Minsk City Council did not allow Byelorussian LGBT members to hold a gay picket in front of the Russian Embassy to Byelorussia.

It would be reminded that earlier, on October 9th, 2008, the members of the Byelorussian Initiative Group for gender and sexual equality applied to the City's authorities to hold on October 27th a gay picket near the Russian Embassy in Minsk. This action has been provoked by the growing number of gay-hate cases in Russia.

On October 25th the applicants, members of Byelorussian LGBT community, have received an official written response, signed by Mr.Mikhail Titenkov, a deputy chairman of the Minsk City Council. It was said that "the City Council did not allow to hold a picket in front of the Russian Embassy in Minsk because the application had been done not within the frameworks of the National Law "On mass events".

The main reason to picket Russian Embassy in Byelorussia were growing number of cases of violation of the rights of LGBT people in neighbouring country (i.e. Russia), groundless police raids on gay clubs, mass detention and insults to gays and lesbians and the official ban to hold the international gay cinema festival "Bok o Bok" (Side by Side) in Saint-Petersburg.

The organizers of the gay picket planned to hand over to the Embassy's officials an open letters to the Russian Prime Minister Mr. Vladimir Putin and to the Russian Ambassador to Byelorussia Mr.Aleksandr Surikov.

However, despite the official ban to hold a gay picket in front of the Russian Embassy in Minsk, active members of the Byelorussian LGBT community still plan to hand over the open-letters to the Embassy's officials and to demand an official explanation of this ban from City Mayor of Minsk.

Translated by Yerdna Bananes