July 18, 2020

Montenegro: LGBT celebrated and then reported hundreds of hate speech cases

topic:	LGBT Rights
located:	Montenegro
editor:	Katarina Panić

Montenegro is the first of former Yugoslav republics outside the EU that has legalised same-sex unions. The country is torn between a homophobic society and the efforts to join the EU.

"The Law on Life Partnership has passed, I honestly didn't think it would, and I still can't come to my senses that this happened in Montenegro. Yet you should also know that an avalanche of hatred and verbal violence started immediately on social networks and I didn't dare to leave the house today," tweeted John Barac, one of the most prominent LGBT activists in Montenegro John Barac.

A margin of 42 MPs in the 81-seat parliament backed the law, which will come into force in a year's time. "We celebrated the first night after the law was adopted. The next day we were already working full steam ahead. We wrote some 300 hate speech reports within 24 hours," Bojana Jokić from LGBT Forum Progres said during the live TV programme on Montenegro public broadcaster, RTCG July 3.

Back in 2013, the Institution of Ombudsman presented to lawmakers in Podgorica an initiative for such a law. The following year the first attempt failed. It took five years for the bill to be tabled in parliament, and it was rejected a year ago once again. The newest decision was made on July 1, the day after the European Commission opened the last negotiating chapter with Montenegro. "Montenegro is one step closer to joining the most developed world democracies!" long-ruling President Milo Đukanović tweeted.

"In a European Montenegro, there is not, and there should not be any room for sexual discrimination," Prime Minister Duško Marković added.

Having two-thirds of citizens consider homosexuality an illness, the authorities passed the latest bill in order to fasten up the EU accession rather than to please the voters ahead of an August election. Campaigners agree it was a historic move toward tolerance, although there is much more to do.

"As long as I am not able, like them (heterosexuals) to fulfil my role as a parent, I will be discriminated in Montenegro because of my sexual orientation," LGBT activist Kristina Ćetković told the BBC.

Those who oppose the new bill, claim the law is imposed by "global world Satanists." They count on predominantly conservative society and fight against undermining traditional values of patriarchy. "After everything they took from us now they want our families," one of the opposition leaders, Nebojša Medojević said.

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