Stephen Wordsworth

Sad and Strange

Like other EU Embassies here in Belgrade, the British Embassy had publicly supported the holding of this year’s Gay Pride parade.  In the words of the Swedish EU Presidency, which we put on our website too, “Any discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity must be condemned and rejected as being incompatible with the basic principles and values on which the EU is founded: equal opportunities and human rights.  Every individual is entitled to the rights and freedoms set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, without distinction of any kind. It is the very essence of European values.” 

So, like many others, I was disappointed to hear that the Parade had been cancelled.  Those people who had wanted to demonstrate peacefully had lost.  Those who were prepared to use all means to stop them had won.  In the words of my Swedish colleague, it was a sad and strange day.

But I can’t say that I was surprised.  In the days before the planned parade, there had been widespread talk of violence.  Graffiti on the walls called for ‘death to pederasts’.  The extreme right re-circulated the old lie that homosexuals are a threat to children (in reality, most serious sex crimes involving children are by adult males against girls).  In the days before the Parade, some senior politicians publicly said that they would prefer it not to take place.  The Acting Head of the Orthodox Church spoke of „the parade of shame, parade of Sodoma and Gomorra”, a parade of those “who chose the path of obliviousness and death instead of path of life”. And in conversations with a number of people, I had come across a common view that the parade should not happen, that holding it would be ’undemocratic’, as the majority did not want it – as though democracy gave the majority the right simply to suppress the views of the minority.

Across western Europe, all our societies have been through the difficult process of facing up to, and trying to overcome, long-established prejudices.  Homosexuality seems to many people to be a fundamental challenge to our image of a ’conventional’ family – so somehow it is ’abnormal’, even ’wrong’.  But research into human sexuality has shown that, while we still do not understand everything, our basic sexual orientation – whether we are heterosexual or homosexual – is not a matter of choice, but something we are born with.  So the only real choice, for the gay person, is whether they live their lives openly and honestly, and hope to find happiness with a loving partner; or whether they try to deny their real feelings, and struggle to live a lie.  For such people a Pride Parade is a way of standing up in front of others, and saying, ’This is what I am, accept me’.  It may make other people feel uncomfortable, but that is only a measure of the prejudice that we feel, that we all still have in our societies.  The choice for those who are not gay is whether they are willing, in turn, to accept gay people as equal citizens, or will go on trying to force them to deny their real personalities and live their lives in the shadows.  This time, clearly, Belgrade wasn’t ready.  Maybe next time, it will be.

Posted at 09:41 21 September 2009 by Stephen Wordsworth  |  Comments[8]

Working tempo picking up

The work tempo is starting to pick up again after the summer break, with people now back at their desks.  

At the beginning of this month I hosted our annual reception for all the people from Serbia who have studied in the UK under our 'Chevening' scholarship scheme.  It was a chance to see some old friends, and to send on their way the latest group of young scholars who are just about to begin their studies in the UK - at prestigious institutions such as the London School of Economics, Oxford University and others.  This year we have been able - despite the global economic crisis - to increase the number of scholarships we are offering - fourteen in all.  We are just starting the search for good candidates for next year, with plans to present our programme at various universities around Serbia.  

We have a wide range of other activities planned for the autumn.  My Defence Attaché will blog separately on the successful visit here by one of our Defence Ministers (and two Hawk training aircraft) for the 14 September Air Show in Belgrade.  We look forward to Serbia playing a bigger role in international military cooperation, including in the framework of the NATO Partnership for Peace.  Serbia has a strong military tradition, and lots to offer.  But clearly it’s up to the Serbian government to decide on the pace and extent of its international engagement.   

On 16 September, I spoke at the annual Summer School for Democracy, on the theme of regional cooperation and EU integration.  Afterwards a journalist asked me if I thought it was right for Serbia to submit its formal application for EU candidate status by the end of this year, whether or not the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) had come into force by then.  Several Serbian Ministers have recently said that Serbia will do so.  I had to say that we didn't think that would work.  While we fully support Serbia's goal of EU membership, and can understand Serbia's frustration at the delay, if the SAA is still blocked in December any candidate membership application would just be blocked too.  We really can't see any alternative to going step by step.  In the meantime, Serbia needs to go on doing all it can to get the best possible report from the International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) when the Chief Prosecutor visits Belgrade again in November.  That's the way to unblock things.  This comment got into most of the press - naturally, because it's an important issue.  So there's lots to do here this autumn. 

Serbian-speaking readers might want to know that the Embassy is now also blogging on B92 - we hope you will join us there.  We are getting a lot of comments already, which is opening up some good discussions.

Posted at 16:15 17 September 2009 by Stephen Wordsworth  |  Comments[1]

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