Patrons celebrating "Coming Out Day" at a Moscow club were caught off guard by an attack on Friday when they initially thought masked men were part of a planned performance for an open mic session.

NYT:

The police in Moscow on Friday were seeking two dozen masked men who stormed one of the city’s most popular gay bars early Thursday and beat patrons — most of them women — with fists and bottles. More than 10 people were injured, and three women and a man were hospitalized after the attack, which coincided with a “Coming Out Day” party, club employees said.

The violence comes during an unnerving year for gay men and lesbians in Russia. Three cities, including St. Petersburg, have passed laws criminalizing “homosexual propaganda,” and a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, the country’s predominant faith, has endorsed an initiative to introduce the laws nationwide.

So far, no such law has been passed in the capital. However, a measure banning gay pride parades in Moscow for a century, until May 2112, was upheld by the city’s highest court in August.

Although homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993, discrimination against gays remains strong in Russia. Attempts to hold gay pride events have provoked violence by police and militant Orthodox activists.

Independent monitors say this was the seventh violent attack against gays in reported in Russia this year, but said the true number is much higher since many attacks go unreported due to the stigma.

Via:

ALLIES of global hacker group Anonymous have put on their masks and picked up litter in a Tokyo park as a protest against tough illegal download laws.

The 80-strong collective said yesterday's busy bee was a protest against Japan's tougher laws against illegal downloads.

In light rain, they took part in an "anonymous cleaning service" for one hour in a park and on pavements in the shopping and entertainment hub of Shibuya, a change from the group's trademark website attacks.

They were dressed in black and wore masks of Guy Fawkes, the central figure in England's 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up parliament, which have become a symbol of protests by the loosely linked alliance around the world.

The group said that cyber attacks are the work of other global Anonymous networks in the global internet community, and that they prefer "constructive and productive solutions."

"We want to make our fellow citizens aware of the problem with a productive message."