Crowds flocked to vigils around the world on Monday in shock at the shooting of dozens of Florida club-goers in the deadliest attack ever on the gay rights movement.
Thousands lined the streets in the central London district of Soho, long a hub for the gay community in Britain, bursting into chants of “we’re here, we’re queer, we will not live in fear” under rainbow flags.
A policeman at the scene estimated the crowd at between 5,000 and 7,000 strong, as other rallies took place in cities from Berlin to Bangkok.
Photo: AFP
“It’s about solidarity, it’s a way for our voice to be to be heard — to try to tell everybody that love wins,” said Julius Reuben, 35, wearing towering heels and a long black dress.
“It made me feel more insecure,” he added. “We shouldn’t have to protect ourselves so much, we should be accepted for who we are.”
The crowd in London released 49 brightly colored balloons into the sky for each one of the victims of Sunday’s massacre at the gay nightclub in Orlando, the worst mass shooting in modern US history.
Standing outside the Admiral Duncan, a pub where three people died when a neo-Nazi planted a nail bomb in a homophobic attack in 1999, Jennifer Hersey, a 36-year-old originally from Texas, wiped away a tear as she looked out onto the crowd.
“It’s amazing, because people could be scared. It’s better that people gather and meet together. Every time that something horrible happens, people come out,” she said.
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn attended the vigil, as did London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim to hold the post.
“It was an attack on our freedoms and our values,” Khan said in a television interview before the rally. “What’s really important is that we stand shoulder to shoulder with the victims and their families in Orlando.”
In Australia, the landmark Sydney Harbour Bridge was lit with the rainbow colors of the gay community flag as hundreds gathered to condemn terror and homophobia.
“This could have happened anywhere,” Paul Savage said at a candlelit vigil for the victims on the busy strip that hosts Sydney’s annual Mardi Gras pride march.
“He could easily have walked into a bar in Sydney,” he said, though he added that Australia’s tighter gun laws were “much more helpful” in preventing the mass shootings that claim hundreds of lives each year in the US.
In Berlin, more than 100 people gathered outside the US embassy to lay flowers, light candles and wave rainbow flags.
And in the Netherlands, the first country to legalize same-sex marriage, hundreds gathered at Amsterdam’s “Homomonument,” composed of three pink triangles, designed to commemorate gay men and women who have been persecuted because of their sexuality.
However, in Moscow a couple were arrested as they tried to leave a tribute outside the US embassy, the RBK newspaper reported.
Islam Abdullabeckov, a social media editor for the newspaper, and his boyfriend, Felix Glyukman, were trying to leave flowers and a sign reading “Love wins — Stay with Orlando” outside the embassy when they were detained, they told RBK.
In an outpouring of solidarity similar to that seen after the Paris and Brussels attacks, social media were awash with messages of support for the families of the victims.
The Eiffel Tower was lit up in rainbow colors and the colours of the US flag in solidarity, as the city still reels from militant attacks in November last year in which 130 people were killed.
In one of several vigils across the US, hundreds gathered in New York’s Greenwich Village on Sunday to leave flowers beside a sign reading “Stop Hate,” and the One World Trade Center’s spire was lit up in rainbow colors.
Leaders around the world sent condolences, with Pope Francis expressing shock at Mateen’s “homicidal folly and senseless hatred.”
US President Barack Obama denounced the attack at the Pulse nightclub by slain shooter Omar Mateen, which also wounded 53, as “an act of terror and an act of hate.”
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Monday condemned the attack and expressed her condolences over the loss of lives in the assault.
Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) said National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) has conveyed Tsai’s message to Kin Moy, director of the American Institute in Taiwan’s office in Taipei.
Additional reporting by CNA
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