Montenegrin LGBT group files 57 police reports over calls to lynch and burn queer people after Podgorica Pride

The Montenegrin NGO LGBT Forum Progres filed 57 reports with the country’s Police Administration on 8 October over hate speech, threats and incitement to violence against LGBTI people on social media.

The organisation, one of Montenegro’s main LGBTI rights groups, found the posts through its regular monitoring of the online space. Most were comments about the 14th Montenegro Pride, which marched through the capital Podgorica without incident on 3 October.

“Although the number of reports is lower than in some previous periods, we are particularly worried that the content reported is considerably more brutal and frightening,” the group said in a statement. Instead of insults and discriminatory remarks, it said, it increasingly sees open threats of physical attack and calls for lynching, persecution and the mass killing of LGBTI people.

The reported comments include calls to attack activists, individuals and the LGBTI community as a whole, invocations of Hitler and of burning LGBTI people, appeals to Putin, and suggestions that tanks be brought in to run over Pride participants.

“We are shocked that such an amount of hatred is still present in Montenegrin society, especially given years of efforts to advance human rights, tolerance and the protection of LGBTI people,” Progres said. Calls for murder, burning and lynching, it stressed, are neither freedom of expression nor legitimate disagreement with holding a Pride march, and require a serious response from the institutions.

The group wants the police and state prosecutors to examine every report, identify those responsible and consider whether direct threats and calls for mass violence amount to criminal offences.

“No one should live in fear of violence because of who they are,” Progres concluded, warning that normalising such threats endangers not only LGBTI people but Montenegrin society as a whole.

The monitoring is part of a project on responding to anti-LGBTIQ hate speech in Montenegro, run by LGBT Forum Progres with support from the joint European Union and Council of Europe programme Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Türkiye.

Source: cdm.me, dan.co.me. English adaptation: gay-serbia.com.