Paris Pride takes place with restricted route due to security concerns
Paris Pride took place today with a restricted parade route due to security concerns.
It was announced earlier this week that the parade would be cut short amid safety concerns following the Orlando Pulse mass shooting which killed 49 and left 53 injured.
People at the Paris parade wore armbands to honour those killed in the shooting in June.
#ParisStandsWithOrlando La #MarcheDesFiertés de Paris rend hommage aux victimes de l'attentat d'Orlando pic.twitter.com/xdjJ10RO1v
— Paris (@Paris) July 2, 2016
Organisers of the parade criticised French politicians and the media for failing to acknowledge that the mass shooting was a hate attack targeted at the LGBT+ community.
The annual Marche des fiertés ran along just a mile and a half in the city centre – from the Louvre to Place de la Bastille, half the length of the traditional route from Montparnasse to Bastille, which had been planned.
The march had already been postponed from late June, as much of the country’s police are focused on the Euro 2016 football tournament.
Around 1,000 police officers were on duty, three times the number at last year’s parade.
Revellers were encouraged to leave children at home.
Organisers criticised responses from President Francoise Hollande who had been accused of playing down the anti-LGBT nature of the attack.
A row also kicked off as a students group of the far-right National Front tweeted support for the Pride parade, saying it was “more necessary than ever after the Orlando homophobe attack”.
A vice president of the Front-National Louis Aliot attacked the student group saying: “The FN doesn’t support Gay Pride, an exhibitionist symbol of a militantly anti-FN communitarism.”
The FN has previously been accused of fostering homophobic violence by aligning itself with aggressive anti-equal marriage factions – though it claims it has since reformed.
The party still includes a number of openly homophobic politicians who have attacked the “evil homosexual lobby” – though vice president Florian Philippot was outed last year by Closer magazine.
The party has previously signalled that it would strip away President Hollande’s equal marriage reforms, with Presidential and Parliamentary elections set for 2017.
Even UKIP leader Nigel Farage has previously ruled out working with Le Pen, accusing her party of “anti-Semitism and general prejudice”.
