by Rex Wockner
International News Briefs
For the first time, after five years of lawsuits by gay activists, a Russian court has declared a governmental ban of a gay Pride parade to have been illegal.
The Lenin District Court in St. Petersburg will issue its full opinion at a later date. Activists had argued that a city ban of this year's St. Petersburg Pride parade violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of assembly along with protections guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights.
"(This is) unprecedented for Russia," said leading gay activist Nikolai Alekseev, adding that while the decision could be reversed on appeal it is nonetheless "the first one we can be proud of."
"We are happy because for the first time, we get rewarded for five years of court actions, five years of arrests, of lost trials, of hits, of insults, of being followed or intimidated by officials, hooligans or individuals," he said. "We demonstrated that in Russia, a country of which many are saying that it is useless to go in the streets because nothing will ever change, even here the impossible can become possible."
