News / Society

An LGBT festival in Ukraine has been called off after a far-right group surrounded the venue chanting “kill, kill, kill” on Saturday.

The event, which was meant to celebrate equality, was held in a hotel in the city of Lviv, and included film screenings, literary discussions and public events. According to the Guardian, organisers were forced to cancel after around 200 demonstrators surrounded the venue chanting anti-gay rhetoric and throwing stones.

Planning for the event had been swamped with difficulties as neither police nor authorities would give approval of the event, and many venues began pulling out. One of the organisers of the event, Olena Shevchenko, said: “The hotel we had booked for people coming from outside Lviv told us we could not stay there.

“When we arrived, the administrator told us the city authorities had told them we were perverts, they had Googled us and said people like us should burn in hell.”

A court hearing had taken place on Friday evening ruling that all public events should be banned for the entire weekend. As protestors gathered outside the new hotel on Saturday, the 70 participants at the equality festival had to be evacuated by bus.

The city’s mayor, Andriy Sadovy, spoke out about the event on Sunday, appearing to blame both sides in equal measure. He wrote on Facebook: “Yesterday’s events in Lviv are a result of a carefully planned provocation. Participants from both sides were conscious or unconscious parts of the whole picture.”