III. Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Who would have imagined? Europe, after all, produced the first international legal findings that sexual orientation was protected by the right to privacy. After the Wall fell in 1989, lesbians and gays were among the first to claim political rights, form organizations, campaign to end repressive laws. European institutions stood behind them, supporting legal reform and safeguards for intimate life. Boris Yeltsin repealed Stalin’s sodomy law. Ten years of international pressure led Romania finally to scrap its Ceausescu-era ban on homosexual sex. 

Who would have supposed that 20 years later, political leaders would call for beating and jailing LGBT people; that, in ostensibly democratic states, police would stand by while neo-Nazis bashed peaceful marchers? Europe in the 21st century was not meant to be like this.

Patterns of abuse

The pictures are the most memorable evidence of this unexpected Europe: faces bleeding, people running, the air streaked with tear-gas trails. These photographs have burst forth every spring and summer for several years, as LGBT groups try to stage pride marches in Cracow, Chisinau, Moscow.

The Warsaw mayor who banned a march became Poland’s president. His political allies called for criminalizing anyone who introduced LGBT issues in Polish schools, and for beating any daring marchers with batons. In Moscow, the mayor called pride participants “Satanic.” In Latvia and Romania, church leaders demanded an end to “pervert” demonstrations. 

Russian politicians reminded voters that the sodomy law had been abolished fifteen years before under pressure from the West, and told gays, in effect: We gave you your rights in the bedroom; keep off the streets. Banning the marches became a way of defining who belonged in the public sphere, who could participate in politics at all.

The backlash—the threat to freedoms of expression and association—is only one sign of a swelling violence. Hate crimes are “a daily reality all over the European continent,” the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner says, targeting immigrants, Muslims, Roma, foreign students, and others, from Ukraine to Italy. Political and religious figures who vilify LGBT people encourage both organized extremists and ordinary haters to move them up the roster of targets. “They use labeling and marginalization, demonizing, spreading misinformation about LGBT people, saying that homosexuality is a sin, against traditional values,” a Latvian activist explains: “Wherever we go, whatever step we take, we always need to expect some reaction: it’s an everyday thing.” A Polish group confirms that “physical attacks on LGBT people” have become a regular occurrence.

The violence happens in places where LGBT people have little visibility. Bosnian activists speak of death threats. An Armenian LGBT organization describes “sexual assault, sexual harassment. . . . physical violence, verbal violence, family violence.”

In Turkey, the state has headed to court—successfully—to close down LGBT groups. Regular assaults against transgender people by police and private individuals, and gang attacks on gay men, go unpunished.  A Turkish activist sees the “dark forces” in government—a militaristic establishment committed to conservative codes of morality and masculinity—still in charge. “It seems we are still trying to learn how democracy works.”

There are less visible inequalities. Countries admitted to the EU have been compelled to adopt anti-discrimination standards, which protect sexual orientation in employment (though not, as yet, in other areas of life). In many places, though, no effective enforcement exists. In countries beyond the new iron curtain—the one separating states with a hope of EU admission from those, like Russia, with none—neither the law nor international standards offer real recourse from discrimination.

Recent European Court of Human Rights decisions guarantee transgender people who have undergone surgeries the right to change their legal identities. These decisions make rights depend on medical intervention, however, and most EU countries require sterilization, among other medical invasions, as a condition of identity change. Some states in the region, like Turkey, have essentially adopted European practices on surgery and identity. In others, like Kyrgyzstan, the medical profession looks on gender identity with incomprehension—and transgender people face violence in family and community with little access to justice.

Challenges and chances

A small FTM group in provincial Russia told us: “The main challenge is fear.” Social attitudes in much of the region remain unreformed, and the issues Western European gays find urgent seem far away. In Serbia, an anti-trafficking center that works with LGBT people conducted the “first national research ... documenting the views and opinions of the general public toward LGBTs... It showed that 70% or more of the general public thinks that by engaging in same-sex relationship you are sick. This research shows a huge gap between those who don’t belong to sexual minorities and LGBT people. ... Due to that social distance, violence is seen as an acceptable way of dealing with or reacting to sexual minorities. So we are not at the point of discussing marriage or relationships at all.”

In many countries, movements that trace their origin to 1930s fascism are reviving in skinhead garb. Orthodox churches (some of which saw their credit damaged by collaboration with Communist regimes) have periodically used controversies over “culture” and sexuality to revive their political influence and prestige, sometimes allying with neo-fascists.[9] Newer Protestant denominations have spread in the Baltics and other areas, supported by North American evangelism; they start virtual “competitions,” one activist explained, “to see which church is the most homophobic.”

In Hungary and Romania, some ministers and parliamentarians have vocally defended LGBT people’s rights. In Poland, however, no political group is willing to speak out; and a Latvian lesbian says, “We do not have any truly liberal political forces, just some individual politicians.”

“Our biggest opportunity,” a Bosnian activist declares, “is entrance in to the EU family, which brings with it issues of harmonization of laws with treaties and human rights instruments.” During accession negotiations from 1992 on, the EU raised the issues of sodomy laws and discrimination with several states; it was largely through its pressure that Romanian law changed. The mere possibility of EU entry brought real political liberalization to Turkey. However, many EU states feel its elasticity to absorb new members is at an end. Moreover, the Union did little to restrain Poland during its government’s worst homophobic rhetorical rampages. In some apparently straightforward matters, it has exercised little influence: a Maltese activist points out that EU membership has still left his country the only one on the continent where divorce is illegal. A Serbian lesbian fears “that within this process of European integration ... the EU will trade off sexual rights. There are many things that Serbia needs to change, and if two more high profile war criminals are extradited, the EU might not be that demanding on sexual rights issues.”

Groups also face funding challenges. Some foundations are withdrawing from the Balkans: a Serbian anti-trafficking activist says, “only a few funders continue to support us. Activists are operating with very little funding, fighting among themselves for the little funding that has been left.” Meanwhile, the leading Romanian LGBT group states that “Access to human resources, specialists on LGBT issues, experts on legislation, is becoming more and more problematic.” Expanding for-profit opportunities mean that “being an employee in the non-governmental sector cannot compete ... We need to invest in people and keep the experienced people in the organization.”

What are movements doing?

Many activists in Eastern Europe make cultural change a priority: fighting invisibility and the climate of violence. An Istanbul activist says, “the main issue we tackle is silence.” Through pride events, conferences, intensive work with independent media, and articles and exhibitions on gender roles in society, they hope to change heart and minds: but “it’s far from enough. It has to be connected with other movements: women’s and anti-nationalistic and anti-militaristic.”

For a feminist activist in Serbia, “lobbying also means lobbying the masses, finding ways to communicate the message to the widest possible public—a new public, outside of the co-opted media.” Theater and film offer possibilities for outreach.

For most activists, however, legal and policy change remain critical. Goals they mention include:

• Hate crimes legislation that mandates keeping disaggregated statistics on incidents of violence and their motivation.
• Liaison and trainings between LGBT community organizations and the police.
• Detaching transgender identity from surgical intervention, and instituting simple and accessible procedures for changing legal papers to reflect the gender in which one lives.
• Protections for freedom of assembly and expression.
• Decriminalizing sex work   and relaxing legal regulation of public spaces through “morals” laws.
• Partnership recognition.

Comprehensive anti-discrimination laws, a key element of EU integration, also remain a central goal. Serbia in 2009 passed such a law, amid opposition from the Orthodox Church but with the support of rights activists both in the country and in the rest of Europe. However, the passage from paper protections to full implementation also demands close monitoring. Romanian activists stress the importance of “ensuring that the state institutions fighting discrimination ... will continue their work in a professional manner, independent of the political pressure put upon them.”

Hopes for such change vary immensely, between the repressive atmosphere of Russia—where neither courts nor lawmakers preserve much independence or have time for LGBT concerns—to the openness of Hungary and the Czech Republic (where forms of partnership and other protections have been achieved).

The question many activists ask is: given the role European integration has played in legal and political change so far, can European institutions still support LGBT rights effectively?

The EU is obviously not the only player. The Council of Europe has taken an active role in condemning hate crimes and promoting free assembly. Russian activists plan regular appeals to the ECHR against decisions denying them the right to demonstrate. While a similar appeal against Warsaw’s ban on a pride march led to embarrassment for Poland, it is not clear that Russia can be similarly shamed.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—the only non-military European body that also includes the US—monitors and works against violence based on intolerance and hatred, through its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The US has up until now actively opposed ODIHR taking on sexual orientation in its mandate.

The most significant test is coming soon within the EU itself.  A new anti-discrimination directive—launched after much hesitation by the European Commission, and after vocal pressure from human rights groups across the Union—would finally extend protections for sexual orientation to a broad range of areas of life, including access to goods and services. (It would extend similar protection to those suffering discrimination due to religion, age, or disability.) Now the Council of the European Union, representing all 27 member states, must decide by consensus whether to support or reject the commission’s proposal.

Both in new member and in non-member states, however, activists also look to alliances with other domestic movements to press forward reforms.  Their motto is: Use the EU, but don’t depend on it. A Serbian lesbian says, “We need to have the presence of civil society” in all processes of government reform, rather than relying on outside help. “We don’t want to have the Poland situation, where the legislation is EU-harmonized but you can’t have a pride parade, abortion is forbidden, there is a highly conservative government constantly threatening sexual and reproductive rights ... It’s not only about harmonizing legislation. It’s about working together with the government so they change their own conceptions about the world.”