Equal rights for gays still distant dream in Ukraine

Weekend summer mornings along the riverside promenade in Kyiv’s Obolon district usually include scenes of strolling families and 20-something crowds. But on June 6, tension, violence and blood ruined this idyll as two opposing views clashed over gay rights and the right to publicly support them.

Equipped with rainbow flags and posters, 200 Ukrainians gathered at a Kyiv pride “March of Equality” to advocate for the rights of all people to be respected as they are – including lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender.

Armed with nail bombs, flares, and donning balaclavas, some 80 militant and violent homophobes attempted to disrupt the march.

Hundreds of police took the brunt of the immediate attack, with one officer suffering a life-threatening shrapnel wound to an artery in his neck. A total of 11 police officers received injuries that day.

Police acted swiftly, but couldn’t protect all the demonstrators as they scattered from the scene. At least 10 gay rights activists were hunted down and beaten.

One of them, Rostyslav Milevskyi from Zaporizhya, told the Kyiv Post that their exit strategy was poorly planned.

Milevskiy was run down and beaten by a group of eight anti-gay militants. He took part in a similar event in 2012, which also ended in violence, he said.

Seven militants – mostly from a variety of small nationalist groups – were arrested by police. Volunteer battalion soldiers and Right Sector activists were placed under house arrest and charged with hooliganism. One suspect was bailed out by lawmakers from the Radical Party, led by Oleh Lyashko.

In a year of great upheaval and change, conservative attitudes towards different sexual orientations seem fixed.

Ihor Kryvoruchko, 28, head of the right-wing Center Youth Assembly, was present at the march on June 6. He’s certain that most Ukrainians consider homosexuality an aberration.

“Such parades could only take place on the territories of the self-proclaimed republics (in the east),” he told the Kyiv Post. “The real purpose of the organizers of the gay parade is to force more people to support the rights of the necrophiles, zoophiles and pedophiles,” he said.

Milevskiy was certain that many in Ukraine still have “dark age stereotypes towards gays.”

Bohdan Ovcharuk, spokesperson for Amnesty International Ukraine, said that the Right Sector seemed to be “the consolidating force” in the clashes.

A number of social media groups urged people to oppose the pride parade on the Russian-owned social network VKontakte. One of them, called Zero Tolerance, had posted a photo album of at least a dozen people the group’s moderators say are gay activists. The group has more than 2,800 followers.

Right Sector spokesman Artem Skoropadsky insisted that the

At least 200 Ukrainian gay activists held a gay pride March of Equality in Kyiv’s Obolon embankment on June 6. (UNIAN)