After all the people that marched in the Russian city for gay rights was arrested, a Russian court rules police violated their right to freedom of assembly
A Russian court ruled yesterday (10 July) the arrests made at Gay Pride in St Petersburg were not illegal.
When every person who attended the protest was arrested, with some even badly beaten by police, around 60 people were left in custody.
Dzerzhinsk regional court judges has now said the people who attended the rally had their right to freedom of assembly ignored.
Police said the meeting was supposedly ‘unauthorized’, but the court proved the organizers had obeyed the law by telling them about the event beforehand.
The court ruled the arrests had no solid basis as it was impossible to declare an event unauthorized in the middle of it happening.
This is the first positive gay rights ruling since President Vladimir Putin signed two bills into law; one banning ‘gay propaganda’ effectively making homophobia legal, and the other banning foreign gay couples from adopting Russian children.
Igor Kochetkov, chair of the Russian LGBT Network, said: ‘Instead of fulfilling their duty to protect the rights of the citizens for free assembly and restraining the aggressive behavior of nationalists, the police dispersed the meeting, themselves becoming violators of the law.
‘The police is beginning to resemble the Nazi SS troops in the time of Hitler.’
by Joe Morgan
Source – Gay Star News
