The equality of impossibility

Activists of the Insight public organization, the initiators of the equality festival, which was supposed to be held in Lviv on March 19-20, on the eve of the local city council with a request to support the action. They asked the Lviv police to strengthen the patrols on the day of the event in connection with the threats coming from the organizations "Bandera", "White Nation", "Freedom". But, according to the head of "Insight" Elena Shevchenko, from the city administration they were associated only once. The head of the internal policy department of the Lviv city council called Yevgeny Boyko and asked not to conduct LGBT campaigns, referring to the request of the mayor Andrei Sadovoy. The planned Pedestrian LGBT quest called the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

In addition, the City Council was forced to apply to the district administrative court, as several applications were received at the same time for public events on March 19, including the right -winging organization Sokol. The court limited the right to hold public actions on the streets of Lviv. The organizers of the equality festival had to abandon part of the program and transfer all the planned events to the premises. But this was not easy. The administration of the Museum of Ideas and the Underground Club refused to cooperate with the festival, explaining this with threats of physical reprisals from radical organizations.

As a result, the leadership of one of Lviv’s hotels agreed to accept the festival, and the organizers decided to limit themselves to discussions, film locations, photo exhibitions. They would like to see the festival as "a cultural platform where there is an opportunity to talk about the inequality of rights and discrimination."

On Saturday, opponents of the LGBT festival, as promised, tore off the action. At first, aggressively tuned young people in sportswear, some in balaclavas, actually blocked the entrance to the hotel where the event took place. Then there was information that the hotel building was mined. The police were forced to evacuate the participants on buses. At the same time, the radicals threw buses and the police with stones and sticks. Law enforcement officers did not respond to the aggressive actions of young people. Despite the fact that the glass of an official car was broken, the police did not detain a single participant in the pogrom.

“We will understand,” says Elena Shevchenko. “In my opinion, the city authorities support extremism in Lviv and this is the“ Safari ”that was arranged. As far as I know, these people still go to Lviv in large groups and pester everyone who looks“ somehow wrong ”, interrogate, do you know such Elena Shevchenko ...” The organizers of the festival claim that they say that they say that they claim that The groups attacked to them were well organized, they were constantly in touch with coordinators and even lawyers. Neither in the City Council, nor in the Lviv police, so far, Saturday events have been commenting.

The breakdown of the LGBT festival in Lviv caused a resonance in Ukrainian society. Deputies from the interfraction association of the Verkhovna Rada "Eurooptimists" condemned manifestations of violence, the passivity of the police and the city authorities of Lviv. US Ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Payette called the incident "bad news." “Manifestations of intolerance in Lviv contradict the European future, for which the Ukrainians sacrificed so much,” the ambassador wrote on Twitter.

Some experts associate the conflict in Lviv with the approaching referendum in the Netherlands about the Association of Ukraine and the EU. Voting is scheduled for April 6th. “Someone needed to see Ukraine just like that. And it will see. And very on time, because the voting in the Netherlands is coming,” Ukrainian writer Yuri Vinchuk wrote in his column. “You need to get used to such things for a long time, as Europe gets used to them. Do you want us to jump from a scoop through the dictatorship of the oligarchs and the Russian world to Europe at once? Take an interest in Poland or in Slovakia.

There were also those who accused the organizers of the festival of equality of provocation. Like, the reaction of the radicals in Lviv was absolutely predictable, and the organizers of the LGBT festival deliberately ran into the conflict in order to harm the image of Ukraine. “I can say to such people: sit at home,” says Elena Shevchenko. “Something happens every day, which is harmful to the image of Ukraine. Let's not do anything and not say that everything is bad with reforms, with human rights. This is not my position. It will not be so.”

Insight public organization does not abandon its plans and is going to hold an equality festival in at least three large cities of Ukraine. But in which exactly is not yet reported. For security reasons.