Far-right threat to EuroPride in Serbia

“I will curse all those who organise and participate in such a thing... If I had a gun, I would use it...” So Serbian Orthodox Church Bishop Nikanor Bogunović denounced this year’s EuroPride, due in Belgrade 12-18 September. The Church, a major prop of the far right regime of President Alexander Vučić, organised a march on 28 August to celebrate Vučić’s ban on the EuroPride week of events, imposed just two days before.

At least 10,000 turned out. The march was led by the Night Wolves, a biker gang of 4,000 members and far right Putinist grouping which originated in Russia but roams across Eastern Europe. Some of the Night Wolves fought for the Putin-backed separatists in the Donbass, and their leader has declared their purpose in Putin’s war on Ukraine as bringing “death to faggots”.

Alongside medieval religious icons on the 28 August march were placards of Putin and Russian flags. Bishop Bogunović called for Putin to be recognised as the “Tsar of the Planet”.

Violent homophobia is strong in Serbia. In 2010, despite gay rights laws introduced the year before, a Pride demonstration was attacked by some 7,000 well organised homophobic thugs.

One of the main organiser of those attacks was Mladen Obradović of the openly fascist Obraz movement. Obraz, now illegal, had targeted LGBT activists and Zionists for attacks. Obradović had called for lynching of gays and was convicted of hate crimes.

Much of the Serbian far right has made cult-figures of Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, convicted of genocide after Serbia’s war on Bosnia- Herzegovina.

After Vučić’s election victory in 2012, Obradović had his sentence lifted and an amnesty was granted for 3,000 criminals, including a great many from the Obraz group who have taken up prominent positions under Vučić’s regime.

Those fascists reorganised in groups like Dveri Zaventnici and its People Patrols which have been reactivated on Belgrade’s streets by Putin’s war on Ukraine. The Zaventnici have been courted openly by Putin’s regime. Foreign Minister Lavrov met them back in 2016. They now threaten EuroPride.

Vučić’s power base comes from the Serbian Putinists and fascists as well as the Church, whose claims over Montenegro and Kosovan church property he uses for his increasingly aggressive postures towards those countries. His anti-NATO rhetoric is welcomed by Putin, who might welcome a renewed war in the Western Balkans to relieve pressure on him in Ukraine.

Vučić also needs to maintain support from the EU, of which Serbia has candidate membership and from which it gets a lot of funding. He has appointed a lesbian Prime Minister, Ana Brnabic. She supported Vučić’s ban on EuroPride on the grounds that Serbians had to unite behind the President in his current dispute with Kosova.

Serbian gay activists and organisers such as Kristine Garina, president of the European Pride Organisers’ Association, are determined that EuroPride will take place.

Several radical oppositional parties such Ne Davimo Belgrade and the green-left Moramo coalition, of which they are a part, have called on people to join the main Pride march on 17 September, as have less radical parties such as the Democratic Party and the Movement of Free Citizens. There was opposition ten years ago in trade unions, particularly the teachers’ union, to the Serbian far right’s attacks on LGBT rights. Unions remain weak both numerically and politically but some explicitly working class organisations like Solidarnost – part of Moramo – are mobilising in support of Pride.

Vučić may allow the main march on 17 September. But we don’t know to what extent he can or will pull back the fascist and homophobic mobs, or restrain attacks on the wider week-long EuroPride.

The labour movement across Europe and the world must give solidarity to the EuroPride 2022 demonstrators.