Slovakia’s LGBTIQ+ Community Needs Human Rights

It seems impossible to fully comprehend Slovakia’s situation for the LGBTIQ+ community, and trying to dig deeper into the human rights issue doesn’t make things any easier. Yet, demographic trends do offer hope for minority communities if only politicians in Bratislava would hear their voices.

On the evening of Wednesday, 12 October 2022 near a popular gay bar in Bratislava, two people were killed and one wounded by a fanatical attacker. The place wasn’t chosen accidentally, this was a targeted attack on the LGBTIQ+ community, which was later classified as a terrorist attack.

The reactions following the attack were frightening. Politicians were even scared to properly name the obviously heinous attack aimed at the LGBTIQ+ society. MP Juraj Šeliga wrote about an attack against “a certain group of people in Slovakia.” Another MP from the biggest governing party OĽaNO, Peter Kremský talked about “a random shooting in the street.”

Even worse, the former prime minister, now-finance minister and the leader of OĽaNO, Igor Matovič after a famous TV moderator came out live on TV, stated on Facebook that he is a “hetero” and added a hashtag suggesting that heterosexuals shouldn’t be ashamed of themselves. This was just a few hours after the attack. In the end, the Prime Minister himself named LGBTIQ+ culture as a “way of life,” implying that sexual preference was a choice, but at least he later apologised.