In June 2001, nine months after the toppling of Serbia’s autocratic president Slobodan Milošević, the Serbian capital, Belgrade, attempted to host its first Pride parade. The event, which organisers had envisaged as a celebration of a new, progressive era, turned into a chaotic nightmare.
News footage from that day shows groups of young men marching through the capital, chanting “kill, kill, kill a poof”. The ultras of Belgrade’s biggest football clubs momentarily put tribal animosities aside and ran riot across the city, beating up parade-goers and fighting running battles with the police that left two officers seriously injured.
