Belgrade Pride condemns ruling party campaign video that paints trans people as a threat

Belgrade Pride, the organisation behind the city’s annual Pride march, said on 17 October that it “strongly condemns” the use of transphobia in the election campaign of the list “Aleksandar Vučić – United Serbia”, led by the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

The statement responds to a promotional video posted on the Instagram account of Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia’s long-dominant political leader. The video speaks of “two paths ahead of us”: “Vučić’s path” and “the other path”, which it implies leads “to hormone therapies for changing the sex of our children”.

“Such a message is manipulation through fear and the spreading of disinformation about trans people, their lives and their healthcare,” Belgrade Pride said.

“A well-known strategy”

The group said that using marginalised people to score political points is nothing new, calling it a familiar tactic of right-wing and populist movements, used in campaigns by Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán and others. By stoking moral panic and presenting trans people as a danger to children and families, it said, public attention is pulled away from Serbia’s real social problems.

The statement singled out misleading claims about healthcare. Puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormone therapy are not the same thing: blockers temporarily pause pubertal development, while hormone therapy involves hormones to develop certain sex characteristics. According to Belgrade Pride, no hormone therapy for medical transition is given anywhere in the world to children before puberty begins, and access during adolescence is regulated and requires expert assessment and medical supervision.

Presenting this as arbitrarily “changing children’s sex”, the group said, grossly distorts medical facts and serves only to spread fear.

A call to all parties

Belgrade Pride called on the SNS, and on every other party and political actor in Serbia, to stop exploiting trans people in campaigns, spreading disinformation and inciting intolerance towards the LGBTI+ community.

“Political responsibility means public speech based on facts and respect for the human rights and dignity of all citizens, not manufacturing fear and looking for political enemies among marginalised groups,” the statement said, adding that trans people, and trans children and young people above all, must not be presented as a threat to society for political gain.

Source: danas.rs, insajder.net. English adaptation: gay-serbia.com.