Posted on 06/11/2005 1:12:26 PM PDT by lizol
Clashes as gay paraders defy ban by Warsaw mayor 2 hours.
WARSAW (AFP) - A march by more than 2,000 homosexuals through the Polish capital in defiance of a ban by the mayor degenerated into violence as marchers clashed with right-wing extremists.
The clashes, in which at least three people were injured including a policeman and about 10 arrested, occured towards the end of the gay parade through Warsaw, for which police were out in force, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.
Warsaw's right-wing Mayor Lech Kaczynski had banned the parade on Friday, on the grounds that the application to march had not been correctly filed.
A favorite in the race for president of this devoutly Catholic country in October, Kaczynski had also banned the gay parade last year and has made clear his opposition to homosexuality.
Warsaw police spokesman Mariusz Sokolowski told AFP more than 2,500 people had attended the parade, and were met by around 300 counter-demonstrators.
Earlier in the day the gays had been pelted with eggs and insulted as "deviants, pedophiles" by around 100 far right youths when they held a demonstration, which was legal, outside the parliament building.
The gays yelled back that the rightwingers were "fascists" and a line of police officers had to step in to separate the two groups. Police also intervened to lift barricades placed along the route of the parade by the extremists.
An estimated two million gays and lesbians live in Poland, making up five percent of the population. But they complain of discrimination at work and open hostility in a society which is more than 90 percent Catholic.
Carrying rainbow-colored flags the protesters were joined by a number of politicians including Poland's deputy prime minister, Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka, and two German lawmakers from the Green Party, Claudia Roth and Volker Beck.
The German Greens lawmakers appealed to Poland's national leaders to respect homosexual rights.
"The persecution of gays and lesbians is contrary to the democratic values of Europe," Roth told journalists in Warsaw.
"It is unacceptable and incomprehensible that a demonstration by any group, whether homosexual, Jewish or Muslim, should be banned in Poland which is a member of the European Union," Beck told AFP.
"Whether the mayor does or does not like homosexuals, he is required to honor their fundamental right to protest freely," he said.
According to a poll published on Saturday by the influential Gazeta Wyborcza daily, 55 percent of Poles backed the mayor's decision to ban the parade, while 34 percent criticised his decision and 11 percent had no opinion.
Is that true? Or does the AFP think that anyone who opposes these (real) extremists' viewpoint is extreme?
No bias here.
It's all fun and games; until someone get's their eyes scratched out...
Pervert Poles or Perverts with Poles?
In other words, they were a concerned group of young citizens who were courageous enough to come out and express their opposition to the degredations advocated by a fanatical special-interest group. But the AFP calls people who question the 'political normalization' of deviance "right wing extremists."
""The persecution of gays and lesbians is contrary to the democratic values of Europe," (Claudia) Roth...
Remind you of anyone?
I wonder what the guy on the left is about to swallow.
Looks like Claudia is gonna be eating at the Y in Warsaw tonight. Heh.
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