Today, 07:47 • 2 minutes reading time
LEAD – An estimated 25,000 people attended the first official edition of Pride Leiden on Saturday. That says a spokeswoman for the municipality. Due to announced protests, an emergency ordinance was briefly in force on Saturday morning around a library in the city center, but according to the municipality, no disturbances took place there.
In the afternoon there was a boat parade on the Leiden canals, which according to the municipality was ‘joyful and exuberant’. 21 boats sailed along and hundreds of people stood along the side in the historic city center. Bridges were decorated with rainbow flags. The ‘canal parade’ ended at the Beestenmarkt, where a music festival was held.
Lorenzo van Beek of the organization said to media partner Sleutelstad. ‘In 2023 it will be exactly 55 years ago that the Leiden Student Working Group on Homosexuality, the predecessor of COC Leiden, was founded. It is also forty years ago that Pink Saturday was held in Leiden. A great opportunity to start a new pride tradition.’
The origins of the worldwide pride movement lie in the Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York, where gay men, lesbian women and especially trans people and drags decided to fight back when the police evacuated the pub of the same name with a heavy hand. The riots are seen as the starting signal of the contemporary emancipation movement for LGBTI+ rights.
Because of the Pride, Leiden drag queen Dina Diamond came to read to children in the library on Nieuwstraat on Saturday morning. Because the municipality feared that public order would be seriously disrupted due to the announced protests, the new mayor Peter van der Velden instituted an emergency ordinance.
In the end, just over ten people demonstrated on a square next to the library against the reading hour by the drag queen, including Forum for Democracy MP Gideon van Meijeren. A little further on, more than a hundred people took action against that demonstration, says the municipality spokeswoman. According to her, there were no incidents and the reading hour could be completed ‘in a good atmosphere’.
The police say that no arrests have been made in connection with the activities in the library. On Saturday afternoon, two people were arrested in the city center for insulting an officer and assaulting another officer, a spokesman said.
2023-09-03 05:52:34
#edition #Pride #Leiden #attracts #visitors
