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December 7, 1999 Serbia Is a National Socialist Society
In recent days the media focused on the first trial for violent behaviour against a homosexual in Serbia. Dejan Nebrigic, executive director of Campaign against Homophobia and one of the parties in the trial, gave an interview for Free Serbia. FS: What has been achieved so far in the campaign? We have already published in our first report something we might term "a general picture". Those are the results of the campaign in its first phase known as "sensitising public opinion in Serbia". We are carrying out the campaign in two quite simple ways.
FS: Is homophobia more conspicuous in FR Yugoslavia than in other Balkan countries? When it comes to homophobia, we are always on the same side with the Jews, Masons, Romanies and all other endangered minority groups. I have already said that Serbia is a nationalist socialist i.e. homo-fascist society since always three minority groups are endangered, two of them especially, in all totalitarian societies. In every single dictatorship, both under Stalin and Hitler - as the most radical extremists, homosexuals and Jews were the most endangered. Such is the case in this society as well, even though the attitude towards the Jews here was markedly different. Homosexuals and Jews were persecuted in all totalitarian societies, beginning from Voltaire, the French philosopher, onwards. Pink triangle is the symbol both of Arkadija and the whole gay movement. Many gay groups use it as their logo which was why in Hitler's times when the Jews wore yellow bands displaying the six-pointed "star of David", the homosexuals also ended up in concentration camps, including Jasenovac - the people know little about these things - on account of their sexual orientation only, regardless of their nationality. They all wore pink triangles. Stalin was even worse and many more homosexuals were sent to Siberian gulags. True enough, they were not murdered in gas chambers - Hitler killed around 10,000 homosexuals and we have no records of those who were imprisoned.
FS: Have there been verbal or physical assaults on activists during the campaign? I could show you straight away something called 'an archive of individual cases - reports on incidents'... Our annual report listed all the incidents of 1998 on pages 5-11. Actually, some cases were not put on this list as we try to avoid publicity in some cases. All of the people involved are mentioned by their initials, although everybody actually knows who they really are, but this is our principle of anonymity. If publicity might harm the victim, then we do not even publish a short account of such a case. Individual cases of homophobia are presented here - during NATO bombardment there were cases when homosexuals and some lesbians could not enter local shelters as their neighbours would throw them out. Also the people in Plato bookshop would not sell a homosexual book once; and recently we had the most drastic case in the campaign. Fortunately, this case didn't end like the one in Montreal where some 17 murders on average take place every year because of homophobia. No one has been murdered yet for being a homosexual in Serbia, and I hope no one ever will, but we cannot say that Canada is homophobic, yet we could say so for Serbia. Police practice in Serbia is entirely different from the one in Canada - in this country homophobia is being encouraged, not punished. Also there is something we might call "homophobia in Serbian health service". It is illegal, but nevertheless it is quite prominent. It is illegal as the Serbian Medical Society adopted the position of the US Psychiatric Society according to which homosexuality was excluded as a category in medical diagnoses. Unfortunately, homophobia is deeply rooted in Serbian health service and the worst homophobic case was the one I have already mentioned in which I was involved as well while helping a victim of homophobia. We are talking of a homosexual and drug addict, and we regularly indicate in our reports a specific relation between drug addiction and homosexuality. We just cannot keep our mouths shut about the fact that there is a large number of drug addicts among homosexuals, and they are the ones who are the most exposed to sexual discrimination. This drug addict was taken to the mental hospital in Kovin on orders given by his quasi-psychiatrist. This institution is also a hospital for alcoholics. Our campaign against homophobia responded quickly to this and soon we managed to secure his release from the hospital in 12 hours. We also proved that the psychiatrist in question did this because of his being prejudiced against his patient as a homosexual and not on account of his being alcoholic - he was not an alcoholic anyway, but a drug addict. FS: What are the most recent developments in the case in which you are also involved as this is the first instance of homophobic assault trial in Serbia?
Also there was a conflict between the defendant's lawyer and judge Feratovic, so Mr.Sultan Feratovic had to take leave and get away from court and those gossips. This lawyer brought 27 criminal charges against judge Feratovic. FS: Were there attacks against the judge on nationalist lines? Only Mr.Bastajic, the defendant's lawyer, actually attacked the judge. What were the motives behind it- I couldn't tell, as I don't know either Mr.Bastajic or Mr.Sultan Feratovic.
It is extremely annoying that everything is being postponed till next spring, and we wouldn't put faith in the effectiveness and even fairness of this court if Mr.Feratovic were dismissed by higher judicial authorities from this case. It could happen that we decide to withdraw our charges and resolve the problem out of court if the other party agrees to it. FS: What is the address of your Internet presentation? Our presentation is under construction and I ask of all the Internet users to pardon me, but it will be operational soon. The URL is www.gay-serbia.com, and our e-mail address is camp@bits.net. We would like all the victims of homophobia to report to us as we could provide free-of-charge legal service. We would like to call on other victims of homophobia, unwilling to resolve their problem before the court, to report to us as well so that we could have a record of it in our archives. Dragan Maravic
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First, we issue press releases, announcements, call journalists and do this kind of thing I am doing right now. In this manner we endeavour to sensitise public opinion. I could only tell you that we have been rather successful in this aspect of the campaign for which yet another proof is this most recent case. I am referring here to our first experience in court with the victims of homophobic assaults, however, I will not be giving statements on this trial anymore. We have indeed achieved so much in our attempts to sensitise our public opinion. This case received enormous publicity and all articles - there were at least 20 news articles reporting on the trial, and indeed it is unusual to have so many reactions to a press release - were positive. Every single one, except for an article in NIN, which was kind of stupid, above all unintelligent, it was not even negative. We have won over the public opinion to our side. It is important that the public focuses its attention on the first case of homophobia which came to the light of day. I could also single out the article published in Vecernje novosti as they published for the first time a short, yet unhomophobic and professional text about homosexuality even though they actually published BETA news agency's item.
Our system is similar to this one, yet not so extreme.
There is so much fuss about it, but this is what we intended, this is what we wanted. I brought charges against this man almost by accident and at the time it had nothing to do with the campaign despite my being executive director. Of course, I filed private charges since that was the only way. The Campaign is not a legal entity but simply a developing project. We have decided not to give any statements in relation to this trial until the next session of the main hearing. We are annoyed now since we filed the charges in early March and the trial was scheduled for November 17, 1999. We could have even borne a child in the meantime, and the accused could have realised his threats with murder.
Was there an attack on the judge? Well, you know what, his name is Sultan Feratovic and you are probably aware of the fact that Serbia is rather intolerant towards people with such names. I don't know, maybe. You should ask Mr.Feratovic and Mr.Bastajic since this aspect of the case has nothing to do with our campaign. Nevertheless, such rumours are circulating and it's quite unusual that 27 criminal charges are simultaneously being brought against someone called Sultan. Even though Mr.Feratovic as a judge is entitled to judicial immunity, he didn't take advantage of this exclusive right. This is obviously a proof of his honesty. By the way, he is the judge dealing with those subtle and delicate cases like the one when the principal of the elementary school Sveti Sava slapped a schoolboy or a schoolgirl suffering from brain tumour. When Mr.Feratovic was about to pronounce the verdict, he was dismissed from the case. He also handled some dirty trials when a journalist of Pancevac wrote an article of a case of illegal construction and, as far as we know, Mr.Bastajic was involved in this illegal affair. So there is something behind it. If indeed those were attacks on nationalist lines, the Campaign will protest strongly - we don't know yet how.
