E-mail: kontra@kontra.hr, info@iskorak.org tel.: 091/1680 668, fax.: 01 / 457 33 72



Croatian Women's Network
Tel: +385 98 238 308


PRESS RELEASE



Zagreb, February 28th, 2007


Subject: Threats directed to organizations that promote human rights of sexual and gender minorities

To whom it may concern:

We are writing to you in relation to threats that were directed to the organizations that promote human rights of sexual and gender minorities in last two weeks.

Namely, on the Monday, February 19th, 2007 on a door-bell of the Lesbian Group Kontra’s office an inscription stating “Serbian pigs, today is slaughter day.” was pasted.

Exactly one week later, on Monday, February 26th, on the door-bell of the NGO Forum for Freedom in Education the inscription stating “Death to faggots!!! …Soros” was pasted. The label with inscription was very similar to that pasted to the door-bell of the office in which the Lesbian Group Kontra and the Women’s Centre are working. The label looked the same and the letters were written by the same ink and handwriting as in the earlier case. Furthermore, in the hall of the building where office of the Forum is placed, the spray graphite were written stating “Death to faggots!”, “NDH” [historical term: Independent Republic of Croatia], as well as symbols of “Ustaše” [the term “Ustaše” is in plural and refers to the military squad of the Independent Republic of Croatia that was conforming to Nazi regime during WWII].

Both cases were reported to the police.

Members of the Forum for Freedom in Education recently made public statements that subject matter of sexual education shall not be homophobic, while Lesbian group Kontra is organization that promotes rights of sexual minorities.

On the ground of facts mentioned above we conclude that in this case two criminal offences were committed- the criminal offence Threat taken into conjunction with the criminal offence Racial and Other Discrimination because of persecution of organizations promoting equality among people. According to that we lodged criminal petition before Municipal State Attorney’s Office of Zagreb against unknown offenders today.

We are expecting that police will carry out investigation and promptly find the offenders and that State Attorney’s Office will induce criminal proceedings.

Sincerely yours,

Sanja Juras,
Coordinator of Lesbian group Kontra

Kristijan Grđan,
Coordinator of Iskorak – Sexual and Gender Minorities’ Rights Centre

Bojana Genov,
Croatian Women’s Network