Political rant that I need to get out of my system
This has been piling up for a while. I just need to vent it all out.
OK, first of all, we're less than a month away from the Belgrade Pride Parade. Nice. In case you're not skittish, take a look at how the last one went here.
The organizers asked the Mayor of Belgrade to help out. He's what they call "pro-Europe". An economist, no one you'd normally expect to butt around human rights.
About two weeks ago he held a press conference. A pack of strays bit a woman 11 times. And not just any woman - she's a government official. So our nice, pro-European Mr. Djilas said "No dog will be killed while I'm the Mayor of this city". Fair enough. I like dogs myself. But then he added his own opinion about Belgrade Pride. Sexuality is something to be kept between four walls, and the city will not finance it. So here he is keeping his sexuality concealed:
And sponsoring a Pride Parade. Except it's for straight people only.
Lovely job, my good sir.
And we've had quite a bit of other madness going on too.
During a music festival in South Serbia, called Gucha, a black French woman was kicked out of the tent. Put your fears to rest though, they apologized. "We thought she was a Gypsy." Phew, just when I thought they were racist...
Another example is a leader of a clerofascistic/neonazi organization from Novi Sad (North of Serbia this time), called Goran "Fuhrer" Davidovic. He was sentenced to a fine of 500.000 dinars (5500 Euros) for assaulting a journalist. Except he wasn't. The lawsuit wasn't written in cyrillic, thus his fundamental rights were hurt. A nazi with a Jewish name telling us about his human rights? Wonderful.
But to conclude, I was supposed to be going go Novi Sad this weekend for some workshops. The other day a friend calls me and says I can't go. It's only for lesbians from NS.(!?!?!)
I'd swear we once had a law protecting us from sexual discrimination...
OK, first of all, we're less than a month away from the Belgrade Pride Parade. Nice. In case you're not skittish, take a look at how the last one went here.
The organizers asked the Mayor of Belgrade to help out. He's what they call "pro-Europe". An economist, no one you'd normally expect to butt around human rights.
About two weeks ago he held a press conference. A pack of strays bit a woman 11 times. And not just any woman - she's a government official. So our nice, pro-European Mr. Djilas said "No dog will be killed while I'm the Mayor of this city". Fair enough. I like dogs myself. But then he added his own opinion about Belgrade Pride. Sexuality is something to be kept between four walls, and the city will not finance it. So here he is keeping his sexuality concealed:
And sponsoring a Pride Parade. Except it's for straight people only.
Lovely job, my good sir.
And we've had quite a bit of other madness going on too.
During a music festival in South Serbia, called Gucha, a black French woman was kicked out of the tent. Put your fears to rest though, they apologized. "We thought she was a Gypsy." Phew, just when I thought they were racist...
Another example is a leader of a clerofascistic/neonazi organization from Novi Sad (North of Serbia this time), called Goran "Fuhrer" Davidovic. He was sentenced to a fine of 500.000 dinars (5500 Euros) for assaulting a journalist. Except he wasn't. The lawsuit wasn't written in cyrillic, thus his fundamental rights were hurt. A nazi with a Jewish name telling us about his human rights? Wonderful.
But to conclude, I was supposed to be going go Novi Sad this weekend for some workshops. The other day a friend calls me and says I can't go. It's only for lesbians from NS.(!?!?!)
I'd swear we once had a law protecting us from sexual discrimination...