Serbia

Belgrade Pride: No news is good news

Belgrade Pride 2024 went off without any major incidents. The fact that this is worth mentioning shows the environment in which Serbia's queer community continues to live and operate. It was largely ignored in the public discourse.

No injuries, only minor threats and insults, and one paltry attack on volunteers at the Belgrade Pride info centre; that's the summary of Pride Week (“Nedelja ponosa”), which took place last week in Belgrade. On the plus side, however, there were also several thousand participants in the Pride March, a large number of events on LGBTIQ issues and strong and visible support for the Serbian LGBTIQ community from local and international stakeholders.

The motto of this year’s Pride Week was “Pride is People” (“Ponos su ljudi”). The organizers wanted to highlight that members of the LGBTIQ community have to deal with the same everyday challenges as other people, but also with problems caused by homophobia and transphobia on top of them.

The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom was for the first time one of the main partner organizations of “Belgrade Pride”. Many events supported by the foundation, such as the “Community Talks” or the “Human Rights Talks”, addressed issues that are of concern to the Serbian LGBTIQ community. The main topics were two legislative projects that have been put on hold and whose adoption the autocratic government under President Aleksandar Vučić has been delaying for years: the law on same-sex partnerships and the law on gender identity and the rights of intersex people.

This year, the Foundation for Freedom hosted German LGBTIQ and Roma activist Gianni Jovanović. The TV show host (“Drag Race Germany”), who is also well known in Serbia, took part in the “Human Rights Talks” as a speaker, co-hosted the “Belgrade Pride Drag Show” and led the “Pride March” with other public figures.

The parade took place under heavy security precautions. Hundreds, if not thousands of policemen hermetically sealed off almost the entire city centre. This way, the autocratic regime did not expose itself to accusations of curtailing the rights of LGBTIQ people to demonstrate, but at the same time ensured that the parade took place almost entirely out of public view.

On the day of the parade in Belgrade, Prime Minister Miloš Vučević opened the “Family Days” in a Serbian small town to clearly show what the Serbian government thinks of issues such as equality and tolerance. When asked whether LGBTIQ people in Serbia would receive the same rights as other citizens, the Prime Minister replied that this was “not an issue at all” for the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS): “If someone else leads the country, maybe that will change.” So there is hope.