College celebrates Pride Day with flag raising
Lethbridge College celebrated Pride Day on Wednesday with a special flag raising, seminars and various interactive activities to increase awareness LGBTQ student issues on campus.
“When we (president Tara Ludman and I) first came to the college, we didn’t see any (visible) signs the college was inclusive and accepting,” explained Zachary Wigand, vice-president of the LGBTQ+ Club of the Lethbridge College Student Association. “So we wanted to kind of have an event to tell new students we are welcoming, and we are accepting of LGBTQ+ individuals.”
Wigand said they also invited special guest speaker Boban Stojanovic, a prominent Pride organizer in Serbia and LGBTQ+ activist before being forced to flee his home country to come to Canada as a refugee in 2016, to help spread the message that rights won should never be taken for granted.
Stojanovic reinforced that message strongly in an exclusive interview with The Herald on Wednesday just prior to his public speech at The Cave.
“People do take Pride for granted in Canada; especially the younger generation who don’t remember how Pride started,” Stojanovic stated. “The duty of a movement like this is to remind people what can happen.”
Stojanovic said Pride is often banned by the government in Serbia, contrary to the state’s constitutional guarantees of the right to assembly and free speech. And when it does occur, he said, it is often accompanied by threats of violence toward those coming out to take part. The problem is cultural and systemic in Serbia, explained Stojanovic, who has been attacked verbally and physically numerous times for his activism.
“In Serbia being an LGBT person is not criminalized as in some 70 countries around the world, but it is still very tough,” he said. “In Serbia, according to the law, everything is perfect — LGBT are protected. But in reality there is a lack of implementation of the law; so if you are beaten on the street or something like that nothing will happen. You can report the violence to the police, and they will come and do the investigation but judicially they will not react.”
Stojanovic said the violence toward LGBTQ people was already escalating when he first started to think about coming to Canada, but one last beating incident in 2016 convinced him and his partner Adam it was time to flee.
“I was attacked in the middle of the day, in the middle of the street, when two guys approached me and attacked first verbally than physically,” remembered Stojanovic. “But besides them, there was a group of 10 people who simply observed this happening without any reaction. For me, that was a really bad sign of how things had become in Serbia.”
While he is happy to be safe and free in Canada today, Stojanovic warns the rights of LGBTQ people are not something those in Lethbridge and elsewhere can ever stop fighting for.
“I think LGBT people here in Canada have to be more politically involved,” said Stojanovic, “and to be a little bit critical and react to intervene in the system when needed,” said Stojanovic.
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