May 2007

As an opening of this 2^nd day of the festival the declaration on homophobia made by Terry Davis (CoE General Secretary) was read out.

The program plan on the 26^th changed a lot as Nikolai Alekseev has been informed the previous day that the civil court would have given its decision on the Moscow Pride legality that day at 10:30. He went there with Robert Wintmute (who will take the case to the ECHR) and Dmitri Bartnev (Nikolai's layer).

Around 11:30 Nikolai came back to report the court verdict: Moscow Pride is illegal. This decision resulted in  all the conferences to come to a halt and also created a debate on what should happen on the 27^th. The discussions have continued from 11:30 to 18:30. One of the points raised was the fact that more foreigners than Russian were participating at this discussions, so the final call was left for the Russian themselves on wheter or not the evente on the 27^th will continue.

They decided to meet in front of the Unknown Soldier memorial at 14:30 and put a flower as a symbolic act to show that the fight against neo-nazis and neo-fascist that this monument celebrates is not over, and then walk silently and peacefully from there to the City hall to give to the Moscow Mayor an appeal written and signed by all the people attending Moscow Pride festival.

During the afternoon I had a speech on behalf of IGLYO explaining the meaning of our presence in Moscow, which is to support our Russian brothers and sisters and to monitor the events, but not being directly involved. This may sound controversial but I can say there are different ways of being "active" and supportive: as international youth ngo we represent here more foreigners than locals. IGLYO does not want with its presence to impose any "agenda" or "schedule" on the local LGBT community because every local community needs its time to develop and to decide strategies or priorities in full autonomy.

In the evening Merlin Holland went to sign autographs in a book shop, more than 150people came there to make their book sign!