On Saturday, Ljubljana hosted the “Pride Parade” of the LGBT+ community, which has taken over the whole month of June in recent years. Apart from the usual shenanigans that we are used to at such events, this year, certain contradictions stood out, such as support for Palestine and the choice of Janković as one of the main speakers.
The main speakers at the parade’s main event, which took place in Congress Square, were the Speaker of the National Assembly, Urška Klakočar Zupančič, the Minister of Solidarity-Based Future, Simon Maljevac, and the Mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković.
The latter is certainly an interesting choice of speaker for an event that is supposed to be about “resisting the normalisation of hatred” and “protesting against systemic silence”, given that he is a close friend and collaborator of certain statesmen who are extremely reluctant to such manifestations, but let’s come back to that later.
Given that the main purpose of the event was supposed to be to combat homophobia, it was particularly striking to see the huge Palestinian flag that the organisers had hung next to the stage where the speeches and performances were taking place. The LGBT+ community, of course, operates within the contemporary left-wing networks that are passionate supporters of Palestine in the current Middle East conflict, but it is still a slightly strange decision. In Israel, gatherings such as the one that took place in Ljubljana on Saturday, go on more or less unhindered, while the same cannot be said of Gaza; still less can it be expected that Hamas would accept or reciprocate such support for same-sex marriage, for it openly despises it.
In Gaza, homosexuality is considered a moral depravity
Hamas treats the LGBT+ community in Gaza in an extremely hostile and repressive manner; homosexuality is criminalised, and repression includes arrests, torture, family ostracism and potentially violent deaths. LGBT+ people have no protection before the law, no public organisations or legal protection, and therefore live in very precarious conditions. Under legislation still partly based on the British Colonial Penal Code of 1936, male homosexuality is officially criminalised in Gaza. In practice, Hamas interprets these laws even more harshly, treating homosexual acts as a grave moral depravity punishable by ten years in prison.
There are also numerous reports of arrests, torture and harassment of people suspected of homosexuality by Hamas. Indeed, activists from international human rights organisations such as the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have cited cases of arbitrary arrests, extortion and even torture. For example, in 2016, one Hamas commander, Mahmoud Ishtiwi, was tortured and murdered for alleged homosexual relations. And in 2022, Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, a Palestinian, was beheaded for his sexual orientation.
Zoran Janković, a supporter of the LGBT community who is friends with “homophobes”
To return to Janković, he defends and supports the LGBT+ community, but at the same time, he has links with the very people who are fiercely opposed to it in their own countries. It is therefore rather strange that Janković is the one who is invited by the LGBT+ community to be a guest and speaker at their events, given that they are supposed to be fighting homophobia everywhere in the world. Janković, as we know, has good political relations with the President of the Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik. It apparently does not bother him that Dodik announced in March 2023 an otherwise perfectly common-sense law that would ban LGBT groups and persons from kindergartens, schools and universities, thereby protecting ‘traditional family values’.
As a guest at the Budapest Demographic Summit, Dodik also spoke out strongly against LGBT organisations, accusing them of imposing their values on society, while stressing that there are only two sexes and that a woman is a mother and a man is a father. Perhaps Janković could learn something from his political friend in this respect, instead of handing out “LGBT-friendly” certificates to kindergartens in Ljubljana. As we know, Janković is also quite sympathetic to Vladimir Putin and to Russia, where various pride parades are out of the question, and LGBT propaganda is also forbidden by law. Well, the organisers of the Pride Parade are probably well aware of all this, but they obviously have other, perhaps financial, interests in applauding Janković as a great champion of same-sex rights. What is less understandable is the support for Hamas, but apparently, with this, they are only emulating current left-wing trends, which are often difficult to understand from the point of view of common sense and logic.
A. S.
