London – Croatia’s president on Monday condemned the burning of an effigy of two men and a child at a festival weeks after the country’s highest court ruled that same-sex couples could foster children.
Zoran Milanovic said the burning of the effigy, which depicted two men kissing, at a festival in southern Croatia on Sunday was “inhumane and totally unacceptable”.
Organisers of the event in the town of Imotski “deserve the strongest condemnation of the public because hatred for others, intolerance and inhumanity are not and will not be a Croatian tradition”, Milanovic posted on his verified Facebook page.
The Imotski carnival organisers did not respond to a request for comment via their Facebook page.
Croatia legalised gay sex in 1977, but the country remains deeply conservative, with more than 80% of the population adhering to Catholicism, according to a 2011 census.