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Rainbow NewsUkrain’s capital hosts KyivPride, but equality March cancelled
5 Jul. 2014
In Kyiv everything going as planned as the festival KievPride-2014 is hosting many events, including the National conference on LGBT rights, with guests visiting from all Ukraine and from abroad. Nonetheless, the organizers have cancelled the public Equality March, that had been previously planned for today.
Plans for the March had not been finalized, the decision depending on future developments, say the organizing committee. The application for the March had been submitted to Kiev authorities, but the city militia declared it "would not be able to guarantee participants’ security".
Committee spokesperson Yelena Shevchenko, leader of the public nonprofit Insite, said: "We had been planning this March far ahead of time, this year it was a coalition of non-goverment organizations, uniting their efforts to surface the problem of discrimination in Ukraine, have it recognized and dealt with. It would be nowhere close to entertainment festivities or a carnival."
Ukrainian media keeps habitually referring to the March as "gay parade", seasoning the publications with characteristic feather and glamour photos. This year, however, such cases have triggered activists to respond and demand corrections, yielding some success.
"I would like to comment on calls to skip such marches. This is a precisely right time to go out and defend our rights on public. Stop claiming that it is now time for some of us, and later it would be for the others" - sums Yelena Shevchenko.
Tatiana Mazur, executive director of human rights group Amnesty International in Ukraine said that the cancelled march was intended to underline the importance of support for the human rights for everyone - indiscriminately to nationality, faith and sexual orientation. "We are now speaking about the fundamental human rights - the freedom of assembly and the freedom of expression" - she said. Mazur reminded that the Ukrainian authorities have taken a responsibility by signing the international documents, namely the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. She expressed the opinion that the new government failed to pass the first test on its ability to defend the human rights for everyone.
A round table was held yesterday at the office of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Ukrainian parliament Verkhovna Rada. LGBT activists and human rights defenders discussed the problems of the LGBTQ community and ways to fight the discrimination of homosexual and transgender people.
Sergey Ponomarev, the head of department for non-discrimination in the Ombudsman Office, has described the important changes in the Office’s work: the Commissioner for Human Rights can now not only bring up court cases in defense of citizens suffering denial of rights, but also create precedent, that can be used to defend other people with similar issues.
Ponomarev expressed a regret that the Office only rarely gets complains on discrimination on the basement of sexual orientation and gender identity. Perhaps, Ukrainians might be unaware of the support they might receive here. This setup can be altered from inside the LGBT community itself, that could express initiative and create cases, both historical and legal.
Gay.Ru/Lesbi.Ru By Alexandra Lopata, pictures by the author
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