Approximately 30 people were detained (above) in St. Petersburg Russia's Palace Square on Saturday protesting a ban on an LGBT Pride event that was banned by authorities.
Reuters reports: “Police detained campaigners who unfurled rainbow flags or held placards, dragging them into a police bus. There were no clashes between police and the activists.”
Yevgenia Litvinova, an opposition journalist and pro-democracy (anti-Putin) activist, whose organization, Democratic Russia, is allied with the LGBTI movement in St. Petersburg, published an account of the arrests on The Russian Reader.
Wrote Litvinova: ‘Palace Square was completely cordoned off and chockablock with cops. I got held up, and when I got to the square, Alexei Sergeyev had already been detained. Then Alek Naza (Alexei Nazarov) was detained: he had no placard, only a rainbow flag. Before that 28 more people had been detained. That is a total of 30 people detained for trying to hold solo pickets [which, according to Russian law, can be held without permission and without notifying authorities in advance]. There are minors among them. Some have been taken to the 74th Police Precinct (in particular, Alexander Khmelyov), while a third group is still being held in a paddy wagon, as far as I know.'