In spite of a plethora of social, political, economic and other issues that the citizens of South-East European countries are facing today, discussions on themes related to the LGBTIQ+ population remain a ‘hot topic’ in the public arena of these states. With that in mind, Debunk.org analysts have examined posts about LGBTIQ+ rights published on various disinformation-prone Facebook groups and pages from Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia in 2022, detecting close to 400 examples of false and/or misleading content pieces posted across 365 channels.
By Radovan Ognjenović and Daniela Vukčević, researchers at Debunk.org
BACKGROUND
Despite the generally well established anti-discriminatory and LGBTIQ+ rights-promoting legislature in the four analysed South-East European states, the degree of public acceptance of non-traditional sexual orientations remains at a low level. The anti-LGBTIQ+ sentiments shared by many citizens of these Balkan countries are continuously exacerbated by prominent members of right-wing political parties, as well as the largest religious organisations, which, even though the countries in question are nominally secular, nonetheless play a significant role in the social and political lives of their citizens.
Their rhetoric, intensively promoted on social media by the actors themselves as well as numerous amplifiers of their messages, mostly focuses on the LGBTIQ+ rights movement being something unnatural and foreign to the traditional societies of this region, a phenomenon that is ‘imported’ from the West and ‘imposed’ by promoters from the European Union, the United States of America, NATO, and the likes. As this analysis further demonstrates and explains in more detail, it is often claimed that the LGBTIQ+ population operates in an organised manner and has specific goals that it wishes to achieve, and that are aimed directly against traditional family values, the Church, ‘normal’ upbringing of children, etc.
In order to promote such positions, some individuals do not hesitate to stage certain events and make up stories which feed into their narratives. The 2022 case of ‘sister Milka’ in Serbia demonstrates it perfectly. In a video produced and shared by a right-wing political activist, a woman, who claimed to be of Serbian origin, but now lives and works in Germany, givesher ‘testimony’ about allegedly being fined for not dressing up her son in girls' clothes at school, upon request of the German Education Ministry. Following such an experience, Milka supposedly decided to go back to Serbia - and is therefore also expressing support to all the people who are protesting against the organisation of the 2022 pride parade in Belgrade. This video was swiftly debunked, but it still received notable traction across social media, especially because of its timing - being published around one month ahead of the pride parade.
All of this is not to say that the state of play vis-à-vis the protection of LGBTIQ+ rights has not been gradually improving over time. To illustrate this, when the European branch of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA - Europe), an umbrella organisation that gathers 600 NGOs from Europe and Central Asia, published the 2022 edition of its annual review of LGBTIQ+ rights (the Rainbow Map and Index), Montenegro found itself being classified as the best performer in Central and Eastern Europe. With a score of 63% on the equality scale, the country even managed to rank higher than several Western European democracies. On the other hand, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia acquired scores of 45%, 38%, and 37%, respectively.
Indeed, Montenegro has come a long way since 2013 when the first Montenegrin Pride Parade was organised in the coastal city of Budva. Some thirty participants of the event had to be guarded by over 400 policemen, due to the fact that around 1000 people gathered to protest the parade, some of them even throwing stones and eggs at the participants. Later instances have been met with significantly less opposition - for example, the 10th Pride organised in the national capital of Podgorica in 2022 was held peacefully and no incidents were recorded.
In 2020, a tight majority, 42 out of 81 members of the Parliament of Montenegro, voted for the legislation enabling same-sex couples to register their partnership. Montenegro thus became the first EU membership candidate state which adopted such a law, even ahead of certain full-fledged Member States of the Union. A year later, the first homosexual couple got married, while another year later, an NGO based in Podgorica - LGBT Forum Progress - launched a lawsuit against the state of Montenegro for failing to allow its citizens, same-sex couples who have married abroad, to register their partnership in the country although the corresponding legislation was adopted couple of years ago.
Besides the problems with implementation, the legal framework in Montenegro is still a step ahead when compared to the everyday, social circumstances in which LGBTIQ+ people live. The report on the pattern and degree of discrimination shows a significant level of misunderstanding and social distance toward the sexual minorities.
The first baptism of a transgender person, who had still not undergone full transition, was organised by the Serbian Orthodox Church in Podgorica at the end of 2019, and for a moment it sparked hopes that the Church will be changing its attitude toward the LGBTIQ+ people. However, these hopes did not last for long. The Serbian Orthodox Church - in a lesser amount in Montenegro, but to a greater extent in Serbia and Republika Srpska - was included in the anti-LGBTIQ+ and anti-Pride Parade campaign during several months ahead of the eventual start of the Litanies for the Salvation of Traditional Family / Litanies for the Salvation of Serbia, which, in their essence, were protests against the announced Europride that was held in Belgrade on 17 September 2022.
The Republic of Serbia finds itself in a notably specific situation when it comes to the degree of respect of the rights of sexual minorities. Namely, Ana Brnabić, the Prime Minister of Serbia - nominally the most powerful person in the country's political scene and a member of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which has won the overwhelming majority of votes in all elections held since 2012 - is a woman belonging to the LGBTIQ+ population. In 2019, she became the first LGBTIQ+ world leader to have a child with her partner while in office.
However, anti-LGBTIQ+ voices can be heard from within the Prime Minister’s party and their coalition partners. Furthermore, the legislature adopted during her tenure effectively bans same-sex couples in Serbia from having children. This has caused public outcry in the liberal social circles in the country and led several civil society organisations to file formal complaints that call for the relevant laws to be amended or annulled.
Also, although the city of Belgrade applied for the organisation of Europride in 2019, alongside with the letter of endorsement by the Prime Minister, the preparations for the parade did not run smoothly. The anti-parade sentiments were ignited by the Serbian Orthodox Church’s high-ranking officials and the anti-LGBTIQ+ litanies, and often fuelled by conservative politicians’ unsubstantiated claims[1]. This had eventually contributed to the decision of Serbian authorities to officially ban the march, under the pretext of the concerns for the safety of the participants of Europride, and the complicated situation in the country. Eventually, Europride was organised. It was held on a shorter route than initially planned, and caused no major incidents and consequences, but raised many concerns about the legal and political uncertainties regarding its organisation.
The remaining two analysed countries, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, are lagging behind in comparison to Montenegro on different legislation acts related to the position of sexual minorities, even though Croatia allows adoption of children to same-sex couples.
Although Croatia eventually adopted a law allowing same-sex partnerships, the road has been long and bumpy. In 2013, a referendum on including the definition of a marriage as a union strictly between a man and a woman in the Constitution was organised, with an overwhelming majority voting in favour of it. Voting for such a definition at the referendum was strongly supported and promoted by many eminent political and social actors in the country, including the Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica - HDZ), the most powerful political party, as well as the Catholic Church, which has a strong influence in the country.
In 2019, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capital, Sarajevo, became the last former Yugoslav capital to organise a Pride Parade in 2019. A number of incidents and attacks on members of sexual minorities were recorded during events related to LGBTIQ+ rights - however, attitudes towards the LGBTIQ+ population are slowly changing in this country as well. Nonetheless, households headed by same-sex couples are still not eligible for the same legal protections which are available to opposite-sex couples.
SUMMARY
More than 370 examples of content pieces spreading the anti-LGBTIQ+ sentiment were identified during the last year in 365 Facebook groups and pages. Although this analysis focused on the content posted in 2022, the peak was noted ahead of the Europride in Belgrade. Approximately 75 percent of the dubious content was published two months before and after the parade.
The content was shared by potentially suspicious media outlets and their social media channels, as well as by political parties, dominantly Serbian right-wing (Zavetnici, Dveri and the Serbian Radical Party), some medical doctors (Borislav Antonijević, Jovana Stojković), religious authorities, and individual users. It is worth noting that, mostly due to the existence of anti-discriminatory laws in all analysed states, mainstream media outlets did not engage in the explicit promotion of anti-LGBTIQ+ rhetoric during the period of research.
CONTENT ANALYSIS
Discriminatory rhetoric
Analysing the aforementioned examples which promote anti-LGBTIQ+ narratives enabled Debunk.org analysts to identify several cases of specific language being used to further deepen the anti-LGBTIQ+ sentiment shared by a large portion of the population of countries where Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian languages are used by the majority of citizens.
One example is the widespread use of the term ‘homosexualism’ as a means of evoking negative emotions. This term is often used when the author wishes to imply that it represents an ideology which is foreign to this region and which is being aggressively imposed by the LGBTIQ+ rights movement upon the general population, for various reasons set by their alleged predetermined agendas.
Furthermore, in line with the statements that various conservative Central and Eastern European politicians have been making for quite some time now, authors of numerous anti-LGBTIQ+ posts across the Balkan virtual space like to imply the existence of the ‘LGBTIQ+ ideology’. Most often they want their readers to believe that all people of a non-traditional sexual orientation form a monolithic ideological block, adhering to one firm set of rules, and intend to spread it all around the world.
In accordance with the already described examples of language that induces negative emotions towards LGBTIQ+, there are also stories implying the existence of a powerful ‘LGBTIQ+ lobby’. Authors of false and/or misleading content on this topic seem to aim at promoting the belief that members of this alleged lobby are infiltrating the social and political arenas of countries all around the globe, for the sake of pursuing their sinister goals, as demonstrated by the pieces of content shown below.
Comment sections
The majority of problematic content is produced by social media users. Even those outlets that notoriously spread disinformation tend to avoid publishing content which directly, openly discriminates against any minority, including sexual minorities. When they do so, it is done in a more circumstantial way - by, for example, praising the new Russian legislation prohibiting the promotion of ‘LGBTIQ+ ideology’.
Unlike the media and the social media-generated content, which needs to align with Facebook’s policies and is monitored by various fact-checking organisations, the comment sections are often left unfiltered. The recurring messages of the actual posts are being repeated in the comments - in a raw, unfiltered form. Even when the post itself is neutral, or even affirmative of the sexual minorities and their freedom to practise and enjoy the rights provided to them by the legislation, the comment sections often are filled with words and phrases which, according to relevant legislature in the analysed countries, fall under hate speech, sometimes with direct calls for violence against the LGBTIQ+ population.
Even topics like gender equality, which are not tightly related to the rights of sexual minorities, are often misinterpreted as such and refuted as the part of a ‘satanists’ and ‘world globalists’ agenda’ intended to impose the ‘gender ideology’ onto traditional Balkan societies.
The news about a Croatian military officer being fined for using slander against LGBTIQ+ people, induced even more hate speech.
To illustrate the scope of this issue - in Montenegro, the local NGO LGBT Forum Progress has been monitoring hate speech targeting sexual minorities for a decade and, in just one week in October 2022, they filed over 200 reports to the police because of inappropriate content.
RECURRING MOTIFS AND ANTI-LGBTIQ+ COMMUNICATION SOURCES
Recurring motifs
Several recurring motifs and stories related to this topic became apparent during the in-depth analysis of different pieces of anti-LGBTIQ+ content published during 2022 across the social media space of former SFR Yugoslavia.
One of these is the often-repeated allegation that the LGBTIQ+ rights movement, including the organisers of pride parades in the Balkans, has one central overarching objective: destruction of the concept of traditional family and eradication of family values.
This narrative has been adopted and disseminated by several right-wing political figures in the Balkan states, as well as by representatives of religious organisations. In fact, the importance of uniting for the purpose of ‘saving the family’ from the negative influence of LGBTIQ+ people roaming the streets was one of the key messages of the series of anti-LGBTIQ+ gatherings in Serbia in summer 2022, heavily promoted by the Serbian Orthodox Church as ‘Marches for the Salvation of Traditional Family’.
Closely related to the aforementioned motif of protecting the traditional family from the alleged negative influence of LGBTIQ+ rights movements is also the often-encountered motive of the necessity to protect children. As illustrated by the examples below, some content creators did not shy away from making up stories on pride parade organisers and other LGBTIQ+ rights activists claiming that they are ‘coming to get our children’, thus further assisting the blossoming of homophobia in this region.
Several other creators of manipulative social media content decided to capitalise on the collective trauma caused by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on modern-day society. They placed their focus on the 2022 global outbreak of monkeypox, depicting it as a disease which exclusively affects the LGBTIQ+ population.
If we applied the aforementioned logic that would mean that organising any sort of pride parade or similar gatherings of LGBTIQ+ people would equate to putting the general population at risk of a potential new epidemic. As some groups and pages would want their audience to believe - causing a new epidemic and using it as an excuse to impose new lockdowns on regular citizens is exactly the plan that the government wishes to carry out.
Finally, another recurring narrative found in social media posts related to the 2022 Europride in Belgrade revolved around the perceived illegality of the organisation of said event. The authors of such posts claim that the sole organisation of this event represented a serious breach of Serbia’s laws, calling it, among other things, a sort of coup d’etat and/or a piece of evidence that today’s Serbia is under occupation by other, more influential countries.
All of this aligned perfectly with several notable events in European politics which occurred during 2022 and led to a further promotion of anti-LGBTIQ+ rhetoric among certain population groups. Namely, in late 2022, the Russian government adopted a law on banning the so-called ‘LGBTIQ+ propaganda’ which forbids any sort of public promotion of non-heterosexual relationships. The creators of this law claim that public displays of the LGBTIQ+ lifestyle are a form of ‘hybrid warfare’ aimed against the Russian tradition - and it is thus no wonder that the adoption of said law has been met with praise within conservative right-wing circles across the Balkans, especially those which are traditionally pro-Russian.
Another significant political development which resonated well with conservative content creators was the success of the far right in the September 2022 parliamentary elections in Italy, which resulted in Giorgia Meloni becoming the new Prime Minister. Her speech on family being under attack by, among others, the LGBTIQ+ rights movements has been shared numerous times and has been met with praise by the Balkan right-leaning audiences.
During 2022, right-leaning Facebook groups and pages from South-East Europe also did not miss an opportunity to convey messages of support to various developments regarding the adoption and implementation of anti-LGBT legislature in Poland and Hungary - Member States of the European Union which are often criticised by the official Brussels due to the deteriorating situation in the area of rule of law.
Anti-LGBTIQ+ communication sources
CONCLUSIONS
The existence of legal rights and the opportunity to actually enjoy and practise them are two completely different stories. The legislation related to the rights of LGBTIQ+ people in the Balkan region, even though it lags behind some parts of the world, has come a long way since the end of the 20th century, when, in some of the countries in this region, homosexual relations were prohibited by the law.
In Croatia and Montenegro, same-sex partnerships, which grant essentially the same rights as marriage, are allowed, while in Croatia homosexual couples can also adopt children. Although the importance of the legal framework is indisputable, social circumstances are often such that sexual minorities fear enjoying their rights due to potential rejection by both family, friends, and society, and this reflects in the content about the LGBTIQ+ people published on social media. News portals, even some proven disinformation spreaders, tend to restrain themselves from disseminating content against the sexual minorities, most likely because of the potential legal consequences, as discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited. Only a small portion of problematic content related to LGBTIQ+ people has been re-shared from news portals. Anti-LGBTIQ+ content about sexual minorities is predominantly generated by either individuals, or pages on Facebook, but often reinforced by influential persons - politicians, medical doctors and religious authorities, and vice versa. Such content is very rarely presented as explicitly anti-LGBTIQ+, but instead often gets disguised as ‘caring for traditional families’ and ‘fighting for traditional values’.
Several recurring messages have been detected across the analysed Facebook groups and pages, including the one that LGBTIQ+ rights movement has one key goal of all of their actions: destruction of the concept of traditional family and eradication of family values. Furthermore, closely related to the aforementioned message is also the often-repeated one on the necessity to protect the children from the promoters of LGBTIQ+ rights. In addition, the 2022 global outbreak of monkeypox was used to depict monkeypox as a disease which is exclusively spread by the LGBTIQ+ population and was thus used to describe pride parades and similar events as a public health risk. Lastly, many posts related to the 2022 Europride in Belgrade accentuated the perceived illegality of the organisation of said event. On top of this, numerous examples of specific language being used to further deepen the anti-LGBTIQ+ sentiment across the Balkans have been identified, including the use of suggestive terms like ‘homosexualism’, the ‘LGBTIQ+ lobby’, and the ‘LGBTIQ+ ideology’.
In the case of social media content, the fact that it is monitored by independent fact-checkers often results in posts being labelled as ‘false or misleading information with missing context’, but this does not prevent bias and hate speech - most commonly in the comments section. Lastly, some accounts, even when they are sharing content that is affirmative of the LGBTIQ+ community, fail to moderate the comment section, which results in offensive language being used and, in worst cases, in open calls for violence.
[1] In the arguments against organising the Pride Parade, right-wing conservatives often involve the situation in Kosovo. Serbia does not recognise the independence of it, treating it still as its southern province. This topic is highly polarising in the country and it is often being (mis)used for campaigning against the LGBTIQ+ rights saying that ‘The police will be guarding the Parade participants and what about the Serbian children in Kosovo who are being terrorised by Albanians…’ The police forces of Serbia cannot enter the territory of Kosovo and the protection of Europride participants is unrelated to it.
This project was financed by the German Federal Government.