Protest on Red Square during the Olympic Games
During the 1980 Olympics, a FUORI! activist protests against Article 121 on Red Square and is arrested by the KGB.
On 21 July 1980, during the Summer Olympics in Moscow, the Italian activist Enzo Francone chained himself to a railing in front of the Kremlin wall on Red Square. Francone belonged to the Italian organisation FUORI! (Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano), one of Italy's first gay and lesbian movements. With his action he protested against Article 121 of the Soviet penal code, which threatened homosexual acts between men with up to five years in a labour camp, and demanded the release of two imprisoned homosexual men, Piatkus and Trifonov.
The protest had been prepared internationally: the year before, the International Gay Association (IGA), forerunner of today's ILGA, had decided at a meeting in Brighton, England, to use the Moscow Olympics specifically for a demonstration. In full view of Western journalists, Francone was overpowered, beaten and dragged away by members of the Soviet security service, the KGB. He was then expelled from the Soviet Union.
The action took place against a tense political backdrop: because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, around 60 countries, led by the USA, boycotted the Moscow Games. Even so, athletes from 80 countries took part. Francone's protest remained one of the few visible queer actions at these Olympics and shows how early international gay and lesbian networks tried to use major sporting events for human rights causes, a pattern that continues to this day in protests around Olympic Games or football World Cups in countries with repressive legislation.