Participants in a rally for the rights of transgender people were forced to disperse after their demonstration came under attack from members of the Ukrainian far-right. At least two participants and a Canadian journalist covering the event were assaulted.
Organized by civic organization Insight, the Nov. 18 rally gathered over 50 people to mark the annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is observed on Nov. 20.
Sofiia Lapina, a member of the organizing committee of KyivPride who attended the rally, says police forced the participants to move from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv — the event’s planned location — toward the Universitet metro station. There some of the rally demonstrators were attacked by far-right radicals.
According to Lapina, the rally did not last long, as the police started pushing the activists down into the metro station, supposedly for safety reasons.
“Radicals started moving towards LGBT people, so the police started to physically shove us into the metro and told everybody that the rally has ended,” Lapina told the Kyiv Post, using an acronym that refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
On Twitter, RFE/RL correspondent Christopher Miller, who covered the demonstration, wrote that the police allowed “far-right thugs to shout obscenities untouched” but shoved peaceful demonstrators and journalists. At one point, Miller was grabbed by police and prevented from reporting, he wrote in a tweet.
However, law enforcement says that it prevented a “provocation” during the rally by separating the LGBT demonstrators and far-right counter protesters, according to a post on the Kyiv Police’s official website.
The police also say that an unknown individual used pepper spray during the altercation and assaulted two people.
According to Lapina, three people were injured: two women were sprayed with pepper spray and one international journalist was assaulted.
The journalist was Michael Colbourne, a Canadian freelancer who covers Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
“Journalist Michael Colbourne took punch to face, sustained cut and had glasses broken by far-right radicals while covering today’s transgender rights rally, as police not only stood by, but physically removed activists from city-sanctioned event,” RFE/RL correspondent Miller wrote on Twitter.
Police have qualified the attack on Colbourne as “hooliganism,” according to the official Kyiv Police website.
The civic organization Insight, which organized the rally, said that “today’s events have demonstrated that the level of right-wing radical aggression and violence is increasing in Ukraine.”
“Under the pressure of radical groups, the police have declared that they cannot provide security. Thus, the police are not able to ensure the realization of human rights and freedoms,” the organization wrote on Facebook. “We regard this situation as a right-wing radical dictatorship that is being established in Ukraine.”
“The march was disrupted, but a short rally was held, and lasted twenty minutes.”
