Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Banja Luka organized a street action today, October 18, 2023, in Banja Luka as part of the campaign “Sexual Extortion is Corruption. Let’s Break the Silence!”, which goal is to raise citizens’ awareness of the importance of recognizing and reporting sexual extortion, as well as advocating the integration of the concept of sexual extortion into legal policies and anti-corruption strategies.
The citizens of Banja Luka showed interest in this topic, and many said that until now the occurrence of sexual extortion has been kept silent, even though it was happening and that it is necessary to finally speak louder about sexual extortion/blackmail and say STOP!
“I am now retired, but while I was working, there was sexual extortion and sexual harassment in my company, it was just kept silent, that is, like all bad things, it was pushed under the carpet,” said a Banja Luka resident.
Another fellow citizen expressed his opinion that sexual extortion and corruption happen more in times when the economic situation of citizens is worse, when there is inflation, so that some superiors use more vulnerable categories to blackmail them or abuse their positions of power.
“I think that there are especially those phenomena today, and the victims are those who are just looking for a job or who have to keep their job at any cost, get a slightly better salary and the like. This is unacceptable,” said this Banja Luka resident.
Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly research on the prevalence of corruption also showed that sexual extortion most often occurs at the workplace, and even 90% of respondents believe that it most often affects women and girls. At the same time, the largest number of respondents, more than 50% of them, believe that explicit photos of the victim or a close person are used as a basis for sexual extortion.
We remind you that the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Banja Luka already held street actions in Sarajevo and Bijeljina, and after Banja Luka, several other cities across Bosnia and Herzegovina will follow.
The campaign is implemented by the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Banja Luka with the financial support of the Center for Civic Initiatives and USAID.
