Nationalists from the Vazrazhdane party invaded a cinema in Sofia on Saturday night and sabotaged a film screening from the “Sofia Pride Film Fest” program,
According to the organisers, the protesters insulted and threatened the audience in the cinema lobby while holding posters denouncing ‘paedophilia’ and against LGBT rights. Police officers present reportedly shook hands with and encouraged protestors, according to the festival organisers through a Facebook post.
The screening has since been cancelled.
“We cancelled the screening of the film “Close”, part of the Sofia Pride Film Fest, due to security reasons. A crowd of protesters entered the cinema, began to take close-up photos of the faces of the audience, shout at them “, paedophiles” and scared them and the staff,” organisers announced.
The screening was part of the cultural program before the 16th Sofia Pride, which will be held on 17 June. “Close” is a Belgian film that won the Cannes Grand Prix and was nominated for Oscar, Golden Globe and César for best foreign language film. It was also shown in Bulgaria before.
The Minister of Internal Affairs Kalin Stoyanov said he will revise the issue. The police claim that “supporters of a political party and a group of citizens who came to a screening got into a verbal confrontation. The screening organiser decided to end it and returned the money to the purchased tickets. There was no physical violence between the two groups.”
The pro-Russian nationalist “Vazrazhdane” party stated that it would not allow propaganda of paedophilia and homosexuality among both children and adults. The aggressive advertising campaign of the gay parade in Sofia and events in it are aimed at the children of Bulgaria,” the party said in a position sent to the media.
“A verbal confrontation occurred at the protest after a female homosexual hit a woman who had come to express her civil position of disapproval of the film and its broadcast,” Vazrazhdane claims.
The leaders of the ruling pro-European coalition PP-DB wrote on Facebook that “the actions of “Vazrazhdane” continue to get out of control and contradict all humane, democratic and state principles.”
The coalition recalls that the party led by Kostadin Kostadinov tried several times to prevent MPs from expressing their opinion from the rostrum, and “regularly and tendentiously use hate speech, encourage extremism and violence, and the destruction of statehood”.
The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee issued an open letter to the Mayor of Sofia, the Ministry of Interior and the Speaker of the National Assembly. It states that yesterday “there was a group of policemen on the spot who not only did not assist the organisers of the film festival in removing the protesters from the cinema but greeted and shook hands with some of them.”
“These events come after days of vandalising billboards of the upcoming Sofia Pride in the capital, as well as several years of a smear campaign against the LGBTI community, claiming it is ‘affiliated’, ‘endorsing’, ” promoting” and aiming to “legalise” paedophilia. This outright lie pursues an obvious goal – to create an intolerable, hostile environment for LGBTI people in society and force it to withdraw from publicity. This is not just intolerable. It is illegal,” stated the Helsinki Committee.
(Krassen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg)
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