LGBTI rights organisation ACCEPT has called on police to investigate the vandalism of banners promoting the Queer Wave film festival in Nicosia’s Kaimakli area, and urged the Nicosia Municipality and the local Kaimakli community to publicly declare that their neighbourhood belongs to everyone who lives there.
Banners for the LGBTQIA+ festival were vandalised on Wednesday night, according to organisers, who described it as an attack on queer visibility in public space.
In a Facebook statement, ACCEPT said the act destroyed more than a piece of fabric. It argued the vandalism targeted the idea that any organiser can promote their event and, more dangerously, that a community can publicly declare its existence under its own name.
“Vandalism is not an opinion,” the organisation said, arguing that anyone who disagrees with the festival has every right to say so publicly and in the open. Tearing down banners in darkness, ACCEPT said, is not disagreement — it is a clear message that some people are not entitled to be visible.
ACCEPT said that message extends beyond the queer community and LGBTI movement to every citizen who wants to know whether public space is open to everyone, or only to those who do not “disturb,” and only to those who hide in the dark to intimidate.
The organisation said the Cyprus Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights guarantee freedom of expression and assembly for everyone — not just the majority — and that the state has a duty to actively protect these rights rather than merely tolerate them. It called on police to investigate the incident with the seriousness warranted by an act targeting a group because of who they are.
ACCEPT said it stands with Queer Wave and everyone creating culture under conditions of intimidation. “Public space belongs to everyone, or it isn’t public — and freedom of expression and assembly isn’t a privilege for the few,” the organisation said.
