On Friday, June 8, a poet and gay activist Brane Mozetič and a guest from Canada, poet Jean-Paul Daoust were denied at the entrance to Galerija Café in Ljubljana City Gallery. They were denied with explanation: “You should get used to the fact that this is no longer a place for people like you.”
This was a gesture of obvious homophobia, intolerance and discrimination of the different, which happened in the very centre of the city of Ljubljana. But this event was just one of numerous and frequent expressions of homophobic violence, which has – despite the fact that it happens on personal, random level – systematic causes and state support.
The fact that the government’s label as “the protector of human rights and freedoms” is a farce can be seen from the fact that capital is protected better than the citizens. The fact that article 141 of the Penal Code, which sanctions criminal acts against human rights and freedoms and ensures equality regardless of sexual orientation, does not apply to personal property, is a clear evidence of that. One of the logical consequences of diminishing rights in favour of the parasite capital and his managers is the abovementioned event in Café Galerija.
Even more! Systematic violations of human rights, orchestrated by the state, are evident from:
- systematic violations of basic human rights and freedoms of single women, lesbians and gay men, handicapped persons, foreigners and immigrants;
- systematic and police repression over subcultures and other minorities (gender, sexual, ethnical, cultural);
- more and more aggressive recatholicisation of Slovene society and consequential ideological polarization of society to patriarchal-catholic system of values and liberal system of values, which announces rights on the declarative level and denies them through fascistoid administrative mechanisms on every-day-life level
We would like to bring the unbearable position of sexual minorities in Slovenia to public’s eye, because authority’s empty promises about equalization of their status in society, their silence, their total ignorance and pretended ignorance; church orchestrated spread of moral panic, incessant stigmatisation of minorities, discriminate against them brutally and deny them basic human dignity. With this attitude, the Republic of Slovenia is violating the Amsterdam Treaty (article 13) and other international documents, to which it is bound as EU membership candidate. Even more, it violates article 14 of the Constitution, which gives equal human rights and fundamental freedoms to all the citizens, regardless of any personal circumstance – also regardless of their sexual orientation!
We appeal to freethinking public to recognize each and every human right violation as a threat to own personal freedom!
Tomorrow your freedom will be threatened, too, so participate in political actions, protests and manifestations for protection of constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms today! Join us on Friday, July 6, 2001, at 5 pm in front of Galerija Škuc, Stari trg 21, Ljubljana, where manifestation THE ROAD PAST INTOLERANCE – A MARCH AGAINST HOMOPHOBIA will take place!
– glbt section of UZI
UZI – “Urad za intervencije” – Office for interventions, an umbrella for civil movements
HOMO-BYPASS-2001: THE INTOLERANCE IS OUT!
