{"id":6495,"date":"2021-01-09T09:25:49","date_gmt":"2021-01-09T09:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=148037"},"modified":"2021-01-09T09:25:49","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T09:25:49","slug":"apparent-body-shaming-shows-even-kosovos-top-official-must-endure-disgusting-misogyny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/09\/apparent-body-shaming-shows-even-kosovos-top-official-must-endure-disgusting-misogyny\/","title":{"rendered":"Apparent Body-Shaming Shows Even Kosovo’s Top Official Must Endure ‘Disgusting Misogyny’"},"content":{"rendered":"
Just weeks before next month’s snap elections, Kosovo’s interior minister and a leading voice in one of its top parties has been accused of taking a sexist, body-shaming swipe at the Balkan state’s most powerful woman.<\/p>\n
Agim Veliu said he didn’t know that Vjosa Osmani, Kosova’s acting president and parliament speaker, was “so big that she needs a space as big as the presidency [of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) and] that [the leadership] should be removed [in order] for her to come [back and join the party].”<\/p>\n
Veliu was referring to Osmani’s demand that the LDK’s top leadership resign before she returns to the party in which she served as a deputy chairwoman. She was expelled from the LDK in June after disagreements with its presidency.<\/p>\n
In Veliu’s full comments, published on January 5, a journalist follows up by asking what he means by calling Osmani “big.”<\/p>\n
“The way I say it,” he responds.<\/p>\n
Asked whether he regards that as insulting language, Veliu says, “She considers herself big if she thinks a [LDK] presidency should be removed [from office] for her to come [rejoin it]. She considers herself to be big.”<\/p>\n
Asked to further explain, he declines: “No, no, that’s all I’m saying. I don’t want to complicate it further.”<\/p>\n
‘Bullying,’ ‘Misogyny’<\/strong><\/big><\/p>\n It’s unclear how perceptions of misogyny or sexism might affect voters in a region where many patriarchal norms and stereotypes against women persist.<\/p>\n “Life in politics is seen as a life dominated by men,” Luljeta Demolli, executive director of the Kosovar Gender Studies Center, told RFE\/RL’s Balkan Service. “And it would be better for Agim Veliu to support women entering politics with more democratic language and not such language, because we clearly see that they are afraid of women [and] afraid of women’s votes.”<\/p>\n Osmani has, however, had more important things to think about than Veliu’s seemingly sexist swipe at her.<\/p>\n This week alone, the 38-year-old politician and professor of international law has dissolved the legislature after the Constitutional Court declared the ruling coalition illegitimate, scheduled new national elections, and urged the incoming U.S. administration<\/a><\/strong> to review Kosovo’s recent “pledges” to Washington regarding mainly economic issues with Serbia.<\/p>\n But an Osmani adviser, Egnesa Vitia, took to Facebook<\/a><\/strong> to demand Veliu’s “immediate dismissal” over the remarks. Vitia said the comments were “unforgivable, intolerable…disgusting” examples of “bullying” and “misogyny.”<\/p>\n