Russian police detain gays as punches, eggs fly

MOSCOW, May 27 (Reuters) Russian police detained gay protesters calling for the right to hold a Gay Pride parade in central Moscow today while nationalists shouting ''death to homosexuals'' punched and kicked the demonstrators.

Riot police detained the protesters as they tried to present a petition asking Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who has called gay marches satanic acts, to lift a ban on the parade.

Nationalists and extreme Russian Orthodox believers held icons and denounced homosexuality as ''evil'' while a group of thick-set young men turned up with surgeon's masks, which they said would protect them from the ''gay disease''.

''We are defending our rights,'' said a young gay man named Alexey, with blood pouring out of his nose after he was beaten up by a man screaming ''homosexuals are perverts'' opposite the mayor's office. His attacker was detained.

''This is terrible but I am not scared. This is a pretty scary place, a pretty scary country if you are gay. But we won't give up until they allow us our rights,'' he said.

Hundreds of riot police lined Tverskaya street in central Moscow and plain-clothes police mingled with a large number of foreign and Russian journalists.

Parade organiser Nikolai Alexeyev told Reuters by telephone from a police station that about 20 people had been detained, a figure confirmed by police.

''We are sitting in the police station right now. We were detained outside the mayor's office when we tried to present the petition,'' said Alexeyev.

GAY TOLERANCE Russia decriminalised homosexuality in 1993 but tolerance is not widespread.

''We believe these perverts should not be allowed to march on the streets of Moscow, the third Rome, a holy city for all Russians,'' said Igor Miroshnichenko, who said he was an Orthodox believer who had come to support the riot police.

''It (homosexuality) is satanic,'' he told Reuters. One man holding a crucifix threatened beat-up any gay person he saw.

Richard Fairbrass, a gay singer with the British pop group Right Said Fred, was punched in the face and kicked by anti-gay activists while speaking to Reuters in an interview.

''We understand this is a gay event and so we came down here today,'' Fairbrass told Reuters before being hit. Blood dripped from his face after the attack.

Volker Beck, a German green party politician and gay rights campaigner, was hit in the face with eggs before being detained by riot police. ''We didn't do anything,'' he told Reuters as he was led away.

Germany's Green Party Chairwoman Claudia Roth called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to raise the issue of rights with President Vladimir Putin at next month's G8 summit.

''It has been shown once again today that human rights are systematically abused in Putin's Russia,'' she said in a statement.

Beck was later released.

''It is very conspicuous when people are arrested in front of the mayor's office when they were doing nothing other than trying to present a peaceful petition,'' said Scott Long, a rights activist with Human Rights Watch who obser ved the events.

''There was no real attempt to separate the two sides and that led to people being beaten up,'' he said. ''I would call on the Russian authorities to protect freedom of assembly, protect freedom of expression and protect demonstrators.'' REUTERS SG RK1801