Clashes in Podgorica during Pride Parade. The hooligans find refuge inside a church

Kristi Pinderi, from Podgorica

Photos by Erjon Tela

The first gay pride parade was organized today in Podgorica under some extreme and impressive security measurements from the Police and Anti Terror forces of Montenegro.

There are around 4 thousand policemen in total in this country: 50 percent of them, or 2 thousands were deployed for this event. There were at least 10 policemen per each of those 200 hundreds activists who marched with LGBT flags, while a helicopter monitored the situation from the air.

Some hundreds of extreme opponents of the pride, mostly teenagers still managed though to cause violent incidents outside of the perimeter of the area were the pride was organized. They threw stones to the police and broke the glasses of some shops, while policemen responded to them with tear gaz.

The “Krajl Nikolla” boulevard were the LGBT activists marched, a space with mainly state buildings was probably the most safe area in the whole city today. Policemen were situated not only at the boulevard, in the streets and crossroads but also on the top of every building close to the march.

The other parts of Podgorica especially the place where a recently inaugurated orthodox church is situated was almost occupied by the hooligans who found refuge from the police inside the church. The priests were in that moment preaching against the pride. Some sources said that the building of a television was also attacked, while the official website of some mainstream media were down after their traffic was extremely increased by readers in need to get information.

 “We will not give up”, said Daniel Kalezic, one of the organizers of the pride, “until LGBT people enjoy full rights”.

The newly elected director of LGBT Forum Progress, Stevan Milivojevic said “we finally have a LGBT movement in this country”. Members of his organization were physically attacked in the street prior to the pride.

Source:Historia