North Macedonia holds first Pride parade
North Macedonia held its first Pride parade on the streets of the country’s capital Skopje on Saturday.
The parade was attended by supporters from North Macedonia and abroad, and was covered by domestic and global media.
“We are far from full respect of the LGBTI community, but this is an important step in the right direction. Today, North Macedonia is joining the family of countries that have held pride parades,” said former MP Pavle Bogoevski.
The Skopje Pride march went through the streets of the capital and ended in the City Park.
We believe in a society that is equal and gives a chance to all. The LGBTI community is here to stay and if we do not recognize this, we are losing a great potential for the country. We will not allow for this to happen, we will fight until every single person can be free to show love in public, Minister of Labor and Social Policy Mila Carovska told the first-ever Pride Parade in Skopje.
“We showed today that we are visible and that we can support all those who were invisible and discriminated for years, promising ourselves never to let violence happen in the country again,” said Carovska.
Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, United States Charge d’Affaires, expressed her delight for attending Skopje’s first Pride Parade.
“We are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which started the modern pride movement. This year Skopje joins more than 70 countries around the world in celebrating LGBT pride. The United States is very proud to be a part of this. There has been a lot of progress here in North Macedonia in the recognition of the LGBT community and there is still work to be done. People need to remember that discrimination doesn’t help anyone and we are here to continue to make progress on these issues in North Macedonia,” said Schweitzer-Bluhm.
MP Maja Morachanin, member of the Inter-party group for LGBTI rights, said the country’s society moved in a positive direction, in the spirit of the European values of respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, solidarity, equal opportunities and tolerance of diversities.
Kocho Andonovski, activist and parade organizer, said the event came as a result of previous years of hideous attacks on the LGBT community.
“We are here today because hate speech has not been punished, nor has the violence on the LGBT center. We are here today because the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy is covering for the first time almost half of the costs for the center, our shelter for the most vulnerable members of our community. We are here today because the City of Skopje has recognized the need for a safe space for our community. We are here today because of you, because of your courage to come here. No one is free until all are freed,” said Andonovski.
The parade was attended by many supporters from North Macedonia and abroad and covered by domestic and global media.
In parallel, a civil-religious march for traditional family values was taking place in the vicinity of the Skopje Pride route.
Nineteen civil society organizations and informal groups of civic-religious platform “Alliance for Life” produced a declaration for the protection of the marriage and the family, and staged a peaceful march in downtown Skopje on Saturday.
They called for for maintenance of the traditional family values, respect of the marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and opposed the redefinition of the family, marriage, gender and sex.
“We are concerned because of the attempts to redefine marriage and family through aggressive propaganda and ideology. Our responsibility before God, conscience and sanctity of life is to defend the permanent moral values of humanity and society: marriage as a union between a man and a woman, family, religion, nation and state,” reads the Declaration.
