Please note-

*Please note- Your browser preferences must be set to 'allow 3rd party cookies' in order to comment in our diaries.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Russian Gay Activist Arrested at Moscow Airport


■ Nikolai Alekseev: Arrested at Moscow airport





MOSCOW, September 15, 2010 – Russia’s best known gay rights activist was arrested this evening at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. And there are concerns as, so far, officials are not giving out any information about his whereabouts.

Nikolai Alekseev was about to board Swiss Air Lines flight LX 1337 for Geneva and had passed through passport control when he was arrested by Russian border police at about 7pm Moscow time (4pm UK).

No explanation has yet been given by officials as to why he was arrested.

He was taken to a closed room at the airport.

However, he was able to get messages out by mobile telephone of his arrest before his handset was confiscated as he was speaking with other activists at GayRussia.ru Website.

A group of three fellow activists, led by Nikolai Baev, immediately headed for the airport to assess the situation.

But airport police refused to give any further comment apart from saying that “Alekseev is not here”.

One police man did, however, suggest that Mr. Alekseev might have been transferred to the FSB, formally the KGB, headquarters on Lubianska Square in Moscow.

Ludmila Alekseeva from the Moscow Helsinki Group called the Main Office of the Moscow Police and was told that there is no track of the activist in their system.

Yesterday, activists from GayRussia announced that they had applied to stage a picket against the Moscow Mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, on September 21 on the occasion of his birthday. The theme of the picket was “Luzhkov – gomiki”.

Recently a Russian court confirmed that when the Mayor of Moscow called gays “gomiki” in the media, the term was not offensive. Gomiki is the translation of “faggot”


-end-

No comments:

Post a Comment