The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in Kryvyi Rih has held the first Equality March in the city’s history.
The march came as the closing event of KryvbasPride, a festival of queer culture in the city, which is located over 400 kilometers to the southeast of Kyiv.
Participants arrived at the site of the march at approximately 9 a.m on a bus specially ordered by the organizers. Demonstrators then marched for 200 meters along the city’s central Sicheslavska Street, carrying signs emblazoned with rainbow colors and slogans like “Refuse to be afraid!” and “Different people – equal rights,” according to the Gay Alliance of Ukraine.
Around 40 people took part in the LGBT demonstration.
“Today a historic event has occurred: the first march for the rights of LGBT+ people in the industrial city of Kryvyi Rih,” Borys Zolotchenko told the Gay Alliance website. “The LGBT community is not limited to singers, dancers, and musicians. We are also workers, teachers, doctors, soldiers and ordinary residents of this city.”
“We are people and today we are loudly saying that we exist, we are here, and were are tired of being afraid,” he added.
Organizers kept the march’s location secret until the last minute. Photographs of the event show participants far outnumbered by police forces guarding the demonstration, a scene that remains common at LGBT marches in Ukraine.
The concern for security was not without merit. The night before the march, representatives of the local LGBT community received threatening messages from unknown individuals. Some registered attendees declined to take part at the last minute after receiving threats, according to the Gay Alliance.
At the end of the march, participants again boarded the bus, which took them to a safe location.
There were no violent incidents, although a group of demonstrators for “traditional family values” gathered at another location in the city, Kryvyi Rih’s Pervy Gorodskoi TV channel reported.
Early in the morning, a large number of police officers gathered on the city’s Polya Square, a move that may have been intended to distract the attention of would-be attackers, according to the TV channel.
LGBT marches are a growing phenomenon in Ukrainian society, but have frequently faced public resistance and even direct violence from their opponents.
On June 30, more than 10 assailants attacked organizer Zolotchenko as he returned home from a meeting of the KryvbasPride’s organizing committee with friends. Despite witnesses calling the police, local law enforcement declined to come to the scene of the crime, Ukrainska Pravda reported.
Shortly thereafter, parliamentarian Ihor Mosiychuk wrote on Facebook that “perverts” were planning a gay parade in the city. “I hope rugged Kryvyi Rih miners will beat up these Soros servants as much as possible,” Mosiychuk wrote, referring to Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros, who donates heavily to democratic causes.
Kyiv held its fifth annual Equality March without incident on June 17 as the closing event of KyivPride 2018. Marches and demonstrations have also been held in Odesa and Kharkiv.
