Brody's Notes... Amnesty International To Serb Minister- Allow Belgrade Pride To Go Ahead Without Discrimination

Serbian Gay Couple  Photo By Mark Condren- Front Line

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) OCT 4 | Amnesty International spokesperson Lydia Aroyo released a statement last week from the organisation's London offices, calling on Serbian Minister of Interior, Ivica Dačić, to enforce Serbian laws that guarantee participants in the scheduled October 10th Belgrade Pride parade and associated events their rights to freedom of assembly, expression and association; and be protected from physical attack and abuse.

Aroyo said that the Serbian Anti-Discrimination Law explicitly guarantees the rights to freedom of assembly, expression and association to the LGBT people. Threats that aim to destroy the rights of freedom of assembly and expression of others, and which amount to incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence against Pride organizers and participants, violate Serbian and international human rights law.

According to Aroyo, Amnesty International is concerned that right wing groups may increasingly resort to threatening discourse in the public domain, leading up to the march. The organization has already learnt of attempts to intimidate individual gay rights activists.  Threats against organizers and participants of this year’s Pride have been already posted on the internet, including on Facebook and various social networks. Far-right groups' leaders have made threatening media statements. Individual LGBT activists have been intimidated.

Lazar Pavlovic, from the Serbian-Croatian Gay Straight Alliance, one of the organisers of the parade, said some ministers and political parties had already promised to support the event. In an interview last month, Pavlovic told Bojana Barlovac, a reporter for Balkan Insight:

"The right to freedom of movement is guaranteed by the constitution. We demand the state to allow us, as equal citizens, that right," Pavlovic said.

Serbia's first pride march was brought to a halt in Belgrade in June 2001 during clashes with protesters in which several people and policemen were injured. Almost eight years later, the country's parliament adopted an Anti-Discrimination Law prohibiting, among other things, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and transgender status.

Last year, the Belgrade Pride march, which was scheduled for September 2009, did not take place after the authorities at the last moment refused to provide security to the Pride participants on the agreed route through the city centre because of threats from right-wing groups. Up till the present date the authorities in Serbia have failed to bring to justice those responsible for issuing threats to the organizers and supporters of the 2009 Pride. Following the cancellation of the event, Human Rights Watch called upon Serbian President Boris Tadic to take action to end a spate of violence and discrimination in the country based on sexual orientation and gender identity.