Author: team

Coalition for the fight against hate speech and hate crimes: Homophobia and transphobia have no limits – yesterday Zagreb, today Sarajevo

The Coalition for the fight against hate speech and hate crimes strongly condemns the homophobic attack on UDIK activists, and warns that the practice of not processing the attacks on LGBTI persons, activists that we witness since 2008 until this day is a shame for the BiH institutions, and should be stopped. We ask the police and judiciary of Canton Sarajevo to, in an adequate and timely manner, react, investigate and process this hate crime, threats and attacks on LGBTI activists that have already been reported during 2015 and 2016, and, before that, the attack on Merlinka Festival in 2014.

Federation BiH and Brčko District to eliminate discrimination of women miners from their labor laws

Sarajevo Open Centre, a few days ago, filed requests to examine the violations of the Law on Gender Equality to the Gender Centre of Federation BiH, BiH Agency for Gender Equality and a complaint to the BiH Ombudsman Institution, regarding the existing discriminatory provision in the Labor Law of Federation BiH and Brčko distrikt, that prohibits women the work on underground jobs (in mines).

SOC filed an appeal to the BiH Constitutional Court for the Merlinka case

Upon successful completion of the fifth International queer film festival „Merlinka“ that went by peacefully, with dignity and no incidents, with high number of police officers and security, we want to remind the public of the devastating fact – the lack of prosecution of the attack perpetrators during the Festival Merlinka, on 1 February 2014.

Our personal is political too: About fear, activism and visibility

On the second day of Merlinka Festival, held on 28th of January in Art Cinema Kriterion, panel discussion named Our personal is political too was held. Naida Kučukalić was moderating the discussion and participants were Nera Mešinović (activist from B&H), Nina Đurđević (photographer from Croatia) and Marino Sorel i Entity from Croatian queer art group House of Flamingo. Aim of discussion was to answer the questions of coming out in conservative and homophobic society, and in what way individual activism changes the status quo that many LGBT people are forced to accept.

They care: What messages did famous persons send out from Merlinka Festival

Last Saturday, International Queer Film Festival Merlinka closed its doors for the fifth time. This year, there was record attendance of over 500 people. In the attendance there were some well-known people from political and public life. With some of them we managed to have a talk and here are some of their messages.