IN Estonia a gay black man is bound to attract attention, much of it hostile. Black and Asian faces are rare and until 15 years ago homosexuality was a crime punishable by jail. It is still rarely discussed.

When Hans Glaubitz, the openly gay Dutch ambassador, demanded a transfer last week from the Estonian capital Tallinn after verbal harassment and threats to his black Cuban boyfriend Raul Garcia Lao, it exposed an underbelly of intolerance and homophobia in the Baltic states.

“It is not very nice to be regularly abused by drunken skinheads as a ‘nigger’ and to be continuously gawped at as if you have just stepped out of a UFO,” Glaubitz said. “Estonian society is far from ready to accept two men, especially if one is black.”

Abuse of the couple had intensified after a local magazine criticised the ambassador’s appointment as a deliberate provocation by the Dutch government.

A spokesman for Bernard Bot, the Dutch foreign minister, said: “In some post-communist countries there is a problem accepting minorities whether they are black, gay or whatever. We knew about the problem before we sent the ambassador but things turned out nastier than expected.”

Estonians are still coming to terms with overt homosexuality, although there are five gay bars in Tallinn. “If two men walk hand in hand down the street, you will definitely get comments,” said Silvar Laanemae, the chairman of the Estonian Gay League.

He said he had been threatened by skinheads when he was carrying a “rainbow flag” for the annual gay pride parade. Three bars had bomb threats on the same day.

A survey of 437 gay Estonians found that 28% were considering emigrating and 12% reported having been victims of verbal or physical abuse.

Rainer Kattel, a professor of political science from Tallinn University of Technology, said Estonia’s latent homophobia was connected to chauvinistic attitudes and fears about the survival of a small nation with falling birthrates. “If you are openly gay and of a different race, people will make mean comments to you. We have not really gone through the enlightenment revolution,” he said.

Lisette Kampus, an Estonian gay rights campaigner, said she hoped the ambassador’s departure would be a “wake-up call” to combat homophobic attitudes linked to the country’s Soviet past.

“We were coded to be intolerant to everything that is different,” she said. “Now there is silent tolerance but there is silent hate as well.”

The prejudice extends to other Baltic and east European countries.

Last July hundreds of police officers had to protect a few dozen gay rights demonstrators from a mob in the Latvian capital Riga.

In Hungary, the leader of the Christian Democratic People’s party, Zsolt Semjen, used anti-gay rhetoric to attract votes in a recent general election.

“If you want your son to have his first sexual experiences with a bearded, older man, you should vote for the Liberals,” he declared.

In Poland, Wojciech Wierzejski, the deputy leader of the League of Polish Families, a member of the ruling coalition, said “deviants” turning up to a gay pride march in Warsaw yesterday should be “beaten with batons”.

Glaubnitz and Lao are to move to the more tolerant surroundings of the consulate-general in Montreal.

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