LGBT Rights in Serbia - Living Conditions

Living Conditions

Gays and lesbians continue to face discrimination and harassment in Serbia. The majority of Serbian people display vast anti-gay attitudes. There have been numerous instances of violent gay-bashing, the most extreme during the first Belgrade Gay Pride.

There were three other plans for Pride Day celebration in Serbia, one in Belgrade in 2004 initiated by activists around GSA and another in Novi Sad initiated by LGBT Vojvodina in 2007, but because of low cooperation between activist groups and inability to provide adequate safety against violence due to limited funding, these two never made it. The third one, Belgrade Pride 2009, was canceled for similar reasons – police could not guarantee security to participants. The second Belgrade Pride Parade took place on 10. October 2010, with participation of one thousand people. It was followed by violent reaction and riot that gathered 6000 anti gay protesters and extreme nationalist group members.

Official medical textbooks that classify homosexuality under "Sexual Deviations and Disorders" are widely used through. After several requests to do so, Serbian Medical Society has finally stated that same-sex orientation is not a disease in official letter to Labris in 2008.

The gay scene is small but growing. As of 2011, Loud & Queer operates monthly club nights at different venues throughout Belgrade. Pleasure and Apartman operate Fridays and Saturdays in the city. Bars and cafes include Fenix, Smiley, Espeho, 24 and Mystik in the capital (as well as the gay-friendly Downtown Cafe), alongside others in the downtown areas of Novi Sad and Subotica.

The protection of LGBT people in Serbia is further complicated by the existence of various nationalist and pro-fascist associations like 'Obraz', '1389' and 'Stormfront', which are supported by some right-wing political parties. These groups have, on several occasions, made their threats to LGBT people publicly known, though the media and the police are increasingly reacting to deter such threats publicly.

Development of LGBT rights and culture in Serbia is contributed by LGBT sites such as the oldest Adriatic LGBT Activism mailing list in the region, GayEcho and Gay-Serbia; the last two are primarily online gay portals.

The depth of Serbia's homophobia played a role in the breakup of Yugoslavia, describing a probable gay accident as something different: one of the major landmarks of escalating tensions between Albanians and Serbs was an affair involving the forceful insertion of a bottle into the anus of Đorđe Martinović, a Serb resident of Kosovo. At first, he said it was due to accidental injuries, but later he said that an Albanian had done the deed, leading to mass media attention and a nationalistic outcry in Serbia. There was later circulation of nationalistic material comparing the "impalement of Đorđe Martinović" with Turkish forms of torture due to the shared Islamic religion between Albanians and Turks.