Pristina

And the last stop of this short Balkan tour is Pristina. The week felt good after all, even though it is heavy to do so many visits in such short time. It energized me, as I realise that progress is being made. In Kosovo there was lately quite some media attention: during new years evening two gay guys were beaten up. When they reported this to the police they were harassed by the police officers, about which they raised a complaint. The spokesmen of the police department in Pristina reacted with a statement that homosexuality in Kosovo was still a crime, which is untrue. Pristina is the only entity in this area which has a rather clear anti-discrimination law, which explicitly includes sexual minorites. So the consequense of this all has been that police officers lost their job and the spokesmen was replaced to another area of Kosovo. A lot of media attention was given to the issue, until the moment that president Rugova died.

However it is a fact that the LGBT community lives very isolated. It moves around in small sub-communites, whom hardly communicate with each other. So many efforts are put in building up a community which is capable of defending their granted rights....this is not an easy task!

It was great seeing friends back here. In one and half a year I have seen the confidence of a small group of people growing. For outsiders this might seem like a normal and unimportant thing, but having been involved in these communities for almost two years now I am proud on what these people have reached. Not to forget people here are great fun: we drunk, we sung and we dance like crazy!