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ShareSARAJEVO: Bosnia's first-ever gay festival opens this week amid fears of violence, with homophobia overriding usual divisions among the country's wartime foes -- Muslims, Serbs and Croats.
The Muslim majority is particularly upset about the four-day Queer Festival because it will open in Sarajevo on Wednesday -- during the holy month of Ramadan.
Many others including members of various ethnic political parties have gone as far as declaring homosexuality an illness and the behaviour deviant. Parliament member Amila Alikadic-Husovic drew widespread criticism after declaring that such an "illness should be cured and not supported" but remains unapologetic. "I demand my right to religious freedom, my religion prohibits it," Alikadic-Husovic said, adding she had just recently learned that homosexuality was no longer classified as an illness.
Such statements have been accompanied by a broader campaign of hate which has seen posters declaring "Death to Homos" appear in the capital and a torrent of abuse on Internet forums.
They have been met by condemnation and calls for tolerance from rights groups like Amnesty International and the Organisation forSecurity and Cooperationin Europe.
The OSCE said that it "strongly condemns attempts to incite violence against any group within Bosnia."
The fears of violence are not unfounded in the Balkans, where homophobia is a shared prejudice regardless of ethnicity. At Serbia's first public Gay Pride march in 2001, activists were pelted with stones and beaten up by several hundred ultra-nationalist skinheads in Belgrade.
