In Bucharest Protesters disrupt showing of ‘pro-gay’ film
Demonstrators disrupted the showing of a Romanian-Serb film on Thursday charging it pedals pro-gay propaganda, before police moved on the protest.
A group of hooded youths played loud music outside Romania’s Peasant Museum at the start of the seance after some 30 people from an Orthodox religious association had first protested to defend traditional Romanian values, an AFP correspondent at the scene reported.
“I am protesting against this sort of pro-gay propaganda in a building that symbolises the spirituality of Romanian peasants and which has nothing to do with this sort of ideology,” Anda Barbulescu told AFP.
After the police broke up the demonstration, the museum resumed showing the film “Soldati” (The Soldiers), a Romanian-Serb-Belgian co-production of a love story between an anthropologist and a former Roma prisoner.
Protesters had Sunday night also targeted the opening of a French film on AIDS in the same museum, a centre of popular arts and traditions.
The museum management issued a statement defending the decision to screen the movies “without censoring their content” in the name of freedom of expression.
Romania, which has a conservative Orthodox tradition, only lifted a ban on homosexuality in 2001, long after the fall of the Communist regime in 1989.
