This is an extended version of a report I filed for The Stranger in May.
What would have been Ukraine’s first-ever gay pride parade, an event to show that Ukraine was moving toward tolerance and ready to protect the rights of its sexual minorities, was cancelled at the last second on Sunday when a group of right-wing counter-protesters threatened to turn the celebration of diversity into a violent fiasco.
The timing of the event was deliberate. With the Euro 2012 games less than a month away, gay rights activists figured the government wouldn’t want to cause yet another diplomatic row with the EU on the eve of Ukraine’s big debut on the international sports stage by refusing permission to hold the parade.
On that point, they were right—mostly.
Kyiv’s city administration granted the marchers permission to hold the parade, but according to one of the organizers, the police department didn’t want to provide officers to protect them from anti-gay protesters. Police tried to convince the city to cancel it, but they refused. Eventually, the police relented.
The plan was impressive in its intricacy. Organizers kept the location secret right up until the moment the event was supposed to begin. One hundred marchers, hand-selected for their loyalty to the LGBT community, met at various metro stations throughout the city and planned to head toward a location below the Dnipro metro station at staggered intervals as not to arouse suspicion. They would then complete a short march, with police protection, along the bank of the Dnipro before loading into get-away buses that would take them to safety.
Half an hour before the parade was set to begin, I met with a group of activists, observers, and reporters from various European media organizations led by a woman named Olena, who planned to escort us down to the starting point.
Apprehension permeated the entire day. After several delays due to suspicion that the location had leaked and rumors that hundreds of right-wing activists and “football hooligans” were on their way to the spot, we ducked into the botanical garden behind Taras Shevchenko University to avoid being spotted.
“Pretend you’re a tourist,” Olena instructed us.
She said she was worried that someone would recognize the activists who had joined our group, explaining that anti-gay groups have been distributing photos of people involved in the LGBT community. So we wandered around the garden for a few minutes while she pretended to be a tour guide showing a bunch of foreigners with big cameras and voice recorders some of the 8,000 species of plants growing behind Taras Shevchenko University.
An LGBT activist from Sweden was optimistic but cautious, having tried to go to a similar parade in Belgrade in 2009 only to have it cancelled the day before.
“If it will be nothing, it will be very disappointing,” she said.
Olena got a call from someone working for a German TV channel who confirmed that there were huge groups of rowdy demonstrators and it looked like there weren’t enough police to handle them.
Ten minutes later, Olena announced that the event was cancelled. There would be a press conference in Darnytsia, which was also cancelled by the time I arrived. We learned later that shortly before we got there, a group of men had attacked a few of the organizers with pepper spray while they were talking to Ukrainian reporters in a nearby park and that two of them had been beaten (video).
Nobody knew for sure how the location leaked. Olena suspected Russian journalists. Others suspected the police.
Still, the organizers considered the day a success. To them, the fact that the city administration approved it and the police actually showed up was progress. However, German MEP Volker Beck was less enthusiastic, noting that Ukrainian police are trained to control thousands of rowdy soccer fans when things turn violent at matches between bitter Ukrainian rivals and questioning their willingness to execute orders to protect the marchers.
Even if there are signs of progress, things could get worse before they get better for the country’s gay community. The Ukrainian parliament is considering a bill similar to one passed in March in Saint Petersburg that would ban “homosexual propaganda.” A pride organizer named Stas said he worries that the bill could be interpreted in such a way that it would allow authorities to ban news media from covering anything that has to do with the LGBT community, meaning our rag-tag team of journalists and activists could be targets by police.
Marije Cornelissen, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, told me the parliament plans to pass a resolution this week condemning the bill. She has already received phone calls from Ukrainian politicians begging her to stop it.
While gay sex was decriminalized following the fall of the Soviet Union 20 years ago, the Iron Curtain legacy lives on. A 2010 survey found that 65 percent of Kyiv residents consider homosexuality a “perversion or mental disease,” making the prospect of real progress seem remote, at least for now. This year may have been a step forward, and organizers of the parade say they aren’t defeated yet and that they plan to try again next year, but for now, Ukraine’s LGBT community is fighting an uphill battle.
Gnarly. Nice work Chris!
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