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After a turbulent post-war period, the three largest countries of the former Yugoslavia – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia – moved towards greater democracy and Europeanization in the early 2000s.
All three had joined the Council of Europe in 2003 (Croatia being the first in 1996) and had set their sights on EU membership (Croatia began negotiations with the EU in 2005 and joined in 2013, while Serbia and Bosnia are in the “candidate” phase of 2012 and 2022 respectively). Many civil society groups expected and demanded, and the EU also demanded membership, that these new states improve the protection of their human rights, including LGBT rights.
LGBT rights and Europeanness
During the first two decades of the 2000s, sexual and gender minorities, taboo and mostly hidden during socialist and war periods, began to become more visible and organized, and intensified their fight for equality. rights. Legal rights protections were measurable and improved in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, and LGBT rights became more visible in public discourse and in the media (according to one Serbian LGBT leader, even a controversial public debate was better than erasure and invisibility).
Anti-discrimination laws, hate crime legislation, and freedom of assembly through pride parades are some examples of progress in all three, although to varying degrees, as there are still weaknesses in implementation. implemented and persistent discrimination. Croatia has gone furthest in granting the right to lifelong partnership and adoption, while Bosnia and Serbia currently have bills on same-sex unions in parliament. The conditions and pressure linked to EU membership, particularly in Croatia and Serbia, and to a lesser extent in Bosnia, largely explain this improvement, with strong activism and civil society organizations also playing a role. a key role.
For both supporters and opponents of LGBT rights, being “European” has become synonymous with “LGBT”. This created tension as governments were Europeanizing while ethno-nationalism was still quite strong in all three countries during the first decade of the 2000s. Nationalist publics and elites had a more negative view of the EU and viewed LGBT rights and identities as foreign, imported, and inherently contrary and threatening to ethnonational and traditionally religious identities. In short, identities were seen as a zero-sum game. A Serbian activist leader told me: “People say that before we didn’t have homosexuals and now we see them, which links this to the EU. People want this issue to remain private.
Conflict and opposition
The manipulation of ethno-national identities has been a key tactic of political and religious elites to strengthen their political power and prevent popular mobilization around other identities, particularly class, gender and sexuality. Nationalist elites have engaged in “political homophobia,” a state strategy aimed at strengthening political authority in the face of threats from above or below.
These forces have outsourced responsibility for their domestic economic and political failures to the EU and presented the LGBT community as a threat to the family and the nation, winning them the votes of conservative voters. At the same time, Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia still had EU membership as a foreign policy goal and had to, to some extent, take into account more progressive voters. Thus, over the past two decades, elites have struggled to draw a subtle identity and political line between these diverse groups and interests.
Religious nationalism poses a particular challenge and religious leaders and symbols have played a very prominent role in anti-gay and anti-Pride events. Ironically, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, and Islamic leaders (and particularly in Bosnia) have found common cause in making LGBT identities and rights a target and forming alliances with conservative political parties. Examples of this reaction from right-wing forces include physical attacks on participants of the Queer Sarajevo festival in 2008, the Pride of Belgrade in 2010, the Divided Pride marches in 2011, and the conflict around a Referendum banning same-sex marriage in Croatia in 2013, to name a few.
Croatia
Although there are many similarities in the way nationalist rhetoric and ideology were deployed in all three cases, there are also some interesting variations. In Croatia, particularly as EU membership gained ground, the country’s national identity was constructed more in terms of convergence with European norms and identity, and elites sought to distinguish themselves and distancing themselves from what they saw as a negative “Balkan” identity.
For example, after the violence against the LGBT community during the Split Pride march in 2011, Croatian President Josipović condemned the attack and said: “It is sad what happened in Split where a part of the population showed its non-European face. What happened in Split does not reflect the true face of Croatia. The true face of Croatia is the one that condemns attacks on gay pride.”
Use the word confront to essentially signify identity, the president explicitly linked LGBT rights to Croatian identity and Europeanness. In this sense, EU membership was not only a goal in itself, but also a means of potentially recognizing Croatia’s de-Balkanization.
Furthermore, LGBT rights had a lower perceived threat (compared to Serbia and Bosnia) and were presented primarily as a “threat to the family”. Traditional anti-gay tropes related to “family values” and “morals” have been used, particularly by the Catholic Church and the organization. U Ime Obitelj this is what prompted the constitutional referendum banning same-sex marriage in 2013. Although this created challenges for LGBT rights in Croatia, it was less threatening than in Serbia.
Serbia
In Serbia, on the other hand, state and national identity was constructed more opposition to Europe and as more exclusive and religious, with elites struggling to politically balance EU conditionality and a nationalist population. The perception of threat from the LGBT community was stronger and presented primarily as “threat to the nation”. In short, national identity and religion have combined in a way to perceive homosexuality (and a “European identity”) as a greater threat than what we saw in Croatia.
We see this in cases of greater violence and religious protests in Serbia and in the many state cancellations of pride parades. When Pride was canceled in 2011 and 2013, amid pressure from the EU related to negotiations over Kosovo, a longtime Serbian LGBT leader told me: “If you have to do something unpopular (e.g. meeting EU requirements), you cannot do it. another unpopular thing. We cannot both sell Kosovo and let ‘sick perverts’ march through our cities.”
However, in 2014 (and beyond), as formal negotiations for EU membership began, the government reluctantly allowed Pride to take place. Additionally, President Vucić’s choice of a pragmatic gay prime minister (Ana Brnabić, since 2017) was seen by observers as a way to distract from the government’s poor record on LGBT rights.
Bosnia Herzegovina
The nationalist challenge has also been significant in Bosnia, the most complicated case, given its multiple and competing ethnic and religious identities (Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian), the institutionalization of ethno-nationalism in the constitution and the dominance of ethnic parties that have governed since the end of the war, and its continued intransigence in the face of European standards and pressures for change.
Given that there are three different ethno-nationalist communities competing for power in Bosnia, this has intensified the dynamic discussed above, in which nationalist leaders view the increasing visibility of non-ethnic identities as a direct threat to their hold. on power. The “threat to the nation” frame is quite strong in the rhetoric of ethno-nationalist leaders of all groups. Following the violent attack on the Queer Festival in 2008, for example, a conservative Islamic-leaning newspaper called the festival an affront to European Muslims during the religious period of Ramadan.
As one Sarajevo-based LGBT activist said of Bosnian identity: “Anything other than the heterosexual Muslim norm is seen as an offense to the victimized image of the Bosnian nation. The war produced a cult of masculinity, heroes and šehids (Muslim Martyrs),” echoing the notion of heterosexual masculinity in the service of defending a nation that does not include LGBT people.
Adopting an LGBT identity in Bosnia sends a message to elites that different ethno-national groups can crossed lines collaborate and forge new identities that can truly threaten the ethno-national hold on power. Bosnia’s LGBT leaders are proud that their movement is a multi-ethnic, civic and inclusive movement. For example, the Pride is called “Pride of Bosnia and Herzegovina”, not Pride of Sarajevo. As one leader said: “It is a source of pride for the whole country, without any link to any city or entity. We want to use it as a unifying factor because there are enough divisions in Bosnia.”
Reasons to be optimistic
There are real reasons to worry that democratic backsliding in the region and the continued power of nationalist political parties could reverse some of the progress made toward greater LGBT equality in the Balkans. However, the progress made over the past two decades, particularly in terms of strengthening civil society in matters of human rights and LGBT rights (in addition to legal advances that have not been rolled back), should encourage us to a certain optimism.
Latest from Serbia effort to ban Euro Pride in Belgrade last September (the first Euro Pride in South-Eastern Europe), and its last minute reversal to enable it to move forward, shows that old habits die hard, but that public and international pressure remains formidable and positive. The nationalist backlash against progress is likely to continue, as will the instrumental use of nationalism by opportunistic elites, but over time voters may tire of scapegoating and fear-mongering and focus instead on the foundations of good governance and fundamental human rights for all.
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