STA, 11 November 2021 - A priest from the archdiocese of Maribor has been deprived of priesthood after a Vatican church court has found him guilty of sexual abuse of an underage person, the archdiocese says on its website.

Anton Kmet lost all rights stemming from priesthood in June, and the measure was confirmed by the congregation for the doctrine of the faith in October.

The priest was then informed that the procedure was completed on 22 October, "on which day all rights stemming from being ordained priest ceased".

According to media reports, Kmet last served as priest in Makole and also worked in the parish of Studenice, but was dismissed from both jobs in 2019 when an investigation at the church court started.

Janez Lesnika from the archdiocese told newspaper Večer at the time that Kmet was suspected of criminal acts committed while serving as chaplain in Ljutomer in 1998-2001.

Tabloid Slovenske Novice reported he had sexually harassed an underage girl during a trip to the coast, an allegation Koper criminal police opened an investigation into.

However, Lesnika could not tell the STA today whether Kmet had been defrocked because of this criminal act, explaining the procedure before the church court was not open.

The media have also reported that Kmet was sentenced to ten months in prison in 2010 for groping two girls, and served the sentence.

STA, 24 September 2021 - A teacher from a primary school in Maribor opposing the recovered-vaccinated-tested (PCT) rule and campaigning against Covid measures has been fired, media have reported. Firing staff over non-compliance with the PCT rule is possible under a government decision adopted at the end of summer.

The leadership of the France Rozman - Stane Primary School urged the teacher to get tested for Covid-19 twice and since she did not comply, she was banned from conducting her work and subsequently fired.

Schools and kindergartens received instructions from the Education Ministry on how to act if staff does not adhere to the PCT rule just before the start of the school year.

The ministry said that those who were not vaccinated or reconvalescent and refused to get tested did not meet the obligations from their employment contract, and could thus be fired.

The teacher argued that the government decree on the PCT rule was unconstitutional, and the appeal process is still under way.

The school's decision was backed by both the Maribor municipality and the Education Ministry.

The former teacher is a vocal opponent of Covid-19 measures. She is a member of the group of coronavirus deniers and anti-vaccination protesters who stormed the headquarters of public broadcaster RTV Slovenija at the beginning of the month.

On social media she posted a video urging parents not to send children to school because they would be forcedly vaccinated there.

STA, 27 June 2021 - Maribor held its second Pride Parade on Saturday, a week after a similar event was held in Ljubljana, with the city's local authorities and the university joining in for the first time.

The organizers said they had distributed all the 300 promotional bracelets among the participants, as many more people took part.

Featuring rainbow flags and banners, the parade set off from the city's Freedom Square to proceed around the old town, calling for solidarity under the slogan For You, for Me for Us.

"The slogan is mean to express solidarity with everyone in Slovenia, not just the LGBTQIA+ community, mainly as a response to the current developments," said Doris Špurej, the coordinator of the programme of the Maribor Cultural Centre that organised the parade.

"Pride Parades have been important and are in particular important now, mainly in Maribor, where we are still lagging behind when it comes to visibility, safe spaces and access to information," she added.

Matej Behin, a member of the organising team, referred to Hungary's new anti-LGBTIQ law, stressing that "even the rights that have been gained cannot be taken for granted".

The biggest round of applause went to Urban Bren, the vice-chancellor of the University of Maribor, who described the rainbow flag on the chancellor's office as a sign "that we are an open and welcoming university in an open and welcoming town".

The event was also attended by representatives of the opposition Social Democrats and the Left.

Maribor held its first pride parade in June 2019. The event was not held last year.

STA, 25 June 2021 - The Lent festival will get under way in Maribor on Friday in what will be again an in-person celebration of the start of summer in Slovenia's second largest city. Due to Covid prevention measures, there will be no large venues, however the city's streets and squares will be again filled with music over the next nine days.

More than 30 locations in the city will turn into festival venues during Lent that will continue to bring individual events over summer weekends even after it ends in early July. The festival will hence run until 3 September when the Opera Night concert will be held in Main Square.

There will be no large crowds, which the festival attracted prior to the pandemic year of 2020, with the largest venue this year being Rotovški Square that could welcome up to 650 people.

A sold-out concert by Croatian singer-songwriter Gibonni will be held there tonight. Other big names will perform there in the coming days, including bands such as Siddharta, MI2, and Big Foot Mama.

There will also be a special venue dedicated to classical music as well as more intimate concerts, stand-ups and events for children.

The festival coincides with the international street theatre festival Ana Desetnica and Live Backyard events that promote local performers. This year marks the first time it will also coincide with the Maribor Theatre Festival, which will wrap up on Sunday.

Visit the website to learn more

STA, 14 June 2021 - Still Life - Nine Attempts to Preserve Life, a show by the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre directed by Tin Grabnar, will lift the curtain on the 56th Maribor Theatre Festival on Monday. The competition programme starts on Friday.

While many festivals have opted for a hybrid format, the Maribor Theatre Festival, taking place until 27 June, will be held fully in person.

Last year's festival lasted only a day due to the epidemic, just to confer the Borštnik Ring, the country's main award for theatre acting.

The productions from the 2019/20 season selected for competition last year will thus be staged this year.

While ten were originally selected, only eight will compete because two are no longer played at their theatres.

The festival has a strong international dimension and eight foreign productions will be shown as part of the accompanying programme.

Programmes for youth and students will also be available. For the first time, some shows will be played in front of homes for the elderly.

The full programme, in English, is available at https://www.borstnikovo.si/en/programme-fbs/.

STA, 20 April 2021 - Supercomputer Vega was formally launched in Maribor on Tuesday, putting Slovenia on the global map of computer superpowers. It is the first in a series of eight planned high-performance computing (HPC) centres in the EU. 

Vega is a 6.9 petaflops supercomputer, which means it can do 6.9 million billion computing operations per second, and it cost EUR 17.2 million.

Currently the most powerful supercomputer in Slovenia has been set up as part of the national project to upgrade research infrastructure (HPC RIVR) and EuroHPC, a public-private partnership for European high-performance computing.

It is located at the Institute of Information Science (IZUM), whose director Aleš Bošnjak said there were currently only 13 countries in the world with more powerful supercomputers.

"Our supercomputing power is just behind that of the UK and before Russia's," University of Maribor Vice Dean Zoran Ren said at the online inauguration event. He believes it will enable Slovenian and European scientists outstanding discoveries.

European Commission Vice President in charge of digital transition Margrethe Vestager said the first supercomputer launched as part of EuroHPC was an excellent example of cooperation at various levels.

"Supercomputing will enable European small and medium-sized companies to enter the hi-tech economy of the future," she said in her address via video call.

She also pointed to the role European supercomputers could play in supporting artificial intelligence to produce new medicines and save lives.

Janša, who had the honour of turning on the computer by symbolically pressing a red button, also highlighted the role such machines have in addressing contemporary challenges, including Covid-19.

"Vega will enable scientists to discover new materials and components, help them model global phenomena, discover new medicines and medical therapies in the fight against cancer and other serious diseases.

"It will also help companies, mostly those developing the most state-of-the-art products, for instance in pharmacy, car industry or energy. With these and similar steps the EU is resolutely threading the path of strategic autonomy," he said.

Education and Science Minister Simona Kustec stressed top science, technology and advanced industry could develop only on the basis of top knowledge and infrastructure.

"The initiatives such as EuroHPC enable and encourage joint planning and investments in the European research area, thus further strengthening and connecting it."

Vega is named after 18th-century mathematician and physicist Jurij Vega.

It was co-funded by the EU from the European Regional Development Fund, the Ministry of Education and Science and EuroHPC.

The EU's other seven high-performance computing centres will be located in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain.

STA, 7 April 2021 - Historian Mateja Ratej has published a book about the rise of Hitlerism in the broader Maribor area in the 1930s. She sees some parallels between that era and the present health crisis, in particular with regard to the erosion of people's trust in established authorities.

Entitled Swastika on a Cemetery Wall, the book was presented in an online talk from the Maribor Library on Wednesday after being recently published by Beletrina.

Ratej said that Hitlerism in the Slovenian population in the region of Štajerska had manifested primarily in sympathising with how the Nazis were delivering order, creating an illusion of a better life in a German state under Hitler.

Related: Nazis in Maribor, Celje & Bled, 1941

"When Maribor Germans in the 1930s started leaning towards Nazism, they were followed by many of their Slovenian workers and servants out of loyalty, economic dependence and in hope of greater welfare," the historian said.

The spread of pro-Hitler propaganda in that period is discernible in the files of the Maribor District Court, as Hitlerism was a prohibited political activity in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Some of these files are featured in the book, showing how simple slogans about a better life under Hitler managed to create a specific social climate in which tensions had been gradually raised in the decade preceding the Second World War.

Wikipedia, public domain

German soldiers on Maribor ulica

German soliders crossing from Austria into Slovenia, entering Maribor

The Maribor-based historian noted that there had not been much of a response to the book so far.

"It is possible that even 80 years later we are still not ready to accept the fact that many Slovenians, despite all the horrors that we suffered under the Nazi order, had been swearing by that same order."

The author draws many parallels with the current health crisis, including the many conspiracy theories being circulated among people that are attempting to explain reality, as there is no underlying trust in the established authorities.

Ratej added that very similar trends could be seen in newspapers from the pre-WWII period, meaning that the fight for truth and the media war is nothing new, it is merely another instance of raised tensions in society.

"People are, however, not aware of this to a sufficient extent, much like they were oblivious to it in the 1930s," the author warned.

STA, 3 April 2021 - Some 150 protesters gathered in the Maribor city centre on Saturday to protest against anti-coronavirus measures. The rally was organised through social networks. The protesters did not wear face masks and did not keep a safety distance.

"Enjoy while you can", "Today we have classes in a furniture store", and "We are wearing a smile at schools not masks" were some of the banners the protesters carried. One of the banners urged teachers to wear masks and get tested so that schools could be open.

Police officers merely monitored the event and occasionally issued a warning on a megaphone.

Taxi drivers joined the rally by driving their cars in a roundabout and honking their horns.

The group that gathered in Main Square was later joined by a large number of people and together they proceeded to the Freedom Square shouting "Masks off, and the government to jail", the newspaper Večer reported online.

The initiators of the rally also noted that a call by parents, pedagogues and other citizens against testing children for coronavirus had already been supported by 15,000 signatures.

They believe this clearly shows that they do not allow for any interfering with the basic constitutional and human rights of children and other citizens.

The initiatives, including We Will Not Give Our Children and Masks Off, claim that the authorities are destroying the foundations of the rule of law in the name of the epidemic, using repression and destroying the essence of human beings.

Meanwhile, the epidemiological situation in the country is deteriorating. On Friday, 1,296 infections were confirmed in 4,998 tests, pushing the rolling seven-day average of new cases to 1,047.

Currently, more than 530 Covid-19 patients are in hospitals, 16 more than the day before, including 123 in intensive care, up five from the day before. Five people died.

The Wisconsin-based theatre company Theatre Gigante, last seen in Slovenia in March 2019 with a production of Tarzan, "an exotic drama"  by the Maribor-based writer, poet, playwright, singer and songwriter Rok Vilčnik, is now performing it’s latest production to a worldwide audience under full, COVID-compliant conditions.

Inspired by The Decameron, Boccaccio’s classic collection of tales told by folk isolating to avoid the plague, Theatre Gigante  has created a series of performances hosted online under the title A Cosmic Fairy Tale A Day Keeps The Doctor Away. This is composed of 31 fairy tales from the mind of Vilčnik, as told by storytellers from Milwaukee to California, Colorado to Chicago and Boston, Taiwan to Italy and France.

Rok Vilčnik. Photo Urška Lukovnjak CC-by-SA.-3.0-unported

The stories – which touch on hopes and dreams, beginnings and endings, many questions and few answers – cover a wide range of moods from the playful to philosophical. Each is from two to 12 minutes long, and is available to view on Vimeo throughout the month of March, to be enjoyed over days or binged in an evening or weekend.

Photo: Theatre Gigante

Rok Vilčnik’s Slovene texts have been translated by students of Translation Studies at the Faculty of Arts, the University of Maribor, lprimarily Ana Arnejčič and Nejc Golob, under the mentorship of Professor Melita Koletnik. The translations were then revised and edited by Isabelle Kralj. The production is supported by visual design from Justin Thomas and music by Frank Pahl, seen below.

Tickets cost $31, or just under €26, and for that you gain access to the performances online and can enjoy them for the rest of the month, becoming more familiar with the work of a local author, while also strengthening the links between Slovenia and the world. Tickets can be found here, while you can read more about the show here.

STA, 1 March 2021 - Underage secondary school students from the Maribor area who participated in a protest urging return to in-classroom learning in early February have been issued court summons for the purpose of answering charges of violation of the communicable diseases act, the We Demand School (zahtevamo šolo) initiative confirmed for the STA on Monday.

Lars Podkrajšek of the initiative announced resistance against such "intimidation".

According to the information known so far, a total of six underage persons have been summoned.

"They allegedly violated Point 14 of the first paragraph of Article 57 of the communicable diseases act, so the police initiated charges against them before the Maribor District Court. By gathering they are said to have posed considerable threat to public health in Slovenia even though they wore protective face masks and heeded physical distance," Podkrajšek pointed out.

The allegations will be challenged in court, he said, adding that if necessary, the initiative would seek legal recourse before the Constitutional Court.

"We will not let it happen, this intimidation against youth because they wish normal schooling in a way that would be best for them," he said.

The initiative believes that such summons, which were first reported by private broadcaster POP TV over the past weekend, will be issued to more persons since the six students received them on Friday and it is possible others are still on their way.

Similar rallies for return to brick-and-mortar schools were held in a number of other cities in Slovenia, but so far, only Maribor students have been summoned. If there are any others, the initiative urges them to contact the organisation to face the matter together.

Podkrajšek finds such measures unacceptable. He believes there is a trend in Slovenia of sanctioning those who oppose the current government. The summons target those who do not agree with the actions by the Education Ministry, he said, describing Education Minister Simona Kustec as "completely passive".

The initiative will continue to strive for a return of all secondary school students to in-classroom learning as soon as possible. Currently, only final years of secondary school and those attending lower occupational training programmes are allowed to be educated in person apart from primary school pupils.

"Smaller protest actions are in the making which will start to take place in the event the government does not make a decision on Wednesday for all secondary school students to return to school in a week or two," Podkrajšek said.

Violation of Article 57 of the communicable diseases act carries a fine of between EUR 400 and EUR 4,000. If the offence is deemed particularly grave, it could lead to heftier fines up to EUR 12,000.

The Maribor Police Department said that five persons were issued a fine of EUR 400 via mail in connection with the 9 February rally in Maribor. The police also brought charges against four underage individuals before the competent district court.

The police said that some 50 people attended the rally of which nine, holding posters or other objects demonstrating the purpose of the gathering, were ID'd as they violated Article 57/1-14 of the communicable diseases act, which refers to a temporary ban on gatherings.

They were all notified of the offences and those of age were informed the fines will be mailed, whereas the underage participants were told complaints will be initiated against them in line with the law, the police said.