Prague, Aug 2 (CTK) – The Prague Pride march scheduled for Saturday, August 13 as the culmination of the eponymous festival of the LGBT community will observe a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the June attack on a gay club in Orlando, USA, festival director Katerina Saparova told reporters yesterday.
The 6th Prague Pride Festival is held on August 8-14.
Allegorical wagons and other participants in the march will meet on Wenceslas Square in Prague centre at noon and an hour later, they will set out on a march through the city centre to the Letna plain.
The organisers decided to commemorate the massacre in a nightclub in Orlando where Omar Mateen shot dead 49 people, mainly homosexuals, in June.
“It was an attack aimed against the LGBT community. We perceive it sensitively since it was provoked by homophobia that still exists in society,” Saparova said.
The march is the most popular event of the Prague Pride. However, the festival also offers more than 130 other cultural, social and sport events as well as debates connected with “love,” which is this year’s main theme.
“It may have various forms, but it is universal,” said Separova.
Similar to previous years, supporters of the traditional family will organise a march in the centre at the same time. The committee defending parental rights with the Young Christian Democrats will stage Day for the Family. Its programme includes a one-hour march starting at 14:00.
The Prague Priodefestival will focus on three topics: the family, AIDS prevention and transgender problems.
It has prepared a programme for “rainbow” parents from the LGBT community and homosexual couples who want to have children and a debate for parents whose children are gays or lesbians.
The HIV preventive programme includes a workshop of the AIDS Help Czech association on using condoms. Some 10,000 condoms dill be distributed during the festival and people can also undergo free HIV-testing.
The festival’s village will be built on Strelecky island where a big concert will be held on August 8. Other main festival centres will be at the Svanda Theatre in the People in Need NGO’s seat in the Langhans Gallery in Prague.
The festival’s programme is available onwww.praguepride.cz.
The first Prague Pride festival and parade took place in August 2011.
It stirred up stormy protests by conservative circles. They called the event obscene and tasteless, promoting “the ideology of homosexualism” as President Vaclav Klaus (2003-13) said. However, the protests have faded away with time.
