Shame ! Shame ! Shame !

RUSSIAN police last night arrested Australian-born gay activist Peter Tatchell and at least two European MPs as they tried to hold a demonstration in Moscow.

The activists were arrested by the OMON police riot squad while members of a hostile crowd punched the activists and pelted them with eggs.

One woman in the headscarf typical of devout Orthodox believers repeatedly threw water from a bottle at Mr Tatchell, who now lives in Britain, as he tried to speak.

A young man in a camouflage T-shirt then punched Mr Tatchell in the head before the activist was led away by police.

The demonstrators, appearing to number less than 100, tried to present a letter signed by 40 European MPs to the office of Moscow's Mayor, appealing against the city's ban on a march they wanted to conduct.

But police quickly grabbed about a dozen demonstrators and forced them into a bus, including Russian gay rights movement leader Nikolai Alexeyev.

[Source]

I have to say I was saddened by the News this morning yet was not surprised, as I lay in bed last night, my thoughts were with those marching, after seeing last years despicable behaviour by some I knew numbers would be small as it was inevitable that they were going to be physically attacked.