The European Policy Institute supports the Pride Parade
On the 29th of June our country will host for the first time its Pride Parade – SkopjePride. The date was carefully chosen as it is also the 50th anniversary of the historic Stonewall riots, a turning point in the movement and a symbol of perseverance in the struggle for equality and rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans and intersex people (LGBTI).
The European Policy Institute fully supports the first Pride Parade because it comes from the LGBTI community itself, from the need of visibility and to say #WeAreHere, from the need to pave the way to equality and equal rights for all citizens, as well as from the need to loudly say STOP to years long violence, homophobia, lesbophobia and transphobia, on which everyday most of our fellow citizens and LGBTI are exposed to. We understand the Parade as a call to state institutions to continue on building an institutional framework and capacities where all LGBTI people can turn to freely and exercise their rights, a call to investigate and recognize violence and discrimination from the past, as well as a call for #Solidarity with the fight for equality, which is one and common for us all.
We would like to finish with the words of one of the organizers of the SkopjePride, Slavco Dimitrov – theoretician and years long LGBTI activist.
“Pride here is to oppose the logic of pointing at someone with a finger, embarrassing you about who you are, who you love, what kind of cultural and social life you form. Pride, because we are going out into a context where we are excluded, discriminated and victims of hate speech. Children and young people are being excluded from their families and in state institutions, trans people especially are being devalued. In the social atmosphere of humiliation, we are going out on the streets, in a society where from all parts they say you are ‘sick, deceived…’ These people, in such a context, decide to go outside and take the streets which are a common place and be seen by the people who say to them to stay ‘closed inside 4 walls’” – Slavco Dimitrov.
