RIGHTS: Muslim Beauty Queen Challenges Croat Bigotry

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kevin Sullivan

SARAJEVO, Nov 1 1998 (IPS) - A 22-years-old Muslim beauty queen has become the improbable standard-bearer of free speech and ethnic pluralism for Croatia.

Lejla Sehovic, a native of the popular Croatian resort of Dubrovnik, was crowned Miss Croatia at the end of a marathon television extravaganza held at the seaside town of Opatia last month.

Displaying charm and confidence during the competition Sehovic, when asked to sum up her native land for the judges, deftly took the diplomatic route that “Croatia is the most beautiful country in the world.” Duly crowned, she tearfully accepted the homage of studio audience, judges and an appreciative nation.

Only then was it revealed that Lejla, a Croatian citizen, is also a Muslim, whose parents moved to Dubrovnik from Sarajevo in what is now Bosnia-Hercegovina, 23 years ago.

Croatian nationalism is a powerful force, which found a focus in the 1993-94 fighting over the border between Bosnian Croats – who are mainly Catholic – and Bosnian Muslims. The end of the fighting in 1995 did not end the Croat nationalists’ enmity towards Muslims.

Pageant organisers suddenly found a problem, saying they had discovered “irregularities” in the way the jury had reached its verdict. Lejla’s participation in the Miss World contest later this year was put in doubt, and her prize, a new Fiat Bravo car, remained in the showroom.

A hastily arranged second vote was broadcast from a function room at a Zagreb hotel last Sunday, without the big band, cheering spectators and the glitz of the original event. The judges reversed their earlier decision and voted 17-year old Ivana Petkovic – the runner-up at Opatia – as the new Miss Croatia.

She could not be formally crowned: Lejla had given the winner’s tiara over to the care of human rights activists at Croatia’s Helsinki Committee. Ivana had to be content with the presentation of a winner’s sash, while Lejla called a press conference outside the hotel.

Inside the function room Ivana cut a forlorn figure posing alone on a bare podium having secured what was clearly a very hollow victory. Ivana, also a native of Dubrovnik, is not a Muslim.

Critics accused the pageant organisers of buckling under pressure from sponsors who threatened to withdraw from Miss Croatia- related promotions if the title-holdfer was a Muslim. One Radio Television Croatia executive was quoted as saying she would not travel round the world with a Muslim woman representing Croatia. Meanwhile the organisers failed to offer convincing evidence of “irregularities.”

Human rights activists quickly took up Lejla’s case, encouraged by the fact that Sehovic, a business student, is articulate as well as pretty. She has made no secret of the fact that she believes she was dethroned because she is a Muslim.

For rights activists who have campaigned for so long against widespread human rights abuses in Croatia, the attention given to Sehovic’s plight is tiring, even if it does appear to be a clear case of ethnic prejudice.

“There is a certain cynicism evident in the fact that so much publicity has been given to Miss Croatia when there are many more serious examples of human rights violations,” said Ivan Zvonimir Cicak, former president of the Croatian Helsinki Committee, who has defended Sehovic.

“(There are) problems with the media, problems with discrimination, problems faced by refugees seeking to return to their homes — and when we defend some of these cases very often we don’t have any publicity.

“Yet now when the issue is Miss Croatia the publicity is enormous. Still, I’m glad that the media have taken a unified stance, that chauvinism won’t be allowed to prevail.” Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic said last week that the scandal had caused “substantial political damage” to Croatia.

Ms Sehovic told the Bosnian weekly news magazine Slobodna Bosna: “This is my first contact with the fashion runway and I’m glad I succeeded. What happens now will only strengthen me. I won’t give up the title because I won it fairly.

“This only makes me more determined to represent Croatia in the Seychelles in the best light and as well as a person can do for her country.”

Asked to comment on the runner-up’s acceptance of the title she noted dryly, “That’s her private thing. I didn’t know her before and we’re not in contact at the moment. I’ll just say that I would never take someone’s title if I were in her place.”

Nationalist commentators, and the pageant organisers, have accused Sehovic of being an unwitting dupe of opposition politicians. “It’s a pity that one 22-year old girl has allowed herself to be guided by Cicak and the Helsinki Committee,” remarked Miss Croatia franchise holder Milan Seckovic.

Nevertheless, in a compromise settlement reached last Wednesday, Seckovic and the pageant organisers announced that Sehovic would go to the Seychelles in December to represent Croatia at this year’s Miss World contest. Ivana Petkovic will go in 1999.

Writing in the Bosnian magazine Ljiljan, the well-known Sarajevo writer Miljenko Jergovic noted that the treatment of Lejla Sehovic has drawn more international attention than the murder earlier this month of Muslims seeking to return to their homes in a Bosnian town heavily populated by Croats.

But also Jergovic hailed Sehovic’s dignified stance in the face of what he characterised as racist and sexist discrimination. “The young Dubrovnik girl has shown herself to be unbelievably eloquent and psychologically strong,” he wrote. “She hasn’t allowed herself to be silenced by men.

“Lejla now maybe will not be the official Miss Croatia, but she could become the Miss of some better, more honest and finally more beautiful Croatia…”