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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Monday, June 29, 2015

Police fire rubber bullets at gay pride parade



Islamists Crack Down on Free Speech

  • The Islamist Turkish government tries to tighten their grip on yet another part of their society.  This time the free speech of Gays and their supporters are attacked.


(CBS News)  -  Gay rights advocates have gathered and marched for a few years now in Istanbul in what many have come to dub the largest gay pride event in the Muslim world.
This year, however, Turkish authorities were having none of it.
Police fired water cannon and rubber pellets at crowds gathering to take part in the pride march near the city's Taksim Square on Sunday, according to Reuters and multiple social media reports.
Although no official reasoning has been given for why this year's attempt at a parade was attacked, it happened to fall in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and many suspect the country's religious conservatives firmly objected to the public display.
People run as Turkish riot police uses rubber bullets and tear gas
to a Gay Pride march on June 28, 2015. 

Unlike most other Muslim countries, homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey. There is, however, widespread homophobia in the country, Reuters reports.
The Istanbul LGBTI Pride Week Committee, a group that organized the series of events during the 23rd Pride Week, said the 13rd Istanbul LGBTi Pride Parade, which was scheduled to start at 5 p.m. on June 28 at Taksim Square, had “suddenly been banned by the Istanbul Governor’s Office using the month of Ramadan as the reason without any announcement.” 

Police attacked people with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon, the committee said in a press briefing at around 5:30 p.m. on June 28, adding that all entries to and exits from the Taksim Square and İstiklal Avenue had been shut down.

The first LGBTI Pride Parade in Turkey was held in 2003 with only 30 people at-tending the event. This number increased to around 5,000 attendants in 2010 and rose to more than 10,000 in 2011. 

The participants of the parade then rose to 20,000 in 2012 a year before about 50,000 people attended the parade in 2013, the same year the Gezi Park demonstrations struck the country with millions taking to streets to protest the unjust policies of the government. The Gezi park protests had erupted as a sit-in against the demolition of a central Istanbul park near the Taksim Square, the only leafy area of the city center, for the construction of a shopping mall in the form of military barracks.
Read More . . . .  and More . . . .


Turkish police using water cannon on Gay Pride Parade.

Can I watch?
Gay is not my thing.  My fantasies run toward Salma Hayek and
Kaley Cuoco.  But to each their own I say.

(Haaretz News)

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