Pride under a hail of stones

On 24 July 2013, Montenegro tried to hold a Pride event for the first time in its history, and with it the whole country came under scrutiny. In the Adriatic town of Budva, around 40 participants in rainbow T-shirts walked through the streets, accompanied by a large police presence. Facing them were some 200 opponents, who threw stones, bottles and flares at the police and marchers and chanted "Kill the gays" and "Only a healthy Montenegro". The police had to shorten the route to prevent further clashes; at least ten attackers were arrested and several participants slightly injured.

The co-organiser Zdravko Cimbaljević, the first man in Montenegro to have come out publicly as gay, told Reuters that he had not expected such a violent reaction: "This is the true face of Montenegro." The day before, fake death notices bearing his name and photo had appeared in Budva.

The incident hit a country in the middle of the EU accession process: Montenegro had recently opened accession negotiations and, among other things, had to show progress in protecting sexual minorities. A survey by the polling institute Ipsos from that time showed how far aspiration and social reality diverged: two thirds of respondents considered homosexuality an illness, and four out of five thought it should remain a private matter.

A year later, the Montenegrin human rights organisation Human Rights Action drew a sobering conclusion: despite numerous arrests and clearly identifiable attacks in front of rolling cameras, not a single attacker had been charged. The public prosecutor's office found that no criminal offence had been committed, which the organisation criticised as a licence for violence against queer people.