100 people demonstrated yesterday in front of the serbian embassy in athens. here is the text that we demonstrated and some photos.

Greece-Serbia:United in nationalism and homophobia

Belgrade’s Pride Parade for lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgender men and women was organized to take place on Sunday, the 20th of September 2009, at the main square of Belgrade. The day before the Parade, on Saturday morning, the Pride’s organizing committee received a letter from the Prime Minister which was informing them that the Parade was prohibited for “security reasons”. The Serbian authorities refused to guarantee the safety of the Parade’s participants by controlling the fascist groups that had planned an anti-parade in order to disrupt the lgbt demonstration. The police declared that they were not in position to protect the Pride March of the lgbt and queer community and revoked the permit.

During this last month, and as Pride was approaching, the Serbian mass media were giving voice daily to representatives of far-right groups, who reproduced through hate speech a culture of hatred and threatened lgbt and queer activists and their allies. The city’s streets were filled with nationalistic and homophobic slogans, while groups of fascists were threatening, terrorizing and attacking people that “looked different” to them. Despite the situation the organizers were not intimidated and did not step back; however, the Serbian authorities did, as they chose in the end not to confront the fascist and homophobic ideology on which a big part of Serbian society is based.

On Sunday, the day of the arranged but now forbidden Pride Parade, the city was overtaken by groups of fascists. The police arrested 46 people who were carrying knives, iron knuckles and flashbang grenades, ready for their “revenge hunt”.

This was the third attempt in eight years to organize a public demonstration of lgbt and queer groups in Belgrade. In 2001, the first time Belgrade’s lgbt community tried to take the streets to fight for its visibility, fascist gangs attacked and seriously injured people that were walking towards the meeting place for the Parade; amongst them people that were just passing through that area of the city. Back then the police was present and did nothing to stop the beatings. In 2004, the second attempt was cancelled by the organizers themselves, as the police refused to cooperate on all levels and the threats of the fascists went beyond limits.

The ideology of nationalism, of national purity and supremacy, is what arms the violence against anyone who does not conform to the nationalistic dogma. Those who do not align themselves with the vision of nationalism are attacked because their life-practices refuse to reproduce the values responsible for the structuring of a national identity. For us this is of course a very familiar characteristic of greek society, where institutions like religion and the nuclear family are the ones that support ‘national coherence’. Identities like the ‘good patriot’, the ‘faithful orthodox’, the ‘greek mother’ and the ‘virile man’ are constructed according to institutional and social mandates and it is them that safeguard social norms.

We stand in solidarity with the comrades from Serbia, who are fighting for the freedom of expression of sexual desire and self-determination of our bodies.

We stand with them against homophobia, conservatism, and the social apathy which supports terror and violence.

Open Assembly of Solidarity

Athens, 1/10/2009

Following the ban of Belgrade Pride March, planned for September 20th, 2009 on the Plato in front of the Faculty of Philosophy under the slogan It’s Time for Equality, it became quite clear that the omnipresence of violence and hatred directed toward everything and anything different surpassed the issue of LGBT human rights. Therefore, the equal  engagement of all key factors of our society is necessary in order to solve this problem.  

Such epilogue of the Pride March, an event whose purpose and goal was the promotion of human rights and the system of values highlighting the freedom of choice and equality, represents an obligation by the government and non-government structures, the media, and the LGBT community and institutions to form a prominent and clear platform of battle for human rights which were violated by this ban. The Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, the highest legal act of our country, existing domestic laws and ratified decrees similarly demand this action. .

After the five-month process during which we established the cooperation with the representatives of the most prominent institutions and gained the much-needed support from domestic and international NGOs, numerous embassies and public individuals, we consider our biggest success to be the placement of the issue of human rights of same-sex oriented individuals in the middle of the focus of both societal and political agenda, as well as the cessation of the policy of ignoring the position of an entire segment of our population, a segment suffering from severe violence and discrimination.   

The assemblies which will be held in the following days in Belgrade, are certainly a part of the response to the impermissible violence directed toward the LGBT population, the beatings of foreign citizens and the atmosphere of fear omnipresent in the past several weeks. The Belgrade Pride organizing Committee is maintaining contact with the organizers and will actively participate in these events. We offer our full support for the activities whose purpose is to accentuate the violation of basic human rights such as the right for a peaceful public assembly..

It is our opinion that a serious problems such as hatred and violence need to be dealt constantly and with an united effort from all relevant levels of society. We see the right on individual sexual orientation as an integral part of the indivisible and non-hierarchical corps of basic human rights. Therefore, we wish to announce the creation of the Platform for the promotion of LGBT human rights. The Organizing Committee will invite all LGBT organizations from all over the country to join us in the formation of the principles, goals, and plans of action on which we will work together, and whose integral part will surely be the organization of a successful Pride March in the near future.  

In the following period, we will formally invite the organizations who work to suppress the LGBT human rights violations in order to create a positive atmosphere and all necessary preconditions within the society, based on the agreed platform and with the purpose of not only creating the safe conditions for the next Pride March to be held in the center of the city, where it belongs, and to assure the fundamental equality for all citizens regardless of their individual characteristics.  


Belgrade Pride Organizing Committee

The European Parliament's Intergroup on LGBT rights, together with ILGA-Europe, expressed their true concerns following the cancellation of the Belgrade Pride this weekend.

Scheduled to be held in the centre of Belgrade on Sunday 20 September, the Pride March was cancelled by the Serbian authorities due to high security risks and a lack of cooperation from the State and the police to secure the event.

"This Pride March should have been an important step forward for Human Rights in Serbia, who was already welcomed for adopting an anti-discrimination Law earlier this year. Instead, by failing to guarantee the right to a peaceful demonstration for LGBT people, Serbia has shown that it is not ready to become a Member of the EU', said Michael Cashman, President of the European Parliament's Intergroup of LGBT rights.

“Serbian authorities have given in to threats of violence from neo-fascist groups, sending a message that the centre of Belgrade is controlled by an violent mob, not the government and the police. The events of the last few days demonstrate that the Serbian authorities should fill the legal gap by prohibiting and punishing incitement to violence”, said ILGA-Europe’s Programmes Director Maxim Anmeghichean, who was present in Belgrade.

The European Parliament's Intergroup on LGBT rights will be asking the Commission to take action.

Read about more reactions: http://www.ilga-europe.org/europe/guide/country_by_country/serbia/members_of_the_european_parliament_condemn_the_ban_of_the_belgrade_pride