People in Bosnia are unaware who LGBT persons really are and what they are like, and the goal of the Sunday Pride Parade is to show that they are ordinary people who share the same troubles everyone else faces in the country as well as additional problems because of their sexual identity, Emina Bosnjak from the ‘Sarajevo Open Center’ told N1 on Friday.

“The main message – and I believe this will also be a milestone in understanding who LGBT persons are – is the image that will be sent from this event which is that LGBT persons are not some people who live in a certain part of the country or canton, but that we are citizens who share all these problems which all other citizens have and that we also deal with additional problems,” Bosnjak said.

She said that in Bosnia “only every tenth person knows someone who is openly LGBT.”

In such a situation of unawareness, people can see various images which “present LGBT persons in a false light and bring them down to only their sexual life,” she said.

The event will be highly secured, but articles about anti-sniper units securing it in the media have further “heated up” the situation, which resulted in the sharpshooters becoming the primary topic instead of the promotion of human rights, she said.

It is not unusual that “strong security measures are in place for such gatherings” in the region, she added.