By Kristine Garina
Chairperson of the Riga Pride
Organising Committee

RIGA, May 8, 2008  –  Talking about illusions… We have gay-themed TV series like Will & Grace on TV.  We even have Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and it’s widely popular and everyone watches it.  But it’s just something out there, not here.

It’s okay to see gay people on TV and have a laugh at how funny those guys are and how they can entertain us if we choose to switch on the TV.  We can always switch them off if we don’t want to see them any more.

But that’s not real life.  In real life you can’t switch people on or off as you please.  Gay people are out there whether some people want it or not – and they surely won’t disappear at the press of a button.  That’s bad news for the Riga City council.

My personal illusions are way out of hand, yet in terms of the work Mozaika is doing I thought I saw things pretty clearly.  Surely we expected some troubles when organising (or trying to organise) a Pride Parade in this country, especially doing that for the third year now.

In 2008 aren’t we better prepared, more experienced and even armed with a decision of the Supreme Court stating that the pride parade ban by the Riga City Council in 2006 was illegal?

Following the legally required procedure we applied to the administration of Riga’s Gardens and Parks to get a confirmation that our chosen park is available on our chosen date.  Trying to build a “pride park” tradition in Riga, we want to stay in the same park where we were in 2007 – it also suits us nicely having a stage and being centrally located. Our chosen date – also trying to build a tradition – was the first weekend of June. The parade itself falls on Saturday May 31.

We received another pointless reply from Riga’s Gardens and Park stating nothing.  They haven’t answered a single question we asked them – from what time until when Vermanes Garden (the park where we held our parade last year) is busy, to when the application for this event was handed it.

They haven’t answered what kind of events are planned in other central parks and at what times. They just repeat what they have told us officially and unofficially – we have to move our plans out of the city centre and accept anything they offer us.

The general attitude is quite patronising – it is as if they were doing us a great favour by allowing us to “carry out your event” even on the outskirts of Riga.  They don’t even mention the name of that “your event” in their letter.  However, they openly announce that there’s nothing they can do since they are an administrative structure controlled by Riga City council.

We went ahead and applied to the Riga City council anyway, as the structure (Gardens and Parks) which is legally required to give us their consent is obviously unable to make any decisions.  It can’t even do the simplest thing – tell us what park is booked, when and by whom on the May 31.

This time Riga City council replied quickly.  They basically told us that summer plans carried out by their official Cultural Department have not been finalised yet and therefore the availability of parks might change according to that.  The park we’ve chosen is booked all weekend of May 31 – June 1 by the Cultural Department that plans to build their “City of Children” to celebrate International Children’s Day.

They quote the law stating that a march or a demonstration can be prohibited if it might be obstructive to another event that was registered earlier.  Since it’s all the same City Council and their official Cultural Department, there’s no doubt they have all the right instruments in their hands to make their events “first” in line.

But that leads us to another problem – as soon as we hand in another application for another centrally located park, the Cultural Department might as well “finalise” their summer plans further and create other events in other parks to prevent our event. Of course, how convenient it is in the current environment in this country to use International Children’s Day to switch that TV button and make gay people disappear out of the city centre and therefore out of sight.

We all live in an illusion.  Or at least I do.

Riga Friendship Days and Gay Pride is between May 30 and June 1, with the Pride 'march for equality' on May 31.

■ From Kristine Garina’s Riga Pride blog

SEE ALSO

Venue for Gay Pride March Confirmed by Riga City Council.  An agreement has been struck between the Riga City Council and organisers of this month’s Gay Pride for the location of the march, the Latvian press reported yesterday.  (UK Gay News, May 14, 2008)

Riga Gay Pride 2008: In a Park Behind the Fence – Again?  The office of Latvian Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis and Integration Minister Oskars Kastens have both said that next month’s Riga Pride and March for Equality should take place in an enclosed park as last year at Vermanes Park in central Riga.  UK Gay News, April 25, 2008.

LINK

Mozaika website (English)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.  

Posted: 9 May 2008 at 00:00 (UK time)