Palestinian protesters disrupt Toronto gay pride parade

The Toronto Pride Parade kicked off at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 30. Three and a half hours later, it stopped unexpectedly, because the Coalition Against Pinkwashing blocked it, Toronto Star reports.

Amid thousands of people celebrating Canada’s largest Pride, about 30 coalition members stopped the parade about two and a half kilometres long to draw attention to the war in Gaza. Forty-five minutes later, Pride Toronto organizers decided to cancel the rest of the parade.

In a statement Released later in the day, Pride Toronto said the decision not to proceed was primarily due to safety reasons.

“While we deeply respect and defend everyone’s right to peaceful protest, our top priority is the well-being of all participants and spectators,” the statement read. “We sympathize with those who were eagerly awaiting their participation and regret any inconvenience this decision may cause.”

According to StarPolice offered to help evacuate the protesters, but organizers asked that no such action be taken.

The group Queer and Trans-Palestinian Action for Liberation also published a statementtheir support for the coalition’s action.

“As gay and transgender Palestinians, we are appalled by the instrumentalization of our sexual and gender identities in an attempt to justify and whitewash the crimes of the Zionist entity,” it reads. “These crimes against humanity aim to eliminate and obliterate all Palestinian existence, including that of gay and transgender Palestinians.”

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Pride Toronto is no stranger to political tensions.

In 2016, Black Lives Matter protesters disrupted the march, presenting a list of demands to organizers, which were accepted.

In 2011, the city’s financial support was jeopardized when city council members objected to a group calling itself Queers Against Israeli Apartheid planning to march in the parade..

This year, the coalition presented a list of demandswhich has not yet been accepted. The first demand is that “Pride Toronto declare itself an apartheid-free zone,” borrowing the language of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, calling on Pride Toronto to “implement a cultural boycott of apartheid ‘Israel’.”

Among several other demands, the coalition is calling for a complete ban on police from all Pride Toronto events and community spaces.