9th May 2007
Tony Grew
The opposition of the Roman Catholic church to gay Pride parades reached a new low today when the Archbishop of Riga called homosexuality "total corruption in the sexual arena" and "an unnatural form of prostitution."
An open letter from Cardinal Janis Pujats demands a referendum on the issue of same-sex marriage and calls on crowds of people to take to the streets of Riga to oppose the Pride march on June 3rd.
"If there are 1,000 sexually crazy people acting foolishly in the square of Pride, then the people’s march in Riga should have at least 40,000 or 50,000," he wrote.
snip
Gay and lesbian protesters were refused permission to march in Riga on the 22nd July 2006 by city officials, who cited security advice from the interior ministry.
A group of around 50 activists instead held a service of tolerance at a local Anglican church.
Hundreds of neo-Nazi skinheads, ultra-nationalists and members of the Orthodox church besieged the church, pelting the activists with excrement.
It was reported that local police stood and watched as events unfolded and declined to intervene.
The new Mayor of the Latvian capital has publicly backed the 2007 gay rights march in the city in June.
Source: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/view.php?id=4338
1 comment:
Reinhold Weicker, "webmaster" and press spokesman of Homosexuelle und Kirche (HuK, Homosexuals and Church), Germany writes...
The situation in Latvia (and in several other Eastern European
countries) is indeed very grave, and deserves our attention.
However, in the description of the events surrounding the "Friendship Days" and the planned "Riga Pride" demonstration in 2006, I found several inaccuracies that seem to continue to be duplicated in the gay press (I had seen them before):
"Gay and lesbian protesters were refused permission to march in Riga on the 22nd July 2006 by city officials, who cited security advice from the interior ministry."
This is correct: Different from 2005, the court upheld a city decision
not to allow the parade in 2006.
A group of around 50 activists instead held a service of tolerance at a local Anglican church.
The church service was not held "instead", it would have been held
in any case.
What was held instead of the public demonstration, was an indoor
rally (same day, at a different time) in a big local hotel.
Hundreds of neo-Nazi skinheads, ultra-nationalists and members of the Orthodox church besieged the church, pelting the activists with excrement.
This number of attackers is grossly overstated: I heard from two
witnesses of numbers between 10 and 20 (at the church). However, they were quite
violent; it is true that they threw excrements at those who
were the first leaving the church. Those following later (I was among
them)
were told to remain in the church basement until police had been called.
Maybe the number of attackers had been mixed up with the number of
protesters outside the location of the (later) rally. This number has been
estimated by AP as around 300. However, a large police presence at the
hotel prevented them from direct physical violence there. There was
plenty of verbal abuse, though.
It was reported that local police stood and watched as events unfolded and declined to intervene.
At the time of the attack, there was no police present at the church.
(The organizers said that they had informed the police in advance,
and police should have been there; city official deny this.)
After the attacks, when they had been called via mobile phones,
police came and arrested two people who were beating on a man
in front of the church.
It is true that in front of the building where a press conference was
held an hour later, police did not give protection to gay activists
(e.g. a gay minister who was involved at the church service) when
they left the building; courageous citizens protected them.
Overall, my impression was that police did the minimum they could to prevent direct physical violence, otherwise they remained inactive.
They did not actively protect the rights of gay and lesbians as police had done in 2005. I have been told that this was most likely a political decision, possibly connected with the upcoming national elections:
Nobody wanted to appear as supporting gays and lesbians.
For eye witness reports (in English and German) and some pictures, see
http://www.huk.org/fotos/rigapride2006/index.htm
and the reports that are linked from there.
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