Pride March Takes Place in Belgrade, LGBT+ Community’s Problems Unchanged

Pride parade (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

A protest Pride march of several thousand members of the LGBT+ community took place in Belgrade on Sept. 6.

After 16 minutes of silence at the School of Law, the march resumed through the streets of Belgrade. The entire Pride was mostly without incident, and was secured by a strong police presence, with officers deployed to every sidestreet along the route to prevent access.

This year's Pride "godmother," journalist Olivera Kovacevic, said at the rally that each year the Pride took place in specific circumstances and that she could not recall a time when they were ordinary. "The idea of cancelling the Pride would be unacceptable, because the people have been on the streets for ten months demanding their rights, just like the LGBT+ community is now," Kovacevic told a news conference ahead of the Pride march.

Ana Martinoli, a teacher at the Belgrade School of Dramatic Arts, said the media had a big role to play when it came to the human rights of the LGBT+ community, but that they were not doing enough and in fact sometimes encouraged hate speech.

She criticized the Serbian Broadcasting Corporation for mentioning the LGBT+ community just 19 times since the beginning of the year, "of that zero times in central programs." She went on to say that, by not reporting on the country's LGBT+ population, the public service broadcaster sent the message that their lives were not in the public interest, and added that those assembled at the march were there to remind them that they were.