow Pride Euro Court case delayed

Moscow Pride’s lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights over Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s repeated bans of pride events was delayed Jan. 19 after Russia requested additional time to respond to the case.

The Russian government said it was too busy to file its reply in a timely fashion. The court responded by extending the deadline to Feb. 20.

Chief Moscow Pride organizer Nikolai Alekseev denounced the development, saying it took far too long for the Euro Court to accept the case in the first place, and now he has to wait longer while the Russian government engages in alleged stalling tactics.

“We are engaged in this fight for freedom of assembly for five years,” Alekseev said. “All these years, we have been paying the price of the workload of the court. … Now that the court finally opened our complaints, we are paying the price of the workload of the Russian mission in Strasbourg. Will this ever end?”

Alekseev said the delay makes it very unlikely there will be a decision in the case prior to his group’s fifth annual attempt to stage pride on May 29.

Luzhkov has banned gay pride events in each of the past four years and has sent riot police to violently arrest small groups of activists who ignored the bans.

The mayor has called gay parades “satanic” and, according to reports, “weapons of mass destruction.”

By Rex Wockner

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