Hardline Clerics Savage Kosovo's First Pride Parade

Some hard-line Muslim clerics in Kosovo have condemned the announced first Pride Parade in Kosovo, which is set to take place on 2 October in Pristina.

One imam of a mosque in the village of Shipol near Mitrovica, Fatmir Latifaj, has published a video using insulting expression about the LGBTI community and voicing deep opposition to the planned parade in Pristina.

Using a vulgar insult for gays, he accused them of "staining our history, which has been written with blood" during a sermon in the mosque. "An Albanian does not become a f---t", he continued, using the same term.

Another imam, Husamedin Abazi, has published a video titled "The week of shame" referring to the "Pride week".

The imam accused all the organizations acting on behalf of the Pride Week of working day and night to destroy mankind.

"We all are for human rights. But those that are in the disfavour of mankind should not be seen as human rights," he said.

After the organizers announced that the Pride Parade called "In the Name of Love", would take place in Pristina, the leader of a religious political party also used direct hate speech - which Facebook later deleted.

Gezim Kelmendi, leader of Fjala [the Word], a small religious party, wrote on Facebook that those who should hold parades in Kosovo should be the police or the Security Forces, as people who protect the country, not those who destroy and spread "disease".

"Homosexuals ruin and destroy our country and our people. They aim to spread this disease in our country and present it as something normal in the name of democracy," Kelmendi wrote. "Homosexuality as a disease is the main enemy of the family in particular and all of mankind in general because homosexual couples cannot give birth," he...