Bulgaria: Sofia Readies for Second Gay Pride Parade
BalkanTravellers.com
The Rainbow Friendship Rally is organised by a coalition of non-governmental organisations and business sector representatives, including the international organisation InterPride, the Bulgarian gay organisation Gemini, the ID Club, the resource centre for bisexual women and lesbians Bilitis and the Bulgarian Activist Alliance.
This year’s parade is to start at the Bridge of Sighs, near the National Palace of Culture in the centre of Sofia, at 4:30pm. It will go through Fridtjof Nansen Street, Vasil Levski Boulevard, Graf Ignatiev Street and Luyben Karavel Street, and end at the Red House for Culture and Debate at 6pm.
The Sofia Municipality has granted permission for the parade to take place, with around 300 people expected to attend, according to media reports from earlier this week.
In addition to the actual rally, other complementary events will also accompany it. Preceding it will be a press briefing dedicated to the theme “The Right to be Different: LGBTs in the EU,” which will take place between 11 am and 1pm and include the following keynote speakers: Blagoy Vidin from the State Commission for Protection Against Discrimination; Ginyo Ganev or Borislav Tsekov – the National Ombudsman of Bulgaria (to be confirmed); Margarita Pesheva – Chairperson of the Bulgarian Council for Electronic Media (to be confirmed); Linda Frreeman – the Board Member of ILGA-Europe; Michael Cashman – Member of the European Parliament, European Socialists, Chair of the Inter-Group for LGBT Rights at the European Parliament; Nick Leek – Deputy head of mission at the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Bulgaria; Martijn Elgersma – Deputy Head of Mission at Royal Netherlands Embassy in Sofia; Dr. Israel Butler from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights; Lars Normann Jørgensen – Secretary General of Amnesty International and Stanimir Panayotov – representative of the organising committee of the Rainbow Friendship.
Following the end of the parade, between 6pm and 7:30 pm at the Red House for Culture and Debate, a program entitled Gaze in the Mirror will present a video art selection curated by Boryana Rossa, which will showcase short experimental and documentary films dedicated to issues of equal rights and gay culure.
The authors, including Jim de Sève, Tara Mateik, Pink Bloque, Kathy High, Carolyn Ryder Cooley, Lee Mingwei and Virgil Wong, Elizabteh Stevens and Annie Sprinkle, Boryana Rossa, explore and challenge the stereotypes and prejudices of contemporary society. They, according to the organizers, create visual metaphors and symbolic celebrations to inform society and provoke action to promote equality and love.
This is the second time a gay pride parade is organized in Sofia. The first one, which took place on June 28, 2009, was attended by around 150 supporters. Nearly as many – about 100, nationalists, skinheads and supporters of the Bulgarian National Union, a marginal nationalistic group, were arrested for hooliganism, as they tried to throw stones, bottles and Molotov cocktails at the marchers. As BalkanTravellers.com reported, last year’s parade was preceded by a “Week of Intolerance,” organised by the nationalist group Bulgarian National Union, which plastered Sofia with posters calling on people to “Be INtolerant! Be Normal!” Even Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev, in response to the parade, declared he did not favour “the manifestation and demonstration of such orientations.”
The days preceding this year’s parade have not gone by without opposition either. Last Sunday, students from the Theological Faculty of Sofia University organised a rally in protest of the parade. They carried icons, Bulgarian flags and signs that read “Homosexuals out of Bulgaria, Let’s keep our children clean” and “Moral decay – national destruction.”
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