There were a handful of minor disturbances, with around a dozen arrests, but Kyiv’s LGBT community managed to hold its first ever gay pride parade in the city on Saturday, May 25.
The Equality March was held in an
area outside the city center after municipal authorities last week
banned the group from holding the event at its originally planned Lva Tolstoho
location.
About 50 people from around Ukraine
and some from as far away as Sweden and Germany chanted and paraded down a narrow pathway
near Pushkin Park and Shuliavska metro station, carrying rainbow flags and
signs with slogans such as “LGBT rights = People’s rights.”
The event was planned in secret this
year, with organizers requiring participants and media to register using an
online form that required them to submit names and phone numbers of
gay-friendly people they knew who could vouch for their character.
Text messages were sent to the
phones of participants and media early on the morning of the event, telling
them when and where to meet.
Dozens of buses parked along Victory
Avenue brought more than 300 police in riot gear to the event to keep anti-gay
protestors from attacking the march’s participants.
Still, about 10 people managed to
infiltrate the march, ripping banners from the hands of marchers and shouting violent
anti-gay slogans. Police quickly detained them and dragged them into holding
vans nearby. In one case, a man threw a firecracker into the march. No one was
injured as a result, and the man was quickly nabbed by police.
After marching down a stretch of
sidewalk about 300 meters long, parade participants slipped through an iron
gate and boarded buses that would take them to a safe location.
In all, organizers told media at the
conclusion of the event that they were happy with the outcome.
“This can be considered a historic day,” Olena Semenova, one of the organizers, said.
Members from other LGBT communities
also took part in the march. At least 10 people from the German city of Munich,
a Kyiv Pride 2013 partner, stood side-by-side with members of Kyiv’s LGBT
community and held banners that read “Munich Greets Sister-City Kyiv.”
Wieland and Uwe, a gay married
couple from Munich who came to march in Kyiv, but wouldn’t reveal their last names for fear of repercussions,
said they were proud to be a part of the event.
“Gay people live freely and openly in
Germany, and we hope that soon they can lively openly in Ukraine,” Wieland
said. Asked whether he felt unsafe during the march, he said he was put at ease
by the amount of police present.
His partner, Uwe, said he was proud
to partake in the first-ever event of its kind here.
“We think it’s important to help the
human rights movement here,” he said.
The two were accompanied by Vice Mayor of Munich Hep Monatzeder, who told the Kyiv
Post that he came to the parade to show his support for human rights and Ukraine’s
LGBT community.
While he was disappointed about the event being moved out
of the city center, he admitted that it could have been dangerous to hold it
there, and that he felt safe at the alternative location.
“(The police) have done a really good job today of
organizing and watching over us,” he said. “Pride will go on. Maybe in another
situation we would have done this in the middle of the city. But we can show
here what human rights mean. This will start a discussion. This is the first
stone we throw, and then comes a bigger one that changes the way people think.”
Not unlike Ukraine, he explained, “Germany started off
in a small way. Now we have a big parade every year, and even marchers in the
beginning who were against the idea of the parade now are a part of it.”
Not everyone was as convinced by the authorities conduct, though. Zafire Vrba, who
came from Sweden to participate in the march, said he thinks the city’s excuse
for banning the parade in the city center was simply a convenient excuse for it
to hide behind.
“At at least we
have another spot (to march),” he told the Kyiv Post. “I’m just happy we’re
going to finally march.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Christopher J.
Miller can be reached at [email protected], or on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.
Watch video of the event below.
