Three injured at Bosnian gay film fest

An employee at a Bosnian cinema says "10 to 15 hooded people wearing balaclavas entered the movie theatre" and disrupted a LGBT film festival.

Hooligans wearing hoods and balaclavas injured three people when they burst into a movie theatre hosting a gay film festival in the Bosnian capital.

"Several hooligans entered the Kriterion cinema during the festival. Three people were injured and taken to a hospital, but their lives are not in danger," a police official, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP on Saturday.

The official said the police were gathering information about the incident and would decide later whether charges would be filed.

Organisers of the three-day event, which opened on Friday, could not be immediately reached for comment, but a cinema employee said "10 to 15 hooded people wearing balaclavas entered the movie theatre."

The hooligans "did not break anything, but they were yelling and intimidating participants who attended a debate which followed the screening of a movie", he told AFP.

The festival, dubbed Merlinka and organised by both Bosnian and Serbian gay rights groups, plans to show some 30 movies on the rights and culture of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Bosnia is a largely conservative Muslim country and the capital Sarajevo has usually been hostile towards hosting events linked to homosexuality.

The only attempt to organise a gay pride march and a festival in 2008 ended up in violence which left eight people injured.

At the time dozens of radical Islamists attacked the participants at the opening of an exhibition on the eve of the march, which in the end did not take place.


2 min read

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Updated

Source: AAP



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