Gay Pride in Belgrade

been touring Balkanians last year... We passed Belgrade twice, and I was sad to see so many homophobic slogans and anti-antifa marks on the walls...

 

It was really stupid, from both sides.

Gays didn't achieve anything, and they certainly won't have more rights now. The people will probably hate them even more now when they caused all the damage to our city. And it is their fault really. They knew what would happen. Everybody knew. It was arrogance rather than pride parade. I fully support their rights, but what they did now was just plain stupid.

Extreme nationalists and football hooligans are certainly the worst side of our society. They are not that numerous as they seem, but they are loud, and backed up by the criminal organizations that rule most of this county. They don't really have any ideals. They may wave the flags, and shout against evil western culture, but every time a riot happens, Nike store gets busted, and you see a lot of people with brand new shoes and jackets next day. Just common thieves. This time they outdid themselves and also busted a mobile cancer-prevention hospital (because it was evil and from west, right?). Stupid fucks.

But both sides were only puppets in this conflict. In my opinion, this was all predicted by the government, and they just used this as good excuse to deal with right wing and hooligan leaders (which they did, they got arrested). They were fully capable of containing the riot, since Serbia is practically a police state. Just another issue to keep our minds of the fact that our country is in deep shit. It's certainly better to have the people talking about brave cops, and evil hooligans and gays, than about the fact that there is no milk in the stores.

 

As far as I know they arrested over 200 hooligans (out of 6000+, but still...), including the leaders of the movement. Gays were very well defended, but rest of the city was trashed (including the socialist party office, because their leader is minister of police. Don't be fooled by their name tho, they are socialists only on paper). What I meant is that police could stop the riot before it even happened. There are videos of nationalists gathering (60% of arrested are not from Belgrade), and police just doing nothing. I believe that the order was given not to disrupt them so they could make mess. Then the people would have something to talk about, and police would have a reason to arrest them.

off the topic: I heard that there are groups in Croatia who beat you up just because you look different. That its dangerous to walk the streets of Zagreb if you have long hair, because someone could attack you. Is that really true? I mean there are occasional conflicts between skinheads and metalheads in Serbia, but its very rare. Everyone I know, including me, feels completely safe in every part of the town, in any time of the day.

 

"Socialist" party is part of the ruling coalition. Leader of the socialist party is the minister of the police. He was in the party back when Slobodan Milosevic was president, so nothing really socialist about them, even tho they keep claiming that they changed and want to go towards the west now. Just a bunch of authoritarian conservatives going under different name. (Same as Radical party, the most conservative and chauvinistic political party in Serbia) But hooligans hate the police as much as we do, so they trashed their building.

I didn't say that cops just watched them whole time, but they hesitated and allowed them to organize. If the cops acted early, I am certain they could have prevented all the violence and damage. But then they wouldn't be heroes who arrested violent criminals, because those criminals wouldn't do anything wrong. If you ask me, the one who gave them the order to wait is the worst person in the whole story. 200 people (120 cops) ended in hospital, many more injured, huge material damage... all this just in order to arrest the leaders of right winged organizations.

On the topic of hooligans and nazis, I feel that the situation is a bit better here. I used to have green hair some time ago, and i never felt threatened (laughed at yes, but never threatened ). I live in the center of the city, and I often walk through parks and dark streets in the middle of the night, and never noticed anything that would worry me. It is in fact quite popular here to hang out with your friends whole night on a bench in a park (you know, beer, guitar... cheap & fun). I only heard once few years ago about some nazi-skins chasing some metalheads after a gig, but that's all. So unless i am greatly misinformed, it is quite ok here.

We have 2 hooligan groups "grobari" and "delije", and they make a lot of trouble, but it's mostly them fighting each other, or groups from other cities, and mostly on the stadium. Real xenophobic and homophobic bastards, I believe you heard about that french student they killed about a year ago? But I believe they don't go around just looking for people to beat (rockers, punkers, metalheads, gays). You would be in danger if you went to their gathering or something, or openly provoked them, but if you avoid them, they don't care about you either.

 

I wasn't that surprised when I saw at least 4 hools from our area (southern germoney) in one of the vids, I think they don't give a shit about politics or gay rights, but since the cops are very eager to suppress hool's "sports" in germoney, german hools are very eager to travel to "hot spots" - like the gay pride parade in belgrade?

Some of our serbian friends here claim that "someone" whistled for the hools and that the gay parade wasn't their primary target, but the police presence as such and installations like the socialist party building.

The same happened at the 27th g8-conference in bologna 2001, when hordes of hools from everywhere in europe started to attack the cops, who responded with ultra violence against the mostly peaceful protesters.
But it's still a mystery "who" called them to sabotage the protest, some evidence for a cooperation between hools and cops was never confirmed.

bit off topic too: those fuckers wearing green army caps and fooling around with a black skull&bones flag - are they "chetniks"?
I had the questionable pleasure of meeting some of them after the krajina-offensive 1995, including a mock execution, because we resisted the "confiscation" of the german-red-cross-truck we were driving down to sarajevo with humanitarian aid - for a serbic home of the elderly...
I thought that their group has vanished since the end of the war, but I think I remember the flag.

 

It would be great to know who called for hooligans, but I'm afraid that's out of our league. Everything in Serbia is connected to some sort of mafia. From beggars (I am not joking!) to charities, universities and of course government. And football is right in the middle of it. We had a revolution to overthrow a dictator 10 years ago, but only the figure on top changed. National security, tycoons, and paramilitary organizations stayed (there are indications that they made a deal with the democratic revolutionaries). So its hard to even count the sides in any conflict. Is it just the establishment behind both the police and the hools, using the conflict to take peoples mind of the ongoing crisis, or are there 2 sides behind the curtains using their pawns to weaken their opponent? I have no clue.

On the topic of "chetniks" - its a very wide term. Chetniks were Serbian monarchists (and not only monarchist, anyone who didn't like communists) resistance movement in WW2, and the word was later used during the war in the 90s to describe just about any Serb, like all the Croats were called Ustashas (after Croatian nazi collaborators from WW2). Today chetniks are national monarchists. There are probably good people among them, patriarchal and conservative maybe, but they are not necessarily xenophobic and violent. However those chetniks you see with skulls on flags are no better than Nazis. In fact they are the same shit to me.

 

I never realized that the chetniks fought on both sides in WW2, including collaborating with the kroatian ustascha.
Quite a education gap to be closed, because I only knew about the uneasy alliance between them and Josip Broz later in the war - against the fascist axis.
But googling around a bit I found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chetniks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Chetniks
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Chet ... ldiers.jpg
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Meet ... mander.jpg

 

Uh... Too fully explain what happened would really take a big effort and many many pages and a whole lotta references to stuff that is in language most her wouldn't understand. In reality the whole event was highly political and to some extent predictable. I was dumbfounded at how well organized the nazi/right wing were, they had the numbers before but never this level of organization and quality information. There are some question as to how that happened, but there are some clues like the fact that some of those organizations have their counterparts in Russia (Nasi and Obraz), and in Russia they seem to be even more mainstream than in Serbia and some even get support from the government... Serbian Orthodox church is also highly involved...

What Pankucnik wrote isn't exactly true. Belgrade is a relatively safe city, but looking different can get you into trouble. There certainly are places, event and clubs that you should avoid, but for the most part it's safe to walk around anywhere anytime. However, I've been in my share of fights with nazis over the years and same can be said for most of my friends. "Fashion police" patrols seem to be a thing of the past for the msot part, but shit still happens...

Also what Pankucnik wrote about how the gay people are arrogant and caused the whole thing is pure bullshit. I've known some people that are highly involved in organizing the whole event and would never ever say that they are arrogant or anything other than great people. However, this was a political event that was taken over by the government, and the people involved in the gay movement had relatively little to do with deciding what will happen at the event...

 

@ vAsSiLy77 : It was more or less free-for-all in WW2, with many different sides, and as far as I know communists collaborated with the Nazis as well, but they denied that later. Also, chetniks and communists were in uneasy alliance in the beginning, not in the later years, when communists started being too dominant.

@Bananamen : Organizing the parade in Serbia strikes me as nothing but arrogance or plain stupidity. Every single citizen knew what would happen, and it's a pure miracle no one died in the conflicts. So how would you call someone organizing an event that can only bring harm to people just so they can show that they can? They didn't get any rights or helped spread the awareness of their cause, and I am sure the parade had a negative effect on their popularity. (because the common people would blame them as much as the hooligans)
So unless you are trying to say that whole thing was organized by the government and gays had nothing to do with it, I would say that they have been used as pawns in a much larger conflict, against their interests.

Then again, I don't really know any of the organizers, so all the information I get is second-hand. And I care about the truth. So if you care to explain, I am always ready to listen to someone with more information.

 

It would be an interesting subject, since most of the problems we face today are rooted deep in our past. (both distant and recent past)

I'd also like to learn if there is any anarchistic history in the Balkans, since I don't know anything on that subject.

 

yes, (i live with him), we are already closing his education gap, vassil had some dealings with communists in his younger days, so he's still a bit transfixed on josip broz during and after the war, and blinded by their propaganda, oh yes, the chetniks are a special kind of "favorite" for him too:
a group of chetniks "executed" him 1995 on the bosnian border, we still have a photo of this event, it was later used by the UN to persecute war crimes - two grinning punks and a ex-foreign legionaire up against the wall and giving the "firing squat" the middle finger - i would like to post it, but we would have to anonymize it, so this grinning-into-pointed-rifles would be lost...

easy to say for me from our relatively save heaven in germany:
just because it was that obvious or predictable that there would be trouble, it was important not to give in and take to the streets and parade instead of giving in like last year when the parade was cancelled after serious treats.
the gays have every fucking right to parade, and i admire their courage and braveness. from what we took from the news reports the parade lasted only 15 minutes under heavy cop-protection - so it was a small sign, but it was necessary and the "reaction" is not the gays fault, nobody asked for that trouble.
the gays didn't destroy anything - the damage was done by this rightwing scum, and i think we should not care about the "public opinion", but parade again, gays, leftwing, anarchists all together to show that "we" are there without being a treat to the people.
tadic might be trying to use the parade - for the EU accession - so he has to present serbia as a modern, western orientated, safe state - but in relation with this, there is nothing wrong with the gay parade.
its too easy for me to say so, we live in a city with a strong gay community that has already developed into a established subculture - and as an anarchist punk i am a bit jealous about what they have achieved against all homophobic odds here.

yes, we should definitive, the matter of the former yugoslavia is not only history, i think its important in the revolutionary aspect to - how to deal with a absolute crisis of the state or how to react to civil war or the nato aggression - and besides, i already started to work on hungarian history after the war and the actual situation including the rise of the new arrowcross movement ect.
and because of the lack of information in west european languages we could learn much from your point of view, this free-for-all during WW2 is only one example.

this one might be helpful, it's an anarchist squatters commune, collecting an anarchist library. too bad that I am from hungary and don't understand slavic languages.
http://www.rozbrat.org/news-in-english

besides this i have only a german book about the small bulgarian anarchist movement between 1880 and WW2, but i am sure there must be more to be found - again, it's my language problem.

 

There is no such thing as a history of anarchist movement in former Yugoslavia at least I never heard of any such thing... There were people mostly philosophy students that were somewhat involved like the former prime minister of Serbia Zoran Djindjic or Trivo Indjic who is as far as I know still an adviser to Boris Tadic (used to be ambassador in Spain...).

As far as the event itself, it's just a step forward maybe not a big one but an important step forward. Sure it will not advance the rights of sexual minorities in Serbia, but it has great symbolic value. Just because there are people that are against something it does not mean that you should just give up and let them have things the way they want. As I wrote earlier the whole event was hijacked by the government and used for their own goals, which doesn't have to be a bad thing necessarily...

 

These marches need to be held every year in these regions...eventually after a lot of struggle and visibility attitudes may change. But I don't see the logic in discontinuing the struggle over there just because the neo-nazi fuckwits have problems with us.

You are just as bad as them when you crap on like that, claiming that we did this out of arrogance...what strikes me as being more absurd is that you go and blame Queers for the violence and damage to the city? Who threw rocks and petrol bombs? It sure as shit wasn't the people in the Pride march.

We fought for our liberation at Stonewall and the years following in the US, we fought for it in Europe and we started fighting for it in Australia in 1978 and had the shit beaten out of us by the police.

We will keep marching and subverting and holding our ground until we achieve liberation.

If ou fully support our rights as HUMAN BEINGS then you would be more supportive of the struggle as opposed to coming off like you are now.

 

I think I have spoken here without thinking first, and with too little information. I apologize. I try to avoid that. So thanks for making me think about this topic. You are right, gays have every right to protest for their rights, and even if destruction comes out of it, only the government and hooligans are to be blamed.


So, no anarchistic history in our region? I guess we better start working on that then... On that topic, is there any good organization in Serbia worth of joining? I visited the ASI site, and was kinda disappointed to see that they support the communist regime we had under Tito (on account on them being anti-fa).