Video: New film makes light of Serbia's Gay Parade

By Paul Canning

A bizarre new comedy has just hit the screens in Serbia. 'Parade the movie' is about the struggle of a group of activists to stage a Gay Pride Parade in Belgrade.

The film, by Srđan Dragojević, centres on a group of activists who have - like the real life activists - been refused police protection. But in the film the group then decides to hire some war criminals to protect them at the parade instead.

The actual Belgrade Pride Parade was banned last month following threats of mass violent counter-demonstrations organized by nationalists and fanatical Christian Orthodox supporters. Observers say that the ban was about politics and upcoming elections.

Dragojević, says he first thought of this subject for a film in 2001 while he watched the footage of the violent scenes at the first attempted Gay Pride Parade in Belgrade.

"For me this is quite a realistic film," Dragojevic told the media at the press launch.

Dragojevic previously made the award-winning film "Lepa Sela Lepo Gore" ("Pretty Village, Pretty Flame") set in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

The main characters are Mirko (Goran Jevtić), a struggling theater director who mostly makes a living by planning and organizing kitschy wedding ceremonies on the side, and his love struck boyfriend Radmilo (Miloš Samolov). One of Mirko's clients - ditzy trophy girl Biserka (Hristina Popović) - introduces them to her fiance Limun (Nikola Kojo), a Serbian veteran of the Yugoslav Wars who operates a bodyguard agency whose clients are mostly controversial nouveau riche businessmen and female turbo-folk singers. Radmilo gets an idea to hire Limun to provide security services for their gay parade, however, macho and staunchly traditional Limun wants no part of it and kicks Radmilo out under threat of violence. This infuriates Biserka who is ready to leave him over the issue.

In order to appease his girlfriend, Limun agrees to do the job. However, in order to keep his reputation he decides not to use his regular security associates, but instead goes on the road with Radmilo across former Yugoslavia to hire his former war adversaries from the opposite sides with whom he kept in contact through various criminal activities since the war ended.

"Would people who have definitely committed such crimes defend a minority like the LGBT population? That is an issue for me," says Boban Stojanovic of the gay lobby group Queeria.

A gay reviewer on IMDB wrote:

"The main gay characters are very stereotypical. The transformation of Nikola Kojo's character Limun from partly homophobic to tolerable person feels very forced."

Blic's Milan Vlajčić compared the film with with Mel Brooks' "The Producers".

Politika's Dubravka Lakić said that, by "employing shallow, occasionally lowbrow humour delivered through effective jokes and quick yucks", Dragojević made a "thoroughly watchable, rhythmically populist film that sends out a call to tolerance and a message that love always triumphs".

Related articles

• Video: Serbian LGBT protest: "That's enough!" (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Video: Very brief gay pride parade in Minsk, Belarus (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Video: Serbian LGBT protest: "That's enough!"

Video source: Gay-Straight Alliance

Picture Gay-Straight Alliance

By Paul Canning

Following a attack in Belgrade on a lesbian who was wearing gay symbols and the release by police of her attacker, the Serbia Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) held a large protest outside Serbian government officers on Wednesday under the slogan "It's enough!"

The protest was protected by a large number of police in riot gear, but there were no incidents.

The protesters carried banners with messages "These hands are not violent," "Homophobia is cured," "I do not tolerate torture," "Offenders in the four walls", "Violence on the streets-your own risk", "We are all A.Z" . and "Serbian not be silent." They waved the flag of the gay movement, but not the flag of Serbia.

The near-fatal attack on the lesbian was, said GSA, one of the most serious ones in the last several years.

"It is obvious that attackers no longer shrink from trying to take the lives of those who are of a different sexual orientation or who wear symbols of the LGBT movement. GSA therefore asks the relevant state institutions, and especially those politicians who have lately been talking about LGBT people and their activities in a negative context, if it is necessary that somebody be killed in order to finally realise how serious and severe the problems are that LGBT population in Serbia faces and in order to begin solving those problems."

Wednesday's protest demanded that the government of Serbia develop and implement a national program to combat violence and discrimination and pass a hate crimes law.

The woman that was attacked wrote:

"I am one of many that this is happening - it could happen to anyone of you!"

"I know that my friends are afraid to report similar attacks that are happening to them but I decided not to withdraw. I defended that night, and now I do not want to keep quiet! And it does not matter whether I'm lesbian or straight - someone tried to kill me!"

"I am bitter and angry that they let the one out who wanted to take my life ... What should happen to make it relevant and keep such dangerous refuge from the streets? If I had not resisted and managed to stab or kill me, would that be sufficient cause for detention? What happened to me will continue to happen until you stand up to bullies and those who instigate them."

"I want to live and I want my life to continue. I do not want to go anywhere, this is my city that I love and not let these maniacs tend to me from it. I do not want them to be pictures of Serbia and our future!"

President of the Gay Straight Alliance Lazar Pavlovic told reporters that members of the LGBT community want to live freely and without fear, like other citizens of Serbia.

He said that the release by a judge of those responsible for the most recent attack sent a message to the Serbian public that such violence against LGBT is permissible.

"People no longer wish to suffer such things. They are very unhappy. These things happen always, but very little reaches the public. People want to protect their lives, the state to finally move in a systematic crackdown on violence and discrimination," he said.

Goran Miletic from the Organizing Committee of the Pride Parade in Belgrade told Deutche Welle that Serbia will now find it even more difficult to deal with homophobia because with their ban on Gay Pride, explained because of the threat of violence but widely viewed as linked to upcoming elections, the Serbian authorities sided with the opponents of the parade.

"Given what the state has done this year, the process will be even more difficult. The state this year banned all rallies. Representatives of the meetings were thus found in the same basket - extremists, and representatives of the Pride Parade. It gives a green light to all bullies and all those who are not at all well-meaning, that in the future attack sexual minorities."

Coordinator of the National Strategy of Serbia for European Integration, Vladimir Todoric, told the Tanjug press agency:

"If members of this population still can not walk freely, if you are beaten up because of the clothes they wear, no one in Serbia is not guaranteed by any security or freedom of speech and behavior, and perhaps even the right to life."

According to new figures from UNHCR on asylum applications in the first half of this year, Serbia remains one of the major sources for asylum claims in Western countries.

Related articles

• In Serbia, politicians accused of inciting violence against LGBT (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Audio: The Sisyphean task of Belgrade's gay pride march (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Serbia's election campaign "played role in canceling of gay parade"

Pic: Jonathan Davis

By Paul Canning

A week after the Serbian government announced that Belgrade Pride Parade was banned following threats of mass, violent counter-demonstrations organised by nationalists and fanatical Christian Orthodox supporters, four prominent Belgrade-based journalists took part in a talk show organised by the liberal, independent channel B92.

All of them agreed that the ban was about politics and upcoming elections.

The Editor of Novi Standard, Željko Cvijanović, pointed out that a large majority of Serbians oppose the Parade. According to a study by the World Values Survey (WVS) and the Gallup Balkan Monitor, Serbians are the most prejudiced against LGBT in South-Eastern Europe - 80% oppose 'all forms of expression of homosexual orientation'.

Writing for riskandforecast.com, Political Capital explains why:

"Economic backwardness, gaping social/economic inequality, the post-Communist legacy and religion are major factors and strong predictors of hostility towards homosexuals."

Said Cvijanović of the 2011 Parade ban:

"The citizens have defeated their political class, which for the first time in the past three years demonstrated that it was afraid of the citizens, and I think that's a victory of sorts."

Political Capital says that that political class' attitude to homophobia is a major stumbling block on the road to the European Union.

"Accordingly, when trying to navigate down that road the governing political elite must demonstrate its tolerance of sexual minorities, while the public in these very same countries is fanatically and often aggressively intolerant of homosexuals, of their “exhibitionist” parades and rejects the extension of civil rights. However, this often limits the political elite’s scope for action on this issue and leads to a unique double-talk. Politicians are required to show open-mindedness to the outside to demonstrate having done their “homework” on rights issues while, fearing a popular backlash (reflected at the polls), internally they handle the issue more gingerly."

The Editor of the liberal weekly news magazine Vreme, Dragoljub Žarković, noted that the society was "only capable of organizing itself when some minority group needed to be belittled and threated to be beaten".

"Where's serious rebellion - a rebellion of the citizens against bad living?" Žarković asked. "They're not standing up against the low standard, against being left without apartments, ripped off by the banks, against living worse each day, instead, we're standing up against what - a tiny group of 300 to 400 people who would probably have taken a completely peaceful walk."

Editor of the weekly NIN, Nebojša Spaić. noted that:

"One of the reasons for canceling the Pride Parade was what is appearing in other socials segments and in other ways, and that is the utter inability of the authorities to deal with any real problem, and constant manufacturing of balloons of media lies and Potemkin villages, while the essential problem of this government is that it has no substance, no ideology."

[A 'Potemkin village, based on the Stalinist trick for Western visitors in the 1930s, is 'an impressive facade or show designed to hide an undesirable fact or condition'.]

Journalists Union head Ljiljana Smajlović said that, unlike last year when the Parade took place in the midst of a mass riot and injuries to 100 policeman and Serbia was praised by EU governments as a result, this year the government had an eye on elections.

"This year the authorities decided it was more profitable to let the U.S. embassy and Brussels get angry, but to avoid irritating that majority," she said.

Related articles

• Serbia: Belgrade's Gay Pride Parade Banned (globalvoicesonline.org)
• Audio: The Sisyphean task of Belgrade's gay pride march (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Analysis: Balkan far right using attacks on gay pride for political gain

Image via Wikipedia

Source: riskandforecast.com

By Political Capital

The study of so-called radical rightist ideologies and politicians is receiving increasing public attention throughout Europe. In this context it is important to identify the diversity and internal divisions of these political movements.

In many respects the differences and similarities can be accurately described based on geographic location. Taking this model as a working hypothesis, in the coming months Political Capital will present the striking differences of the Western and Eastern versions of far right ideologies, with special emphasis on the social context, as well as the issues and topics constituting the organizational building blocks of the far right.

In our first study we analyze the position of the far right in respect to the gay rights movement with a special focus on Balkan countries aspiring to enter the European Union.

Fault lines running east and west

The massacre committed by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway appears to represent a watershed in thinking about far-right ideologies. Since the attack there has been a growing consensus among the European public the in the past decade Western decision-makers have been excessively preoccupied with Islam radicalism while they overlooked threats posed by the proliferation of extremist right-wing ideologies. Presumably, this is related to the relative integration of the radical right in Northern and West Europe; parties promoting such ideas have accommodated to democratic political institutions. In contrast, some countries in Southern and most in Eastern Europe present an altogether different picture.

In essence, the ideologies of the far right in the West and the East are essentially the inverses of each other. The Western and Eastern versions are both characterized by neo-populism, i.e., giving simplistic and provocative answers to socially divisive issues. However, those in the East are often also ‘neo-Fascists’ in the sense that in their self-definition and symbols they find inspiration in the political legacy of totalitarian regimes active in their respective countries between the two world wars.

The far right in Western Europe is characterized by shrill Islamophobia while it is not anti-Semitic, in contrast to the East European version that is strongly anti-Jewish for the most part and often pro-Muslim (see Hungarian Jobbik). When it comes to the state and the economy, most far-right movements in the West are neo-liberals, while their East European counterparts are advocates of a strong state. They also show significant differences when it comes to their attitudes toward minorities.

Discriminating policies of Westerners can be described as the intolerance of the tolerant (Cas Mudde), i.e., they are hostile to immigrants rejecting liberal values and violating the rights of, for instance, women and gays. While Breivik himself, according to his book, is rather hostile to gays, the organizations he refers to are typically more ‘homophile’ than homophobe.

In contrast, East Europeans are fundamentally intolerant of minorities, where the rejection of sexual minorities in but one typical case in point. In South-Eastern Europe most centrist parties are also hostile or ambivalent when it comes to this issue. Obviously this is a reflection of the social environment; in these countries the public is profoundly hostile to gays, demonstrated by its rejection of considering their public presence and rights as a public issue and the frequent atrocities accompanying gay parades.

The recognition of gay rights: tensions between internal and external requirements

Read more »

Belgrade Gay Pride banned

By Paul Canning

Update 2 October: About 30 LGBT activists held a flashmob yesterday, stopping traffic for a few minutes on a main Belgrade street holding a 'Ljubav. Normalno' ('Love. Normal') banner. They were protected by riot police who have been deployed onto Belgrade streets yesterday and today.

Those opposed to the Gay Pride march are declaring a "a victory of family values" and a "victory of Serbian patriots."

Serbian politicians have reacted angrily to comment that they had capitulated to violent anti-gay forces. Human and Minority Rights Minister Milan Marković told B92:

“It’s far from the truth that the state has capitulated and that hooligans are more powerful than the state, that’s complete nonsense.”

Serbian parliament Speaker Slavica Đukić-Dejanović says Serbia has met all the conditions for the EU candidate status, expected 12 October, as bans on Pride marches were not 'set as a condition for other countries on their EU paths either'. There are other reasons why Serbia's EU bid may stay on hold, but, wrote The Economist:

"Its ban makes it look feeble and unwilling to stand up to threats from violent extremists. If the government can’t even ensure a peaceful Gay Pride march in its capital, goes the logic, how can it be ready to join the EU?"

Interior Minister Dačić said that when informed of the decision to ban all gatherings, including the Pride march, Western diplomats 'understood'. Western embassies were reportedly on a hit list for those planning to riot.

Update: The March has been banned. Interior Minister Dačić said:

“Police cannot support holding of all this gatherings for security reasons, because there will be clashes, victims, blood and we will end up a huge chaos.”

B92 said that police security assessments showed that extremists were planning on creating disturbances in several parts of Belgrade in order to weaken police forces, burning down ruling coalition parties’ headquarters.

Early reaction from Members of the European Parliament is not good. Ulrike Lunacek MEP, Co-President of the LGBT Intergroup of the parliament and substitute member of the South Eastern Europe delegation, reacted:

“I deeply regret that Serbian citizens will not be able to march for tolerance, acceptance and equality on Sunday. Serbian authorities have a duty to care for everyone’s safety, but it is profoundly disturbing that the leadership of a country seeking EU candidate status and membership—supported by a majority in the European Parliament—feel incapable of providing such safety for all citizens.”

“The government has to be much, much stricter towards extremists whipping up violence in the country . A society that cannot express itself for fear of violence is not a free, democratic society.”

Jelko Kacin MEP, European Parliament Rapporteur for Serbia’s accession and member of the LGBT Intergroup, and who is in Belgrade for the march, added:

“The decision to ban Pride Parade is a sovereign decision of the Serbian Government and the National Security Council. I receive such a decision with deep regret; as a matter of fact, it deprives citizens of the constitutional and legal right to free expression and peaceful assembly. A state seeking to access the EU must guarantee the human rights of its citizens.” 

ILGA-Europe said it "will bring it to the attention of the relevant officials of the European institutions to take further actions."

"This is a defeat for all citizens of Serbia: today, it's the gays, tomorrow, God knows which minority group," organiser Goran Miletic told reporters.

--

Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dačić and the Mayor of Belgrade are calling for the cancellation of Sunday's Gay Pride march in Belgrade.

Numerous far-right, nationalist, fascist and Orthodox groups are planning counter-demonstrations and police have discovered that one right-wing group is using the codename "Belgrade in flames" for their operation against Gay Pride.

The 2010 parade attracted 600 people - and 20,000 opponents, who rioted resulting in many arrests and injuries. Numerous Facebook groups were set up with memberships in the tens of thousands which threatened to murder gays and their supporters. The leader of the nationalist organization Obraz, Mladen Obradovic, received a prison sentence for organising the violent counter demonstrations but this hasn't happened and he is organising counter demonstrations for Sunday.

The Police Union has also called for the gay pride march and counter-demonstrations to all be banned - over 100 of their members were injured last year.

According to SAPA:

The authorities can ban a scheduled public gathering up to 12 hours before it is due to start. The Daily Press wrote: “Chances are strong that Dačić will ban the parade and all other events” - those being four anti-gay demonstrations also planned for the weekend.

Pride Parade Organizing Committee member Goran Miletić told B92:

“The Pride Parade Organizing Committee will not call off the parade and believes that Mayor Đilas’ statement is completely shocking, bearing in mind that he put an equal sign between all the events announced for the weekend. I have to remind you that the announced rallies are those of the organizations that organized violence last year and whose leaders were convicted of the violence.”

According to a post on the march organisers website a 'secret meeting' was held at the German Embassy in Belgrade where it was agreed that the march should go ahead "at all costs"

"The meeting was attended by the ambassadors of Western countries, the top of the Serbian Interior Ministry, representatives of OSCE and the LGBT population, and similar meetings in previous days have been held in the British and the Polish Embassy."

An American attending the march told us that:

"Groups of neo-nazis and fascist extremists can already be seen at the airport and walking the streets of Beograd."

Related articles

• Audio: The Sisyphean task of Belgrade's gay pride march (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Audio: The Sisyphean task of Belgrade's gay pride march

Pic: Jonathan Davis

By Paul Canning

Last year, writing for the Serbian news website Vreme, Predrag Azdejković compared the organisers of Belgrade's gay pride parade to Sisyphus.

"They have been trying to organize the parade since 2001, but its stone rolls downhill every time. The organizers, like Sisyphus, cannot give up so they return to the bottom of the hill and start rolling the stone back to the top, hoping to succeed every time. Unlike Sisyphus, who was punished by gods to roll it uphill, the gay parade's organizers chose the punishment willingly, and, believe me, organizing a gay parade in Serbia is a punishment indeed."

The 2010 parade attacted 600 people - and 20,000 opponents, who rioted resulting in many arrests and injuries. Numerous Facebook groups were set up with memberships in the tens of thousands which threatened to murder gays and their supporters. The leader of the nationalist organization Obraz, Mladen Obradovic, received a prison sentence for organising the violent counter demonstrations

The 2010 parade followed the cancellation the previous year, which was seen as the State giving in to threats. It had the support of Interior Minister Ivica Dačić and Human and Minority Rights Minister Svetozar Čiplić, as well as by the majority of parliamentary parties in Serbia.

The first Belgrade Pride parade, in 2001, ended with dozens of marchers injured by marauding nationalists, skinheads and football fans.

Organising committee member Goran Miletić said:

“I believe that police can secure the gathering [this year] so everything would go well. The state has showed that it can protect all the citizens, which is visible in matches. The parade is not a threat to security.”

Police have discovered that one right-wing group is using the codename "Belgrade in flames" for their operation against Gay Pride.

Politicians including the Belgrade Mayor have tried to get the 2011 parade called off because they know the same opponents will be out in force. But Serbia as well as Croatia - where a pride march suffered a vicious attack in Split 11 June - are candidates for the expansion of the European Union, and politicians know that their treatment of LGBT people and facilitating a safe gay pride parade is a crucial factor in whether they will be admitted.

One exception is United Serbia (JS) leader Dragan Marković Palma who was forced to clarify that his party had never called for violence and bloodshed but that they will never support Gay Pride because “Serbia has more important things to do”.

This was Marković’s response to Gay-Straight Alliance NGO’s announcement that they will file a lawsuit against him “for homophobia, discrimination and violation of equality”.

Marković said that:

“homosexuality was considered a disease 20 years ago, not according to Dragan Marković Palma, but according to the World Health Organization, but it was taken off the disease list under pressure from powerful lobbies”.

Read more »

In Serbia, politicians accused of inciting violence against LGBT

Dragan Marković Palma

Source: B92

United Serbia (JS) leader Dragan Marković Palma says his party has never called for violence and bloodshed but that they will never support gay Pride Parade.

He has announced that he will ask the Serbian government not to allow holding of the parade because “Serbia has more important things to do”.

This was Marković’s response to Gay-Straight Alliance NGO’s announcement that they will file a lawsuit against him “for homophobia, discrimination and violation of equality”.

In a written statement, the JS leader said that his party would never support something unnatural and something that was not even accepted by the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) and other religious organizations in Serbia”.

He stressed that “homosexuality was considered a disease 20 years ago, not according to Dragan Marković Palma, but according to the World Health Organization, but it was taken off the disease list under pressure from powerful lobbies”.

Marković repeated that his party was advocating a healthy family that included children being born in a marriage between a man and a woman and not to be children in “surrogate families” in which “two persons of the same sex would play mom and dad and only have different hair color. They will wear the same clothes and shave beard and mustache”.

“The JS is fighting against the birth rate decline, helping families and children with various activities because all of us are family people who advocate marriages in which children will not be deprived of possibility to have different-sex parents,” he pointed out, adding that “only this can be a healthy future of Serbia, instead of homosexuality”.

The Jagodina mayor said that the difference between the JS and others was “that we are not ‘hypocrites’ who think one thing and say the other and that we will never say we support the Pride Parade, as gay population calls it, or ‘Shame Parade’ as we call it.”

Bearing in mind that Serbia has better things to do and that now is not the time to shift the entire public’s attention to the “shame parade”, the JS “calls on the government not to allow it to be held in Belgrade”, Marković said in the written statement.

“The Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) believes that taking part in the gay Pride Parade is a personal choice of every individual,“ said SNS Presidency member Zorana Mihajlović.

“Everybody has the right to take part in it or not. That's a personal thing of every citizen of this country,“ she stressed.

The SNS official added that the SNS believed that there were much more serious problems that should be dealt with than the issue of the Pride Parade.

Mihajlović said that it was police’s responsibility to worry about security, including security at the Pride Parade, adding that this was the case in every country.

Related articles

• Serbian government displays rainbow flag for LGBT Pride Day (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Serbian government displays rainbow flag for LGBT Pride Day

Rainbow flag hanging from Serbian Ministry, 27 June

By Paul Canning

In a visible representation of the Serbian government's commitment to LGBT equality, a rainbow flag was hung 27 June, International Gay Pride Day, from the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights, Public Administration and Local Self-Government.

Head of the Directorate for Human and Minority Rights Nenad Djurdjevic explained that the flag display was intended to show that Serbia is ready to improve the status of its LGBT population.

Djurdjevic said that the Ministry will work on the implementation of the Law on discrimination that should "enable those belonging to the LGBT community to feel as equal members of the society".

"We will work to raise awareness of citizens of Serbia so that we could improve the rights of LGBT people and raise them to the level that exists in developed countries", he said, noting that in Serbia LGBT are highly marginalised.

Writing in the Serbian newspaper Blic 27 June, the US Ambassador Mary Warlick said that she is extremely encouraged by the government's attitude but LGBT people remain at very high risk of violence.

Warnick attended the 2010 Pride March in Belgrade where a huge contingent of police was required to protect marches from a large demonstration by far-right and religious protesters who subsequently rioted against police.

She writes:

"In last year’s poll 14 percent of interviewed people said that violence and beating were legitimate ways for elimination of homosexuality. Many members of the LGBT populations who were victims of crime are not going to the police in fear of making the matter even worse. A lot more has to be done so that members of the LGBT population feel safe at their homes and in the streets."

"In the name of the USA Government and on the occasion of the Month of the LGBT Pride, I hope that the year of 2011 shall be the year which shall bring more equality, justice and hope to all people in Serbia."

Serbia as well as Croatia, where a pride march suffered a viscous attack in Split 11 June, are candidates for the expansion of the European Union, and their treatment of LGBT people is a crucial factor in whether they will be admitted.


Jovanka Todorović Savović of the Serbian LGBT group Labris said that whilst the symbolic display of the rainbow flag was welcomed it wasn't a substitute for the right of assembly and that a Pride March was planned for September.

Serbia continues to be a source of a 'flood' of asylum seekers to the European Union, an unknown number  of which would be LGBT. The numbers have led to threats that visa-travel between Serbia and the EU could be reinstated.

Related articles

• Video: terrifying assault on gay pride in Split, Croatia (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• In EU, a flood of asylum seekers from Serbia may cost it visa liberalisation (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Video: 'Being gay in Serbia is tough'

A Serbian exchange student in the US talks about life as a gay teen in Serbia. One of the I'm From Driftwood series of stories about individual LGBT lives in the US.

In EU, a flood of asylum seekers from Serbia may cost it visa liberalisation

Image via Wikipedia

Source: ISA Intel

By Igor Jovanovic

As a direct result of the increasing number of asylum seekers to EU countries, Serbia may be removed from the white Schengen list and visa-free travel to EU countries, which was put into effect only in late 2009.

Some EU countries have threatened to request Serbia’s removal from the list unless it can exponentially reduce the number of false asylum seekers.

This is a major blow for the ruling coalition led by Serbian President Boris Tadic, which had based its platform largely on the success stories of European integration.

In December 2009 the EU lifted visa restrictions for citizens of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia, allowing them to travel freely in the Schengen zone, which covers a majority of EU countries.

Visa-free travel was the most visible achievement of Tadic’s pro-European coalition, which plans to base its campaign for the spring 2012 parliamentary elections on the expectation that Serbia will be granted EU candidate status by the end of this year.

Read more »

Refugee surge forces Berlin camp to re-open

Image via Wikipedia

Source: Monster and Critics

A surge of asylum seekers arriving from world trouble spots, including Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Iran, has forced Berlin authorities to re-open a huge refugee housing site.

Only recently, government officials had considered putting the 22,000-square-metre Marienfelde Refugee Camp up for sale.

The refugees stay in plain apartments in 10 centrally heated housing blocks. During the Cold War it was the first place to stay for people escaping communism while they were starting new lives.

Between 1949 and 1990, 1.35 million people passed through the camp. Even after democracy took hold in their homelands, eastern Europeans kept arriving, along with refugees from further away.

But in recent years, the numbers dwindled and a decision was taken to close the camp. But its closure a year ago proved premature and the camp has now been re-activated. Some 125 refugees have shown up at the Marienfelde camp in the past two weeks.

Hundreds more are anticipated in the coming months.

Read more »

Tension over Europe's gay rights role

Image via Wikipedia  

Source: euobserver.com

By Andrew Willis

Gay rights organisations openly acknowledge the crucial role played by European institutions in securing recent advances in the area, but concerns over top-down decision making and rising bureaucracy tell a more nuanced backstory.

Delegates at the 14th ILGA-Europe annual conference in The Hague on Thursday (28 October) also expressed fears over growing social conservatism in a post-recession Europe, and pointed to the recent Roma debacle as highlighting divergences between EU legislation and implementation on the ground.

ILGA co-chairs Linda Freimane and Martin Christensen were speaking at the body's 14th annual meeting in The Hague.

"This year's pride marches have been success stories ... despite confrontations," said Linda Freimane, co-chair of the international umbrella group which represents over 300 lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex organisations.

A Council of Europe recommendation agreed in March was also widely heralded as an important new tool for activists fighting discrimination linked to sexual orientation or gender identity.

The European Court of Human Rights referred to the non-binding text in a landmark decision this October when it ruled against Moscow's decision to ban gay pride marches in recent years.

Read more »

UN leader: 'How we can fight back against homophobia'

Image via Wikipedia  

Source: Washington Post


By Navanethem Pillay, United Nations high commissioner for human rights


Seth Walsh walked into the garden of his family's home in Tehachapi, Calif., last month and hanged himself. He was just 13. Before making the tragic decision to end his life, however, he had endured years of homophobic taunting and abuse from his peers at school and in his neighborhood. He is one of six teenage boys in the United States known to have committed suicide in September after suffering at the hands of homophobic bullies.

In the past few weeks there has been a spate of attacks directed against people perceived to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. In New York on Oct. 3, three young men, believed to be gay, were kidnapped, taken to a vacant apartment in the Bronx and subjected to appalling torture and abuse. In Belgrade on Oct. 10, a group of protesters shouting abuse hurled Molotov cocktails and stun grenades into a peaceful gay pride parade, injuring 150 people. In South Africa on Sept. 25, a large-scale march in Soweto brought attention to the widespread rape of lesbians in the townships, assaults that perpetrators often try to justify as an attempt to "correct" the victims' sexuality.

Homophobia, like racism and xenophobia, exists to varying degrees in all societies. Every day, in every country, individuals are persecuted, vilified or violently assaulted, even killed, because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Covert or overt, homophobic violence causes enormous suffering that is often shrouded in silence and endured in isolation.

Read more »

How yesterday's Belgrade gay pride parade happened

Source: Vreme

By Predrag Azdejković

I know where I will be on October 10th

Could the organizers of Belgrade's gay parade be somehow related to Sisyphus? They have been trying to organize the parade since 2001, but its stone rolls downhill every time. The organizers, like Sisyphus, cannot give up so they return to the bottom of the hill and start rolling the stone back to the top, hoping to succeed every time. Unlike Sisyphus, who was punished by gods to roll it uphill, the gay parade's organizers chose the punishment willingly, and, believe me, organizing a gay parade in Serbia is a punishment indeed. Additionally, we can discuss whether the organizers could be also related to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, but that's a completely different topic.

This year's gay parade is scheduled for October 10th, 2010, at 10 a.m. (10 minutes, 10 seconds and 10 milliseconds?!). The weather forecast calls for a sunny day, if weather forecasters are to be trusted. Much more reliable sources, e.g. astrologists, state that the date is not fitting for the parade since all of the planets will be in the constellation of Scorpio, a symbol of destruction and aggression, but the conjunction of Venus and Mars is offering everyone a possibility to improve their lives, while Jupiter in conjunction signifies a beginning of a much happier period. But, let's leave the experts for planets aside. What is really different from last year's events, when the parade was cancelled due to security issues and how certain are we that it will take place this year and that its participants will walk off with their heads intact?

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In a US court, appeal court judge faults immigration judge's homosexual sterotyping

Image via Wikipedia  Source: Leonard Link

By Arthur S. Leonard

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, has set aside for reconsideration the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision affirming a denial of asylum to a gay man from Serbia, finding that the Immigration Judge had relied on improper stereotypes about gay men in questioning the credibility of the petitioner, and that the BIA had failed to disavow the IJ’s reasoning. The court’s opinion was announced on September 27.

Writing for the unanimous three-judge panel, Judge Stanley Marcus related the petitioner’s horrific story of his mistreatment in Serbia and the generally adverse atmosphere for gay people in that country. Beginning in high school, the petitioner was identified by others as gay and subjected to harassment and abuse. When he came out to his parents, his father "beat him, threw him out of the house, and declared that he would rather Todorovic be dead." In addition, the petitioner alleged that his father "used personal connections" to have him conscripted into the Army, where he suffered further harassment and abuse. The petitioner also described abuse at the hands of law enforcement officials, including sexual assault.

After he had recovered from a particular vicious beating, he contacted a cruise line and applied for a job. This occupation brought him to the U.S., where he decided to stay and eventually applied for asylum. There are difficulties with his asylum application having been filed too long after his entry into the United States, but the court focuses more on the credibility determination by the Immigration Judge (IJ), presumably because the petitioner could still qualify for withholding of removal given the appropriate factual findings. At his asylum hearing, he submitted "a number of background articles regarding the treatment of homosexuals in Serbia.

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Serbian Pride parade to go ahead

Source: B92

Analyst Zoran Dragišić believes that the Pride Parade would be held because of the clearly expressed political support which was missing last year.

A year after the parade was canceled due to the authorities’ inability to protect the gathering from hooligan threats, a plan for this year’s Pride Parade would be announced today.

B92 has unofficially learned that the parade will be held on October 10. The Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) and Queeria Center for Promotion of Culture and Non-Violence, this year’s organizers, will today announce a location and a program for the manifestation.

The parade has already been supported by a number of government members, among others Interior Minister Ivica Dačić and Human and Minority Rights Minister Svetozar Čiplić, as well as by the majority of parliamentary parties in Serbia.

“Now we hear main political actors not disassociating themselves from the LGBT community, there are no more statements such as ‘let them do it inside four walls’, this year, support to the LGBT population is undoubtedly stronger and it explicitly came from all political parties except from the DSS (Democratic Party of Serbia),” Dragišić said.

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Blogging behind closed doors

Source: The Guide

By Michael K Lavers

Khalid knows how frightening it can be to live in a country where being gay is taboo.

In 2007, Khalid agreed to appear on the inaugural cover of MK, the first gay magazine in Jordan. But the shirtless photo of the young man caused a stir after the tabloids caught wind of it. The outcry was so fierce the magazine never published.

"I was still in school at the time," Khalid told Guide magazine from his home in Amman, the capital of Jordan. "People were talking about it in my school, and they didn't know it was me at the time. It was very scary because there was no one in the whole Arab world " the Middle East " who was out in the media."

Although Khalid says he never felt his life was in danger, he did face blackmail attempts from those who threatened to out him to his parents. He hid out in neighboring Lebanon until the scandal had passed.

"It's very simple as I'm talking about it, but at the time it was very big because no other media was talking about homosexuality," Khalid said. "But now, everyone in Jordan is talking about it. That's a big step in two years."

The 21-year-old model eventually returned to Jordan, where he launched the monthly webzine My Kali to give Arab gays "a better image to look up to."

"Most of the people here look to English, European and American publications," Khalid said. "Those images don't really apply here. I just wanted to give people a different image to which [they] can relate."

Khalid, who asked that his last name not be used, is one of a growing number of gays around the world who have launched online publications. Their sites serve as virtual community centers and are an increasingly important source of news and information for gays in their own countries and others around the world.

But this online activism is often dangerous, which is why most of the bloggers quoted in this article asked that their full names not be used. Some countries in which gay bloggers work ban homosexuality. Laws designed to curb homosexual activity often carry steep prison sentences --and sometimes the death penalty. Homophobic attitudes can prove equally harmful.

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Serbia: violence, abuse and discrimination against LGBT

Source: AFP

Gays and lesbians in Serbia face violence, abuse and discrimination and the government is failing to protect their rights, a gay rights group said yesterday.

“The biggest problems of the LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] population in Serbia are violence, discrimination and hate speech,” the Belgrade-based Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) said in its annual report for 2009.

In addition, prosecutors and courts show “extreme slowness and inefficiency” in discrimination cases, it added.

“A dozen legal procedures have been launched in 2009 in order to protect victims of violence and discrimination of LGBT persons... but to date not a single case has gone to trial,” GSA’s lawyer Veroljub Djukic told reporters.

Last September, a Belgrade gay pride parade was called off after police and government officials said they could not ensure the security of the participants following threats by ultranationalist groups.

“The state neither provided an adequate response nor reacted in time by punishing extremist and violent groups,” GSA said.

The gay pride march would have been the first since a 2001 parade, the first ever in Serbia, broke up amid violent clashes with right-wing extremists.

According to GSA President Boris Milicevic, the LGBT right groups are currently assessing whether it will be possible to organize a gay pride parade in 2010.

Serbia’s minister for minorities’ rights, Svetozar Ciplic, who for the first time co-hosted the presentation of the gay rights report, said he supported a march this year. “If there is a gay pride parade this year, we will manage to show that those violent and intolerant groups are defeated,” Ciplic said.

The Serbian parliament last year passed a law banning discrimination against gays despite fierce opposition from nationalists and religious leaders.

• IGLHRC: Serbia