Berlin attack will weigh on Copenhagen Pride, says LGBT+ Denmark head

One person died and several were seriously injured after a crowd was struck by a vehicle at a Pride event in Berlin on Saturday, an incident German police are treating as an Islamist terrorist attack.

Susanne Branner Jespersen, secretary-general of LGBT+ Denmark, called the attack “distressing” and “tragic,” telling DR that another assault on a Pride event was hard to accept.

The Berlin attack comes two weeks before Copenhagen Pride, and while Jespersen does not expect it to alter the Danish capital’s event, she believes it will affect the LGBT+ community there.

“Everyone will be affected by this. But I also think it will bring more people out. We’ve seen that in recent years—when these things happen, we stand together and try to be there for each other more,” she said.

Jespersen also voiced concern over how the threat of attacks affects individual LGBT+ people.

“Some feel hopeless, some get angry, some withdraw. Of course it creates more fear in daily life, knowing you’re a target of someone else’s anger, and you don’t know where that anger is or when it might appear,” she said.

“We’re just people who want to live as we are, and I simply don’t understand why that fuels so much hatred.”

She cited previous attacks, including the 2022 assault on an LGBT+ bar in Oslo that killed two, and the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, where 49 died.

“It’s tragic that as a movement we keep being targeted by these kinds of attacks, which feel like they keep happening again and again,” Jespersen said.

“We have annual briefings with PET [Denmark’s security service]. We know there’s a threat, and that the danger is particularly high from far-right extremist groups. So this is a repeat of what happened in Oslo. It’s quite wild that this is a danger you have to live with.”