Thousands of LGBT people and allies came out around the world from Costa Rica to Ukraine to celebrate Pride throughout June.
The celebrations led up to the festivities commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots with the combined NYC Pride and WorldPride in New York June 30.
Tens of thousands of LGBT Costa Ricans took to the streets of San Jose, the country’s capital city, to celebrate the country legalizing same-sex marriage with a constitutional court ruling last year. The ruling brought the country into compliance with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights order for all Latin American and Caribbean countries to legalize marriage equality in 2018.
Weddings will commence in May.
Kiev celebrated its largest Pride event to date with more than 8,000 people participating in the “March of Equality” parade in Ukraine. France 24 reported the turnout was 3,000 more than the previous year.
Police and national troops, along with a group of military veterans, came out in force to protect the marchers from an estimated 1,000 anti-LGBT activists.
In Warsaw, Poland, Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski became the first to march in the city’s Equality parade June 8, which called for the recognition of LGBT rights in the conservative, mostly Catholic country.
An estimated 47,000 marchers took to Warsaw’s streets in a blaze of rainbows.
“Not everyone has to go to the Equality parade, but everyone should respect minority rights,” Trzaskowski told the crowd from a parade float, according to the News Tribune. “It’s really important for me that Warsaw be open, that Warsaw be tolerant.”
According to the New York Times, Poland is set to have a record number of 20 Pride parades this year despite attempts by some local politicians to block the events.
Diplomats from the United States, Canada, and other Western countries joined the parade in support of Poland’s LGBT community.
Smaller Pride celebrations were also held.
In northern India on the border of Pakistan in the Punjab state, some 75 teenagers hosted Amritsar’s first-ever Pride celebration dressed in rainbow colors and waving rainbow flags as they marched through the streets of the holy city, reported the Times of India.
The town is known for the holiest gurdwara, the Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib) in the Sikh religion.
The teens’ goals were to help “break isolation” and criticism for the region’s LGBT community. They largely succeeded. The crowd responded in various ways. Some went away once they discovered what the rainbow flags meant while some criticized the undeterred youth.
A much smaller Pride celebration happened with LGBT refugees on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya June 20 for the second annual International LGBTQI Refugee Day.
“It would be wonderful to go out onto the Nairobi streets like people in Europe and celebrate who we are, especially on Pride Month. But it’s not safe so we have to celebrate like this,” Obote, 40, a bisexual IT professional from Uganda, told Reuters. (Reuters only reported Obote’s first name.)
This year will also see some first-time Pride celebrations. Skopje, the capital city of North Macedonia, celebrated its Pride June 29. Bermuda and St. Lucia have Pride celebrations planned for August, reported 76 Crimes.
Not all planned Pride celebrations happened.
Organizers in Georgia postponed Tbilisi Pride for safety concerns after a successful week of events leading up to what was to be a big “March of Dignity,” the city’s first Pride march, according to 76 Crimes.
Got international LGBT news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at WhatsApp: 415-517-7239, or Skype: heather.cassell or oitwnews@gmail.com.
