More than 20K attend Slovakia vigil after LGBTQ bar shooting
washingtonblade.comA vigil held Friday evening in the Slovakian capital city to honor the two victims killed and a third who was badly wounded in a shooting outside of the Tepláreň bar, a popular LGBTQ establishment in the old city, was also attended by the nation’s president and the European Parliament’s vice president.
Organized by the Iniciatíva Inakosť, an LGBTQ NGO, there were more than an estimated 20,000 people, according to officials. The murders shook the tight-knit Slovakian LGBTQ community and its allies.
Slovakia is a fairly conservative European Union member country where same-sex marriage is not legal. A spokesperson for the Polícia Slovenskej republiky, the country’s national police force, said that his agency has classified the shootings as premeditated murder, motivated by hatred of a sexual minority.
19-year-old Juraj Krajcik, the radicalized son of a prominent member of the far-right extremist Vlast party, had left social media posts filled with anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ messages including a so-called “manifesto” which the gunman had posted prior to the rampage.
