Belgrade: A Gay Pride parade in Belgrade which was to have taken place on Sunday has been called off after the government said it could not protect marchers from extremists, organisers said on Saturday.
It would have been the first such event for eight years, after the last gay rights march was marred by violent clashes with Right-wing extremists.
Organiser Dragana Vuckovic said on B92 television, "We had a brief meeting this morning with Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic, who handed us a paper informing us that the parade was not possible (in central Belgrade) because the risks were too high."
The parade was to have taken place in the middle of Belgrade, but police proposed it be moved to a large, open space across the Sava river from the city centre, the Beta news agency said.
But Vuckovic said it was "unacceptable" to stage the parade in a "field".
"The message of equal rights is transmitted symbolically when a group on the margins is able to parade in the centre of the capital," Vuckovic said.
Although Vuckovic welcomed messages of support from the authorities, she said the organisers were urging the government to open an investigation into those who had threatened the march.
"The Gay Pride organisers nevertheless consider that the support, albeit tardy, of the President, the government and other institutions are a good basis for organising a Gay Pride next year," she said.
President Boris Tadic warned on Friday against creating an "atmosphere of chaos" and "threats and violence" in Belgrade after two French football fans were injured in a clash with fans of Partizan Belgrade.
Football fans are prominent in the nationalist and Right-wing groups which had threatened violence against those taking part in Gay Pride.
"The state will do everything to protect people, whatever their national, religious, sexual or political orientation, and no group must resort to threats and violence, or take justice into its own hands and jeopardize the lives of those who think or are different," Tadic said.
The "state will react in accordance with its authority to any act of violence on the streets of Belgrade and it will not allow the atmosphere of chaos to be created," he said.
Tadic also condemned "wild and barbaric acts by football fans and attacks on foreign citizens" and insisted the "state must do everything to arrest those who have committed violence and punish them as strictly as possible".
The organisers were expecting up to a thousand people to join the parade, among them a number of public figures, foreign diplomats and gay activists from neighbouring countries.
Interior Minister Ivica Dacic had said thousands of police would be deployed.
The ultra-nationalist Serb Popular Movement 1389 hailed the cancellation of Sunday's march as "a great victory for normal Serbia".
In a statement, the group claimed the real reason for the cancellation of the parade was that not enough people had volunteered to join it.
It said it would press ahead with its own demonstration in central Belgrade on Sunday morning, three hours before Gay Pride would have begun.
"In our city, infidels and Satanists will not pass," it added.
The parade, supported by the Ministry for Human Rights andM, would have been the first gay rights march since 2001, when a rally ended in violence after police failed to protect participants from attacks by football hooligans.
In March, Parliament passed a law banning discrimination against homosexuals, but gays and lesbians are still blocked from marrying, adopting children and other rights enjoyed by heterosexuals.
Belgrade Pride organisers had also called on the Serbian Orthodox Church to make an appeal for calm. But the church said it could not accept the event, calling it a "Shame parade, a parade of Sodom and Gomorrah".
Bureau Report
First Published: Saturday, September 19, 2009, 20:39