Photo from AP
A day after a very sizable anti-gay march in Serbia’s capital, a large amount of fighting and looting took place during today’s pride parade in Belgrade, the first one held in that country since 2001. Hundreds of hateful right-wing protesters attacked and injured at least 100 people, including many of the 5,000 thousand police officers who were present to protect the pro-gay activists.
The AP has a rundown of the insensible violence:
Several parked cars were set on fire or damaged, shop windows were broken, garbage containers were overturned and streets signs destroyed. Several shops were looted. The rioters fired shots and hurled petrol bombs at the headquarters of the ruling pro-Western Democratic Party, setting the garage of the building on fire. The state TV building and other political parties headquarters were also attacked, with many of the house windows shattered by stones. The protesters, chanting “death to homosexuals!” hurled Molotov cocktails, bricks, stones, glass bottles and firecrackers at riot police. Police responded by firing tear gas and deploying armored vehicles to disperse the charging protesters in the heart of the capital even after the brief pride march ended.
The protesters hijacked a bus, ordered all of its passengers and the driver out, and pushed it down a steep street before it hit an electric pole on a main Belgrade square. An organizer, Lazar Pavlovic, said that staging of the pride march was a “historic event.” He condemned the violence and noted that the incidents and immense security measures illustrate the dangers the gay people in Serbia are facing.
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When the designer of the South African Gay Flag announced “Joburg (Johannesburg) pride will be a sea of little Gay flags of South Africa. It will mean that the design will finally be a flying across all provinces of South Africa’s national pink community, uniting us all,” little did he know that activists from GAY USA would ensure the flag’s presence in the hallways of the New York City’s Clerk offices, as hundreds of gay and lesbian couples lined up to marry on the historic first day of same-sex marriages in the State of New York.
