Wed 4 Mar 2015 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
Auckland Pride Festival has apologised “for anyone who was harmed” during the Pride Parade, and says it completely supports the right to protest. “The Pride Festival apologises for anyone who was harmed during our event, and completely support the right to protest and, in this case, the protesters’ cause,” it says in a statement. It’s referring to the broken arm a No Pride in Prisons protesters believes she suffered when she was struggling with security. She believes it may have happened when she was pushed to the ground. The trans woman and two other protesters had been moved of the Parade route after unfurling a banner in front of marching police. Auckland Pride Festival says with an event of the size of the Auckland Pride Parade, it also has a legal obligation to respond to any incident that puts pride participants and visitors into harm’s way. “This includes preventing unauthorised entry to the parade route, as it is cordoned off to protect the public from moving vehicles and prevent alarming participating dogs and horses,” it says. “A small group of protesters did not comply with initial request to leave and subsequently physically resisted removal by security and police. In addition to our own eye-witness accounts we have viewed the available footage and are satisfied the response to the incident met with event Health and Safety plan. However, once police became involved it was outside of the domain of event staff.” Pride says it was going to debrief with the security company and also consult with stakeholders as part of the regular post-parade review. “We invite and welcome No Pride in Prison to discuss with us involvement in the 2016 festival. We welcome the conversation and debate but cannot condone any acts of violence or vandalism. It is unnecessary given Pride is providing a legitimate forum for political messages.” In a further statement, it says it has a very clearly-stated application criteria: “eligibility falls into two categories: One category is for individuals, groups or organisations from the rainbow community; the other is for organisations supporting or celebrating the rainbow community”. It says all applications are assessed to ensure that float ideas are in alignment with the mission of the Auckland Pride Festival Inc –to enhance the mana and wellbeing of the rainbow community in Aotearoa. Corrections marched in Auckland Pride Parade for the first time “Inclusion by government departments like the NZ Police and the Department of Corrections have been largely driven by their lgbtiqf staff who, over time, have been instrumental in influencing changes in policies and in some cases legislation around the rights and treatments of people based on their sexual and gender identity,” Pride says. “There is still work to be done around the rights and treatment of trans people in New Zealand. Auckland Pride encourages efforts to create change in this area. We see the Parade and the Festival as being a vehicle for messages of change. “We also hope that the relationships forged during Pride will assist us to facilitate dialogue between affected parties and those organisations and politicians than can make a difference.” Note: while the media releases from Pride were posted their website last week, they were not sent to GayNZ.com Daily News, which is why we have only today published a story.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 4th March 2015 - 1:49pm