RUSSIA:Gay rights activists were attacked and beaten by anti-gay protesters in Moscow when they tried to protest against the city's ban on a pride march.
About 30 of the gay activists, including two MEPs, were detained by Russian police and eight were later charged for holding an unauthorised rally.
Riot police said they were forced to move in and defuse the situation and protect the gay rights activists from attack by a large crowd opposed to them.
In chaotic scenes in central Moscow, a number of other prominent protesters including a British pop singer were punched by black-clad counter-protesters as they tried to speak to the media.
"These are dirty homosexuals, I am an Orthodox believer and and that is my belief," said young one man involved in the scuffles. Other men wore long beards and some women wore head scarves, screaming abuse like "death to homosexuals" at the small band of activists.
The British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell and the singer from pop band Right Said Fred, Richard Fairbrass, were both punched in the face as they tried to talk to camera crews. Police last night said they had charged one man with assaulting Mr Tatchell.
For the second year in a row, Moscow's powerful mayor, Yury Luzhkov, banned a gay parade through the city. He has described gay people as "satanic".
Although the Russian gay activists didn't try to stage a full-scale pride march, they instead sought to deliver a letter of protest to the mayor's office, just off Tverskaya Ulitsa in central Moscow.
However, the police moved in, pulling some of the foreign attendees, such as Italian radical MEP Marco Cappato, into a police bus when he complained they weren't protecting them from the counter-demonstrators.
He was in Moscow with the Dutch Liberal MEP Sophie IntVeld to hand in a petition signed by 50 MEPs to protest that the decision to ban the parade contravened the Council of Europe's commitments, which Russia has signed.
Homosexual activity was legalised in Russia in 1993 but it remains a taboo issue for most Russians. There are a handful of openly gay bars in Moscow, one of the largest around the corner from the mayor's office.
The resurgent Russian Orthodox Church has also taken a vehemently anti-gay stance and city officials claim the disturbances that would be provoked by allowing a gay parade don't justify the protection such a march would require. Moscow's gay community is split about the merits of staging a protest, with some activists querying if there is any point even trying to stage a gay rights parade.
"There is nothing to celebrate in this country," said a grim Alex Khordorkovsky of the LBGT network yesterday.
Last night the Green Party in Germany demanded that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, raise the issue at the earliest opportunity with Russia's President Putin during next month's G8 summit. Dr Merkel clashed with President Putin over human rights issues just over a week ago, when she complained about the obstructions being used to prevent anti-Kremlin protesters from staging rallies in Russia.