Eight Injured at Sarajevo Pride Festival

Bosnia and Herzegovina's first gay pride festival, which took place Wednesday in the capital city of Sarajevo, was marred when eight participants and journalists were attacked.

Bosnia and Herzegovina's first gay pride festival, which took place Wednesday in the capital city of Sarajevo, was marred when eight participants and journalists were attacked. Police told reporters that dozens of homophobic vandals came to the festival's opening ceremony in front of the city's Academy of Fine Arts, according to the BBC News. Demonstrators chanted "Kill the Gays" and "Allahu Akbar" ("God Is Great").

"When I was getting out of the academy, I was suddenly struck in the back," festival participant Pedja Kojovic told Agence France-Presse. "Three other people then came running and beat me up." A journalist trying to help Kojovic was also severely beaten.

About 50 people participated in the opening ceremony.

Festival organizers say they had been receiving death threats leading up to the event. Sarajevo is a predominantly Muslim city, and religious leaders said the timing of the festival and the holy month of Ramadan was provocative, the BBC reports. Officials with several of the country's political parties have declared homosexuality deviant and an illness.

According to Amnesty International, local publications like Dnevni AvazSAFF have used derogatory language to bash the festival, which ends September 28. Some websites have called for festival organizers to be lynched, stoned, doused with gasoline, or kicked out of the country.

An activist with the gay rights organization Udruženje Q told Amnesty International before the festival that his group did not feel safe.

"Some of us had to find new accommodations because our names and addresses were made publicly known," he said. "We are afraid to use public transport or go out alone. Our dogs are our best protection at the moment. We feel isolated."

Police quelled protesters, though violence still spread to nearby streets. (Michelle Garcia, The Advocate)

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Name: Sarah
Date posted: 9/27/2008 11:47:00 PM
Hometown: Denver, Colorado

Comment:
I am neither Bosnian, nor a Muslim. I would never justify homophobia, but it does not seem as if the response to this festival was fueled purely by homophobia. This festival was exceptionally poorly timed. It took place in the middle of Ramadan, the major Muslim holiday, in the year of the tenth anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, in a war in which people were trying to exterminate the Bosnian people because their ancestors had converted to Islam. Furthermore, Serbia is attempting to join the EU this year, and it seems that Bosnia will be unable to join in large part because of the actions of the autonomous region of The Republika Srpska. Perhaps it should have been timed less provocatively. Bosnia is a highly secular country. Would you support someone who staged an Anti - War protest at a soldier's funeral?
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Name: Vito
Date posted: 9/27/2008 8:42:00 PM
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario

Comment:
sadly my home country is becoming the crib for Wahabi Islamists in Europe. Sarajevo is going in a backwards spiral instead of moving forward for human rights, and the liberal left. All the Islamic propaganda is only transcending to the rest of the country. I will not be surprised when another war starts. It also makes you wonder how free are the Serbs, Croats, etc. who also live in the city, and country.
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Name: CHris Sullivan
Date posted: 9/26/2008 3:23:00 PM
Hometown: Chicago, IL

Comment:
Where Muslims go, violence and death follows. They make Catholics/Evangelicals seem as if they come from a Walt Disney film.

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