The first Equality Festival to be staged in Belarus opened this evening with a large conference at the Crowne Plaza – the third time since 2009 that the hotel has hosted an LGBT conference.
With no disruption, the organisers said the event, which was Webcast live by GayRussia, was “a success”.
“Last year, a group of skinheads attempted to disrupt a similar event we held on the eve of the first Slavic Gay Pride in Minsk,” Sergey Yenin, co-chair of IDAHO Belarus, one of the presenting organisation, told UK Gay News this evening.
Around 100 participants, including foreign diplomats, attended the event.
Opening the conference, the head of the EU delegation in Minsk, Jean-Eric Holzapfel, underlined that support and protection for LGBT human rights defenders is a priority of the EU external action.
“The EU promotes human rights dialogue for tolerance and non discrimination vis a vis lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons," he said.
Mr Holzapfel also congratulated the organizers “I commend and admire your courage and wish you the best success for today’s conference – and all your endeavours.”
Dr Zoltan Bacs from the Hungarian Embassy addressed the audience later and reminded Belarusians that his country will always support those “who are standing for who they are”.
Sergey Praded emphasised the lack of freedom of assembly in Belaru,s explaining the 100 refusals his group, IDAHO Belarus, received from the city hall for the Equality March it intends to host on Tuesday of next week, International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.
And he revealed this his group would be marching on Tuesday, despite the ban. He added that the location for the event would not be revealed for security reasons.
The Lesbian group, Labrys Belarus, later debated the issue of same sex families and propaganda of homophobia.
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