By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Sept 23 | This year's PRIDE in the Serb capital of Belgrade was canceled due to threats from opposition groups and what has been called an ineffectual response by police to protect PRIDE participants. Today, the Serbian minister of Justice called for a ban on all extremist groups that threatened acts of violence.
Serbian President Boris Tadic, had warned against creating an "atmosphere of chaos'" and "threats and violence," a day before PRIDE was cancelled. He said: "The state will do everything to protect people, whatever their national, religious, sexual or political orientation, and no group must resort to threats and violence, or take justice into its own hands and jeopardize the lives of those who think or are different."
From the UK's pinknews service comes this report:
It has been claimed that Serbian police this morning effectively cancelled permission for tomorrow's Belgrade pride (Sunday, Sept 19th) to be held in its planned city centre location.
After organisers met with police, they said that the event had been cancelled as a result of high security risks and a lack of co-operation from the police that meant they had no choice but to call off the event.
In a statement, the organisers of the event said a "full security study was commissioned more than three months ago by pride organisers and executed by the university defence department constructing a detailed strategy for all logistical possibilities to carry out pride safely with full instructions for how police would secure pride participants entrance to the parade, their safety during the event and their ability to leave the event unmolested.
They added that the "study also made detailed recommendations for preventative measures that could be taken by police in the months leading up to pride to minimise the risk of violence." But they claim that the "police did not undertake these measures and despite months of meetings with pride organisers and daily meetings in the past two weeks have failed to act on security measures, instead choosing the
tactic of pressurising organisers to cancel the event."
Adding that in the last 48 hours the police "refused all cooperation for the securing of the pride, applying further pressure to organisers to cancel.
"Police refused to take responsibility for maintaining public order during the event. Instead telling the pride organisers that they would be held responsible for any public damage caused by the hooligans and fascist groups who have been organising a violent response to pride."
Right-wing groups who have already threatened violence against participants in Sunday's planned gay pride parade.
And just last Monday, Amnesty International accused the Serbian government of failing to protect human rights groups fighting for LGBT and women's rights.
A report claimed that "Those fighting for equal rights in the country are putting their lives on the line in the face of physical attacks and hostility."
It also claimed the media was publishing attacks on human rights defenders and in some cases, publishing their personal information and home addresses.Pride organisers said that they have "officially requested that police take action against fascist and right wing organisations who have issued hate speech against LGBT groups and pride in the press. Pride organisers continue to meet today to discuss possible courses of action to demonstrate against this failure by Serbian state and police to defend our most basic human rights, the right to safely walk the streets."
Slobodan Homen, a justice minister in Belgrade, has told the B92 television station in the wake of the city's cancelled gay pride march the government hopes to silence organisations "that voice threats".
After threats were received and organisers met with Belgrade police, the parade, due to take place last Sunday in the city centre, was called off.
Homen identified two political groups which had voiced their opposition to Sunday's march: Obraz, and the Serb Popular Movement 1389. The cancellation of the parade was described as a victory over "infidels and Satanists" by the anti-gay protestors who remained in the city centre on the day of the scheduled march.
Mladen Obradovic, the leader of the group Obraz, meaning 'honour', had warned that it would be the organisers of the event who would be responsible if they followed through their plan to host it in the city.
Serbian President Boris Tadic had expressed reluctance for the march to be abandoned, warning against an "atmosphere of chaos".
Belgrade Mayor Dragan Djilas also regretted the decision and echoed Homen's words about banning extremist groups who behave threateningly or "condone violence". The city's last Pride event, in 2001, ended violently in clashes with extremist groups. Serbian Chief of Police Milorad Veljovic reported to the television station alongside Slobodan Homen that 37 extremists were arrested after the Serb Popular Movement 1389 call to protest, and that four had already been sentenced on Monday.
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1 comments:
Three years ago I was in Slovenia and talking to the hotel receptionist where I was staying. He had served in the Yugoslavian Army and the Slovenian Army after the break up of Yugoslavia. And he explained that Serbia was unlikely ever to have peace. He was grateful to be Slovenian, and to be out of the army.
Slovenia had a very fast peace after the break up. I never thought I'd praise the Roman Catholic Church, but it united the nation, an almost exclusively Christian nation even under Tito's communism, and they had, he said, perhaps a week of unrest.
But Serbia was a social experiment, where Christians and Muslims had been displaced and forced to live together by Tito, hence the ethnic cleansing after the break up. I base this post only on what he told me, not on research or other data.
The article refers to "infidels and satanists" and this is not the language of tolerance. With regret it is the language of militant Islam (not peaceful Islam, for there is a difference).
In the same way that the receptionist said that there will never be peace in The Balkans, a quote from his grandfather, long since dead, I think there will never be easy Gay Rights in the The Balkans.
It is not through lack of desire, nor lack of need. But there are other problems they need to solve, and the rights of 10% (Kinsey figure) of their population seem irrelevant to them compared with the other items.
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