Greek leaders condemn youth mob heckling of trans duo

ATHENS, Greece: Greece’s prime minister and president on Monday condemned a mob heckling of two transgender people in Thessaloniki that came after a landmark same-sex wedding law, and sparked several arrests.

Thessaloniki “was always a historic crossroads of cultures and ideas,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a speech launching his conservative party’s campaign for European parliament elections.

“Intolerance should have no place in the center and districts” of the city, he said.

President Katerina Sakellaropoulou had earlier in a statement said the incident at the weekend “is unbecoming” of the Greek state, and that violence “against citizens and political figures over their identity and choices” would not be tolerated.

According to the police, two 21-year-old transgender people were hunted down by scores of youths on Saturday evening on Thessaloniki’s central Aristotelous Square.

The mob reportedly insulted, spat at and threw bottles at the duo, who took refuge in a restaurant until the police arrived.

Twenty-one people were arrested, half of them minors.

The incident came less than a month after Greece legalised same-sex marriage and adoption in a bill promoted by Mitsotakis’ conservative New Democracy party.

The reform was strongly opposed by the powerful Orthodox Church of Greece, some of whose members have threatened to shun lawmakers who voted in favor.

Nearly a third of Mitsotakis’ MPs voted against or abstained, but the law was broadly approved with support from socialist and left-wing parties.

Some 4,000 people had demonstrated against the reform outside parliament a few days before the vote, many of them brandishing religious icons and crucifixes.

A few days after the law was passed, the first wedding between men was held in an Athens district under police protection after the couple said they had received threats to their safety.