It is the first acknowledgement by a Bosnian court of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, advances the fight against hate speech, and could augur well for aggrieved Bosnians' hopes of seeking protection from state and local institutions. The verdict in the three-year-long case "prohibits any further action" by the defendant "or similar actions that violate or may violate the right to equal treatment of members of the LGBTIQ community." The Sarajevo Municipal Court in April ruled in favor of activists who sued on behalf of the LGBT community against a former assemblywoman who publicly urged state officials to keep "people like this" away from the rest of society. She and other members of Bosnia's LGBT community have spent more than a decade being disappointed by the lack of progress despite the enactment of the Law on Prohibition of Discrimination in 2009.īut a landmark verdict by a court in the Bosnian capital could signal a shift toward greater protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex individuals. It was a total moment of segregation," said Bajraktarevic, who has since become an activist for LGBT causes. "I left the club because I didn't want anyone to perceive me as a predator. In her work as a speech therapist, "almost none of the parents wanted to leave their children with me, and when they noticed I was in the room, would slam the door and leave."Īfter her first trip with her volleyball team, the club told her that, as a lesbian, she either had to quit or change in the men's locker rooms.
Wherever Bajraktarevic went, she said, discrimination followed, creeping into nearly every aspect of life. "It was only later that I realized that this was unequal treatment of me as a member of the LGBT community," she said.
In the end, the medical staff wrote in her file "that I 'felt like a man,' although I never said that." "My whole examination then came down to the question of my sexual orientation," she told RFE/RL's Balkan Service. On a visit to the gynecologist, for instance, after responding to a question about sexual activity or potential pregnancy, she made reference to being a lesbian. For all of Dina Bajraktarevic's adult life, Bosnia-Herzegovina has had a law in place banning discrimination, including based on sexual orientation or gender identity.īut the 25-year-old native of Tuzla, in northeastern Bosnia, has never felt protected, particularly when she was at her most vulnerable.