Neo-Nazis Attack LGBT Equality Festival in Lvov, Ukraine – Video
Despite a court ban on public Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) events in the city of Lvov, Ukraine LGBT activists in the city decided to organize a private gathering in the Dnestr hotel, where 200 people were registered to take part in an “Equality Festival.”
The organizers placed private security at the entrance and local police units reinforced the security for the closed door festival.
But the event never took place, as a crowd of neo-Nazi youth, some covering their faces with rags and bandannas surrounded the Dnestr hotel demanding that authorities stop the event.
Police refused to physically clash with the protestors.
“We are blocked at the hotel,” organizer Olena Shevchenko said on Facebook from the hotel. “Police don’t want to react, they are saying all those people in masks (are here) just meet their friends.”
Additional police reinforcements were deployed to the hotel and tried to quell the mob chasing them into a nearby park, where the attackers regrouped and began pelting stones at the police while shouting SS slogans, repeating “SS” and “Hitler Youth.”
A video of the incident posted online shows riot police retreating from potential clashes with several dozen of angry Ukrainian youth.
Police also state that they received an anonymous bomb threat. The Equality Festival was cancelled and bomb squad units were sent to the hotel t explosives. While festival attendees were escorted out and boarded into buses by the officers, the ultra-nationalist neo-Nazi group started throwing stones and firecrackers at the attendees and attempted to break through the police lines shouting “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
Despite the tense incident Shevchenko says the LGBT community will continue to fight for the “freedom and equality of all people.”
“Because today they hunt us, and tomorrow they will hunt others. There are no guarantees you won’t fall into the next group of ‘abnormals’ or ‘unnaturals’,” Shevchenko wrote. “It is necessary to stand up to this mayhem and lawlessness now.”
Not one protestor was arrested.