Two people suffered head injuries when several masked men entered Kino Kriterion in Sarajevo on Saturday during the International Queer Film Festival ‘Merlinka’. Several days after the attack, it is still not clear why the police did not secure the area, since the gathering was announced a month earlier. While nongovernmental and international organizations have condemned the attack, there have been no reactions from ruling political parties.
On Monday, the police were not prepared to answer the question as to why members of the Ministry of Interior of Canton Sarajevo did not provide security for the ‘Merlinka’ festival.
‘’We made public what we had. When there is something new, we will inform our public’’, said Spokesperson of the Ministry of Interior Irfan Nefić.
Jasmina Čaušević, one of the organizers of the Queer Festival ‘Merlinka’, said that the festival announced to the police one month before it began, when specific security agreements were agreed upon.
Police patrols followed the official opening on Friday, but not the announced discussion on Saturday, when a group of 14 masked men attacked participants of the festival and injured several people. Čaušević said:
‘’We really hope that we will find out who these attackers were and we expect that the police will do their jobs and to investigate why the police was not there, how the attackers knew that the police were not there, because for it is very symptomatic that they entered so freely, beat up people and just left’’.
The last day of the festival on Sunday was not cancelled, thanks to the support of Sarajevo citizens who came to Kriterion to support the film festival. One of them was journalist Almir Panjeta, who came with his family:
‘’We wanted to say that we as a family are not afraid of people, nor any visitor to film screenings or discussions. We want to say that we are afraid of those ‘normal’ people who use force and beat up people because they want to establish their own order in Sarajevo.
Nearly all international organizations in Sarajevo condemned the attack at the ‘Merlinka’ festival. Apart from Naša Stranka, no other political party has made a public statement on this event.
‘’It is obvious that this has become a rule that people of different sexual orientation are not permitted to organize any type of cultural or other event in Sarajevo. I think that the government is not doing its job, and that it is in some way complicit in inhibiting the expression of sexual minorities’’, said Srđan Dizdarević from the B&H Helsinki Committee.
(Source: Slobodna Evropa)
