Yesterday in Kiwi, during the movie screening, a group of people who prepared an anti-vegan provocative action, entered and started to be violent. It all started when they came into the cafe speaking and laughing loudly and didn't care when we asked them to be quiet and not to disturb the people who came to watch the film. Continuing to act loudly and disturbingly, they pulled out some grilled meat, sausages, fish and started eating them and throwing them at us, and finally they started to smoke. Knowing that all of the above is forbidden here, they were just trying to provoke our friends and disrespect us. We said that they must leave because this is a vegan café and because it is our place and we don't want them to provoke a conflict with their behavior. But they didn't leave and started yelling, laughing, and talking to us sarcastically. They said things like "why are you so aggressive? What about love?” showing their irrespective attitude to vegans and our ideas. (This people were neo-Nazis, participants of "Bergmann" movement, who support fascist ideas. About a month ago they came here at night asked our friend in the next shop about the people who hang out in the café, implied LGBT, foreigners, punks, etc.)
We started to push these people out of cafe, already by force, as the absurd of situation started to pass all boundaries. Hearing shouts, locals from neighboring houses came out and here is the most interesting part. One of the neighbors showed the knife, he said - come out, we will figure everything out. Our friend said that no one will go anywhere, and then one of them took her by her hair and pushed her on the street, pushed her to the asphalt with her face toward the ground. Then the fight started on the street. We called the police. Some neighbors had already showed us their negative attitude a lot of times, because we (the way we look, music that we listen to, ideas we support, and the fact that we don't eat meat) are out of the world to which they are used to, because we act weirdly by their measurements and are not embarrassed of who we are.
At these painful moments, when we were the most vulnerable, they decided to attack. None of them knew what exactly happened, what was the point of the conflict and who provoked it – they were not interested to know, and they are still not interested now. Finally, they had a chance to could find a reason to express their baseless hatred toward us – and they started to blame us, although we were the victims of an absurd and unintelligent provocation by fascists.
Locals took the side of fascists just because in their view we are “different”. They started to say that we are guilty not only of this conflict, but also because we broke their so-called peace – peace of watching TV and eating sunflower seeds. They said that we must leave “their” street, leave the country, do not “establish our procedure”, because in Georgia it’s not accepted to act like we do. They didn’t want to hear anything – they yelled, groundlessly threatened us. One of them attacked with the knife – first toward fascists and after that toward to us.
Surreptitiously Nazis left, got away clean. One passer-by, maybe also local, shouted out an insult in at us, and one of our friends reacted adversely and responded with shouts, and after that this man yelled that he must be respected because of his age and lashed him in the face with his walking-stick which caused a bleeding injury on our friends face.
The police finally showed up, one of policemen was very aggressive, pushed us, yelled with anger, said that we are guilty of what had happened. Some of café workers were brought to police office for interrogation.
In spite of the situation and everyday negative attitude to us and other people, who visit us, café is continuing to work and is ready to accept all costumers regardless of nationality, race, appearance, age, gender, sexual orientation, religious views, etc. Equality is the most important thing for us.
Animal liberation! Human liberation! ¡No pasarán!
During these hard times you can support us just by visiting our café, we will be very grateful if you come to show everyone that here are a lot of us who care about the issue! Also you can spread the information and make a donation for café development, using following details:
Yandex.money wallet : 410013058300865
PayPal :
kiwi.vegan.cafe@gmail.com
