Homophobic Hooligans go on Rampage in Macedonia

Around 20 hooded hooligans tried to wreck the second birthday party of the centre for support of the LGBT community on Thursday in Skopje, vandalizing the “Damar” cafe in the Old Bazaar area, where the event took place. 

A woman was injured after the hooligans threw a bottle at her head. 

Witnesses said the attack only lasted around 10 minutes but had devastating effects.

“The hooligans entered the cafe and started throwing everything, like bottles, crates…  It was a stampedе. One girl was injured and was taken to the accident and emergency centre. She is fine, but still recovering,” Uranija Pirovska, director of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Macedonia, a host of the event, said.

The victims of the homophobic rampage said they could not see the faces of the hooligans because they wore hoods.

“They were well organized. They had an exact plan of how to enter, what to demolish and when to leave, before the police came,” a witness said.

This is not a first attack on the LGBT Centre in Skopje. On October 24, 2012 when it first opened, the building was attacked and the windows broken.

Last year, a policeman was injured after 10 hooligans in masks threw rocks and bottles at the building.

The centre is financially supported by the Dutch Embassy. The outgoing Dutch Ambassador, Marriët Schuurman, in an interview for BIRN on Tuesday, expressed grave concerns about the rule of law in the country.

The failure of the authorities to react to violence “creates a perception that this is sponsored, or tolerated in the best case, by the government and used as an instrument to make people afraid and try to shut people up”, she said.

Pirovska repeated the same allegation of official complicity to BIRN.

 “I will meet representatives of the EU delegation in Skopje and with all the ambassadors. The attackers responsible for previous events were never found – and that means that the institutions tolerate violence,” she said.

“In Macedonia, the fundamental rights of the LGBT community have no value. Their right to live is endangered,” Pirovska added.