Commemoration in Utrecht tonight for victims of Colorado LGBTQ club mass shooting

Tonight, people in Utrecht will commemorate the victims of a mass shooting at an LGBTQIA+ club in Colorado Springs in the United States. Between 7:30 p.m. and 8:15 p.m., anyone who wants to can light a candle or lay a flower at the Gay Monument on the Domplein to commemorate the victims of this hate crime.

On Saturday, a 22-year-old man shot and killed five people at nightclub Q in the American city. Many others got hurt. The United States police believe it was a hate crime against the LGBTQIA+ community because of the location of the mass shooting and the fact that it happened around Transgender Day.

“That people are apparently still so full of hatred against a community to do something like this,” Simon Timmerman, initiator of the commemoration, told RTV Utrecht. He deliberately chose the Domplein as the location due to the memorial stone installed there in 1999. It commemorates the homosexuals persecuted in Utrecht in 1730 and 1731 and states that men and women may choose freedom without fear of persecution.

That is by no means always the case. “People in a gay club have been attacked in a place where they thought they were safe to come together. They had to pay for that with their lives,” Timmerman said. “We feel very connected to the community. It’s in America, but we recognize the negative and annoying reactions here too. People are concerned about that,” America may feel far away, but he feels society in Europe hardening too.

According to Timmerman, the pandemic and now the cost of living crisis is putting more and more pressure on society. “Minority groups are the first to suffer from this. Conservative anti-sounds, which started with President Trump, are finding their way to Europe. You see it in Poland and Hungary, but there are also politicians in our parliament who have these views. I think that we have to be very vigilant about that.”