Organizers of the Pride event, which celebrates Christopher Street Day (CSD) \u2014 a commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City that became a catalyst for the international gay rights movement \u2014 say participants face threats and intimidation.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThe threats are much harsher online because of the supposed anonymity,\u201d said Lea Krause, one of the CSD parade organizers in Bautzen. \u201cBut it\u2019s\u00a0tough on the street too, simply because you\u2019re face to face with people. And they know exactly who you are, and you also know who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
German federal police say CSD events \u2014 of which there are some 200 scheduled across Germany<\/a> during the spring and summer \u2014 are increasingly targeted by neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist groups. Since the middle of last year, \u201cnew youth groups have emerged in the right-wing scene\u201d that target the CSD events, Germany\u2019s Federal Criminal Police Office said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n A CSD parade in the Bavarian city of Regensburg <\/strong>planned for July had to be rescheduled<\/a> due to threats against its organizers. In the small eastern German city of Wernigerode, a 20-year-old man allegedly threatened to open fire on the local CSD event. Police later found ammunition at the suspect\u2019s house, according to media reports<\/a>. At a CSD parade in June on the outskirts of Berlin, police said they prevented a violent attack on participants amid a counter-demonstration planned by a right-wing extremist group.<\/p>\n During last year\u2019s CSD parade in Bautzen, nearly 700 right-wing extremists<\/a> gathered to disrupt the celebration, which drew about 1,000 people amid a heavy police presence. Many of the counter-demonstrators were minors, according to a report<\/a> from regional domestic intelligence authorities.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had enough, enough of this Pride month, enough of all the rainbow flags hanging everywhere: on schools, town halls, even in the German armed forces,\u201d Dan-Odin W\u00f6lfer, a member of the extreme-right group organizing the counter-demonstration in Bautzen this year, said in an online video. The month, he went on, \u201cdoesn\u2019t belong to the rainbow. It belongs to us. It belongs to the people who built this country, who stand up, work and fight every day for their families, for their homeland. We are proud of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Organizers of the Pride event, which celebrates Christopher Street Day (CSD) \u2014 a commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[31,7219,2000,299,26386,1105,1824,26384,4582,5763,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-236348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-democracy","9":"tag-equality","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-extremism","13":"tag-far-right","14":"tag-germany","15":"tag-hate-crime","16":"tag-human-rights","17":"tag-lgbtq","18":"tag-rights"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114792746376707667","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}