Belarus Police Use Violence To Break Up Gay Pride Parade

In the Belarus capital city of Minsk Saturday, riot police employed excessive force and violence to thwart a gay pride parade that had been banned by authorities, ending the event moments after it began. Several parade participants have been arrested and detained. The leader of the Belarusian gay movement, Sergei Androsenko, saying that the government attitude toward gay amounted to little more than state sanctioned homophobia and that Saturday’s parade was meant to attract universal attention to the violation of sexual minority rights in Belarus. Although homosexuality was decriminalized in Belarus in 1994, the threat of violence against members of the LBGT community is constant, and rights are often trampled. The police would not comment on either their actions or the arrests.