Discrimination against the same-sex oriented people in Serbia and Montenegro

Friday, 09 September 2005 01:34

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Discrimination against the same-sex oriented people in Serbia and Montenegro
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The European Court in Strasbourg considers sexual orientation i.e. sexual life in general, to be the most intimate realm of the human private life.
The Court is governed exactly by this when it makes decisions in favor of persons discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation.  The word discrimination stems out the Latin word discriminare, which in its root carries the meaning to differentiate. Although in its original form, it bears a completely neutral meaning through time this expression has gained a degree of judgmental connotation. Nowadays, discrimination represents an illicit differentiation of people i.e. differentiation according to illegitimate basis by which the usual premise consists of the so-called “personal features”.

My conviction firmly stands that the degree of a country’s civil society is in a reversed proportion with the existence of a discriminatory practice in that same society. Because, if we assume that a civil society understands a self aware, open, (self) critical, tolerant society, then in such system rarely does the discrimination occur. Developed society is an ideal to be strived for. Our surroundings, where the civil society has been systematically and grievously repressed for decades, is a fertile ground for a high degree of discriminatory practice. Our country now needs new, affirmative laws, professional politicians (both men and women), and institutional changes. Yet, all this “state” level is unsustainable, that is: it cannot survive by itself without a proper support. Great role here must be played by an independent, professional media, nongovernmental organizations, the entire educational system – schools, universities, artists… Only by joint forces, with parallel development, quality progress, these two spheres lead to that we call a democratic society, the society with space for everyone, where differences are respected and learned from, where they open up new views making us all better persons.

Those that are most often discriminated against are the minorities, as the old Latin word says – those that are “different” from those that are more numerous. Still, this is not a rule, not always are the discriminated groups both the minority one, which is a case with the discrimination against women.

Prejudices and stereotypes are closely related to the people of different sexual orientation than heterosexual, i.e. discriminatory practice that is a consequence – is tremendously strong in our country. Tolerance is missing from, unfortunately, many reasons. Our society carries the decades’ burden of hatred, wars, isolation, systematic indoctrination of “we – they”, and all those others and different according to anything are bad and dangerous. In that same society where there are still no appropriate laws, where ministers assault journalists, criminals are still at large, newspapers swarm with hate speech, and fascistic graffiti are common “decoration” on the street walls – poor level of tolerance goes almost without saying or at least does not surprise. Being different is simply not accepted, not permitted.

Our country is one of the last in Europe not to have adopted the Anti-discriminatory Law. The first motion to suggest this law was written by the Humanitarian Law Centre in 2001. The Institute for Comparative Law has written a new motion for this legislation(1) in 2004. The motion was written in cooperation with other nongovernmental organizations, and among other things, it outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation. The essence is that nobody can be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation, also nobody can be called to publicly state their sexual orientation but everyone has the right to do it. Should they decide to exercise their right they must not suffer negative consequences. This legislation is also beneficiate since it enables victims of discrimination with mechanisms of civil and legal protection possible to be triggered without waiting for a state intervention. It is imperative to adopt the general anti-discriminatory law as soon as possible, but there is an impression that this is the least clear to those that are at the same time the ones with the power to sanction hatred, violence and discrimination. Contrary to this – we are witnesses of an utter problem ignoring. Although the United Nations Human Rights Committee had accepted conclusions on July 28 2004, demanding our country to ask for an urgent adoption of an all-inclusive anti-discriminatory legislation, nothing has been yet done about this issue. Numbers also show that we must not wait any longer.

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