Pride caravans in Kraljevo and Zaječar go ahead despite stones and hate speech

Activists and members of the LGBT+ community held Pride caravans in the Serbian cities of Kraljevo and Zaječar on Tuesday, pressing ahead despite the stones, eggs and hate speech that met them, and carrying a simple message: there is room for everyone.

In Kraljevo, as the caravan moved through the Square of Serbian Warriors, a group of men gathered on the other side of a police cordon and pelted participants, journalists among them, with stones and eggs. Police soon broke up the gathering and moved the participants out. The LGBT+ organization Da se zna said dozens of hooligans had insulted and stoned them while police failed to react, and that reporters from Glas Šumadije and the Likvidno.info portal were hit with eggs.

In Zaječar, hundreds of police officers secured the caravan’s arrival, with two cordons keeping several dozen opponents away from the activists. The event began at 7:30 p.m.: a handful of activists, ringed by police, unfurled flags reading that there is room for everyone in Zaječar, while the assembled young men chanted insults and threats.

The gathering had been preceded by inflammatory posts from Neli Nikolić, a local councillor for culture and deputy head of the Zaječar branch of the ruling SNS party, who announced on Facebook that “sick people” were coming to town and urged residents to “lower their shutters.” When the caravan was first announced in July, he wrote that local children would not be made to watch what he called “freaks and perverts.”

Despite the ban on the Pride caravan in Pirot and open hostility elsewhere, Da se zna is continuing a series of gatherings across Serbia, insisting on LGBT+ people’s right to public space and visibility.

Source: Danas, N1. English adaptation: gay-serbia.com.