Guardian Article: Writer Claims Gay Pride Parade In Belgrade Serbia Is A Sign Of Progress.
Gay pride shows Serbia’s progress
Though imperfect, Belgrade’s recent pride march goes some way towards atoning for the attacks on gay Serbians of 2001
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- Rob Miller
- guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 October 2010 12.00 BST
- Article history
Gay activists followed by riot police march in Belgrade on 10 October. Photograph: Darko Vojinovic/AP
The Belgrade air was choked with smoke and teargas. Armed police, locked tight in formation, spanned one end of the street; at the other a throng of young men, overwhelmingly masked and hooded, swarmed across the road, hurling at the police lines whatever came to hand. They were trying to reach the gay pride parade, the first attempt to hold such a parade in the city for almost 10 years. Chanting “death to homosexuals” and “homosexuals go to Kosovo”, they were targeting the marchers.
Stones, bottles and petrol bombs rained down on the police, but the line held steady, even when the crowd hijacked a trolley-bus, driving it at speed through the rubble towards the ranks that blocked their way. Police reinforcements arrived and whole columns of mounted officers galloped up and down the avenue and its side streets.
Throughout Sunday, this scene was repeated around the city. An estimated 5,000 police were deployed to contain the rioters. When the tension finally abated on Sunday evening, the city centre was a mess. An estimated 140 people, 124 of them police officers, had been injured, 207 had been arrested and the offices of political parties that had supported the parade had been attacked and set on fire.
It might seem a stretch – as Belgrade’s shopkeepers and municipal workers clear the broken glass from the streets – to claim the parade was a success, but it surely was. To see why, one has to look back nine years to the July day in 2001 when the last attempt to hold a pride parade was made.
Two thousand football hooligans, ultra-nationalists and religious extremists attacked the parade, beating the marchers and chanting homophobic slogans. The 50 police officers present, there ostensibly to protect the parade, looked on in callous impassivity, spurred into action only when they themselves were attacked.
“As a society we are not mature enough to accept such demonstrations of perversity,” Belgrade’s chief of police said the following day, blaming the parade’s organisers for provoking the violence. No effort was made to protect the parade or its participants and no significant opposition to the attackers was raised in public. But the Serbia of June 2001 was very different to the Serbia of today.
Slobodan Milosevic had been deposed just months before and was on his way to the Hague. Zoran Djindjic was beginning his first term as prime minister, which was to end with his assassination in 2003. The country was still reeling from the wars of the 1990s. It was barely two years since the Kosovo war had seen Serbia’s infrastructure reduced to rubble by Nato bombs and crippling economic sanctions. It is perhaps little wonder that the state was unable or unwilling to protect its minorities.
The 2010 parade, though imperfect, provides an illustration of the progress Serbia has made. The police were out in force and prominent political figures, high-ranking police officers and foreign embassies had announced their support for the parade. One thousand people attended the parade. Police tactics were successful, sealing the parade from its attackers and ensuring that, while the show of pride hardly had the audience of ordinary Serbians that its organisers wanted, its participants were protected.
These might seem trivial matters, the sort of actions one would expect any metropolitan police force to undertake. But until now, Serbia’s LGBT population has not been able to rely upon this basic protection from violent attack. For its resolve in facing this problem, Serbia must be congratulated; it has gone some way towards atoning for the tragedy of
Associated Press Article: Anti Gay Riots In Serbia Will Hurt Chances Of Entering European Union.
By DUSAN STOJANOVIC (AP) – 6 hours ago
BELGRADE, Serbia — An EU official said Monday that Serbia’s failure to prevent an anti-gay riot could hurt its bid to join the European Union, but the U.S. Embassy praised police for doing all they could to protect the gay pride march from far-right activists.
On Sunday, Serbian police fought running battles with thousands of far-right supporters who tried to disrupt the march in downtown Belgrade by hurling Molotov cocktails and stun grenades. More than 150 people were hurt and nearly 250 were arrested, police said.
Jelko Kacin, in charge of the European Parliament’s evaluation reports on Serbia, said in a statement the anti-gay riots “show an elementary lack” of tolerance for minority rights in Serbia and the “inefficiency” of the state in preventing such a trend.
“A very bad message was sent from Belgrade” that could hurt its bid to join the EU, the Slovenian official said.
However, the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade said it “commends the professionalism and restraint exercised” by the police and Belgrade authorities “in ensuring the participants in the Pride Parade were fully protected throughout the event.”
“We strongly condemn all the many acts of violence committed throughout the city, and call on the perpetrators to be brought to justice,” the embassy said in a statement.
The same far-right groups set the American Embassy in Belgrade on fire during riots in 2008 to protest U.S. support for Kosovo’s independence.
On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is due to visit the Serbian capital as part of a tour of the Balkans.
Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said Monday that police are bracing for “a mayor security challenge” during Clinton’s one-day visit.
“As of tonight, we are starting the preparations for Hillary Clinton’s visit,” Dacic said, adding that thousands of policemen will be deployed and most of Belgrade’s downtown will be sealed off for traffic and pedestrian movement by security forces.
The gay pride march, attended by some 1,000 participants, was viewed as a major test for Serbia’s government, which has pledged to protect human rights as it seeks EU membership. Most of the rioters were young football hooligans whose groups have been infiltrated by neo-Nazis and other extremist groups.
Police said the rioters were “extremely well organized and synchronized” and that the violent protest “did not happen spontaneously.”
Police official Milorad Veljovic said authorities have found a list of suspected organizers during the arrest of one of the far-right leaders.
Veljovic said 249 protesters have been arrested, including 54 minors. He said 131 remain in detention. More than half of the detained are from outside Belgrade.
“Today and in the coming days police and the prosecutors will continue with the detentions of all who are suspected of taking part in the riots,” he said. “We will not stop.”
Veljovic said 132 policemen were injured, including five seriously, while 25 civilians were hurt, one seriously.
Opposition Liberal Party leader Cedomir Jovanovic demanded tough action against the far-right groups that “were trying to topple the democratic authorities.”
“The police know well who organized yesterday’s riots,” Jovanovic said, accusing two opposition nationalist parties and security officials who were sacked after then-President Slobodan Milosevic was ousted in a popular revolt in 2000 of being behind the violence.
The anti-gay rioters also fired shots and threw Molotov cocktails at the headquarters of the ruling pro-Western Democratic Party, setting the building’s garage on fire. In addition, the state TV building and the headquarters of other political parties were attacked, with many windows shattered by stones.
The Hindu Article: Shocking Development Nobel Peace Prize Winner’s Wife Now Under House Arrest In Communiust China!!!
Nobel laureate’s wife “under house arrest” in Beijing
Ananth Krishnan
A day after Liu Xia returned home after informing her imprisoned husband and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, of his honour, she has been placed under house arrest in Beijing by the Chinese authorities, according to a reported posting by her on Twitter.
Visitors to her home and reporters in Beijing were barred by plainclothes security personnel from entering her apartment complex on Sunday and Monday. Ms. Liu also remained unreachable by phone, with her friends saying the authorities had turned off her mobile phone connection.
Ms. Liu posted a message on Twitter that she had been put under house arrest after she returned home on Saturday.
“Brothers, I have come back,” she wrote, according to a translation posted by the Hong Kong-based China Media Project (CMP). “I was put under house arrest on the eighth. I do not know when I can see everybody. My mobile phone has been messed with, so I cannot receive phone calls. I saw Xiaobo. The prison told him on the ninth the news about his winning the prize. The rest I will share with time.”
The CMP reported several Twitter users, and other intellectuals, had also faced detention and questioning by the police in recent days, and had been prevented from visiting Ms. Liu. There were also several accounts of gatherings in Beijing and Shanghai to mark Mr. Liu’s award being disrupted. In Beijing, a gathering of more than a dozen bloggers and activists was broken up by police on Friday evening. Fourteen of those present were detained on Saturday, and it was unclear on Monday whether they had all been released. In Shanghai, Shi Feike, a journalist, was detained by police for several hours just as he planned to meet others in Shanghai’s People Square.
Fan Yafeng, a legal activist and church leader in Beijing, reported that a police car had appeared in front of his Beijing home in the university district and his Internet connection had been switched off. He was also unreachable by phone over the weekend.
He told The Hindu in a recent interview, before the announcement of the award, that he believed the emergence of prominent figures like Mr. Liu “was changing the face of China’s society”. “We have mature leaders now, lawyers, scholars and intellectuals,” he said. “This is as important as [having] the right environment, and a crucial ingredient for any civil society that is trying to find its voice.”
Most Chinese, however, remained unaware this week of Mr. Liu’s Nobel Peace Prize. Media across China have been issued orders by the Central Propaganda Department to not report the news.
On Monday, some newspapers carried editorials criticising the decision. The Chinese-language Global Times newspaper, which is run by the Communist Party, hit out at the “prejudice” of the West behind the award.
“The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to ‘dissident’ Liu Xiaobo was nothing more than another expression of this prejudice, and behind it lies an extraordinary terror of China’s rise and the Chinese model,” it said. On Mr. Liu’s calls for political reforms and elections, the paper said: “China’s fate would perhaps be no better than the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and the country probably would have quickly collapsed.”
Keywords: Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace prize, Liu Xia, house arrest
NY Times Article: American Politician Complains About Toronto’s Gay Pride Parade.
Paladino Strongly Defends Remarks on Homosexuality
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Today Show A screen shot from Carl P. Paladino’s appearance on the “Today” show. Click to view video.The day after making remarks denouncing homosexuality, Carl P. Paladino defended his opinion during television interviews on Monday and said that children should not attend gay pride parades because they featured skimpily dressed men “grinding at each other and doing these gyrations.”
“It’s disgusting,” Mr. Paladino, the Republican candidate for governor, said on the “Today” show.
Mr. Paladino, who also appeared on “Good Morning America,” sought to defend controversial remarks about gays he made on Sunday to Jewish leaders in Brooklyn, including arguing that children should not be “brainwashed” into accepting homosexuality as acceptable.
Mr. Paladino said he did not regret those remarks and did not believe they made him a bigot. He also said that discrimination against gays was “horrible” and should not be tolerated.
“My feelings on homosexuality are unequivocal,” said Mr. Paladino said on the “Today” show. “I have absolutely no problem with it whatsoever. My only reservation is marriage.”
He added, “I have a lot of homosexuals working in my organization,” referring to his real estate business.
But Mr. Paladino reiterated that he thought it was wrong for Andrew M. Cuomo, his Democratic opponent, to have taken his daughters to a gay pride parade, saying that such events were inappropriate for children.
“Young children should not be exposed to that at a young age. They don’t understand, it’s a very difficult thing,” said Mr. Paladino. “And exposing them to homosexuality, especially at a gay pride parade — and I don’t know if you have ever been to one, but they wear these little Speedos and they grind against each other and it’s just a terrible thing.”
Mr. Paladino elaborated on those remarks during his interview on “Good Morning America,” saying that he and his wife had “stumbled on” a gay pride parade once during a trip to Toronto.
“It wasn’t pretty,” Mr. Paladino said. “It was a bunch of very extreme-type people in bikini-type outfits grinding at each other and doing these gyrations, and I certainly wouldn’t let my young children see that.”
Supporters of gay rights lashed out at Mr. Paladino’s comments saying they make him unsuitable to be New York’s governor.
“Out of touch, out of his mind, should be out of the race,” said Brian Ellner, a senior strategist for the Human Rights Campaign for New York Marriage.
NY Times Article: New York City Men Accused Of Trapping & Attacking Gay Men!!!
Lured Into a Trap, Then Tortured for Being Gay
From left, Nelson Falu, 17, Idelfonso Mendez, 23, and David Rivera, 21, at right, were among the seven suspects arrested in the abductions and attacks on three men in the Bronx on Oct. 3.
By MICHAEL WILSON and AL BAKER
Published: October 8, 2010
He was told there was a party at a brick house on Osborne Place, a quiet block set on a steep hill in the Bronx. He showed up last Sunday night as instructed, with plenty of cans of malt liquor. What he walked into was not a party at all, but a night of torture — he was sodomized, burned and whipped.
Yana Paskova for The New York Times
A gay man was tortured in the house, at left, at 1910 Osborne Place in the Bronx, the police said.
Uli Seit for The New York Times
One of the men arrested in the case was taken to the hospital Friday night. Officials did not reveal the nature of the emergency.
Yana Paskova for The New York Times
Neighbors of the building where the police say a group attacked two teenagers and a man who had had sex with them.
All punishment, the police said Friday, for being gay.
There were nine attackers, ranging from 16 to 23 years old and calling themselves the Latin King Goonies, the police said. Before setting upon their 30-year-old victim, they had snatched up two teenage boys whom they beat, the police said — until the boys — one of whom was sodomized with a plunger — admitted to having had sex with the man.
The attackers forced the man to strip to his underwear and tied him to a chair, the police said. One of the teenage victims was still there, and the “Goonies” ordered him to attack the man. The teenager hit him in the face and burned him with a cigarette on his nipple and penis as the others jeered and shouted gay slurs, the police said. Then the attackers whipped the man with a chain and sodomized him with a small baseball bat.
The beatings and robberies went on for hours. They were followed by a remarkably thorough attempt to sanitize the house — including pouring bleach down drains, the police said, as little by little word of the attacks trickled to the police. A crucial clue to the attackers was provided by someone who slipped a note to a police officer outside the crime scene, at 1910 Osborne Place in Morris Heights, near Bronx Community College.
Seven suspects were arrested on Thursday and Friday, and two were still being sought in a crime that the leader of the City Council called among the worst hate crimes she had ever heard of. “It makes you sick,” said the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, the city’s highest ranking openly gay official.
The charges included abduction, unlawful imprisonment and sodomy, all as hate crimes.
“These suspects deployed terrible, wolf-pack odds of nine against one, which revealed them as predators whose crimes were as cowardly as they were despicable,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference.
The assaults are the latest in a string of recent episodes of bullying and attacks against gays. A Rutgers University student jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge last month, prosecutors said, after his roommate had secretly set up a webcam in their room and streamed over the Internet his sexual encounter with another man. Two men were accused of robbing and beating a man in the Stonewall Inn, a landmark gay bar in Greenwich Village, last weekend while shouting slurs.
Neighbors on Osborne Place said the house, nondescript but for its door painted a bright lime green, had been vacant for some time. A group of teenagers and young men had moved in as squatters, neighbors said, and hosted loud parties.
“You could smell it from them,” said a neighbor who gave only his last name, Gomez. “From the start, you could tell they were trouble.” Mr. Gomez said he and other neighbors had discussed whether anything could be done about the squatters, but nothing came of it.
The nine suspects — the group seemed not so much part of an established gang as a loose group of friends who adopted a nickname — knew some or all three victims. The idea for the attacks seemed to have been hatched last Saturday, after one member of the group saw the 30-year-old man, who he knew was gay, with a 17-year-old who wanted to join the gang, the police said.
Hours later, at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, the group grabbed the 17-year-old, took him to the house and slammed him into a wall, the police said.
He was beaten, made to strip naked, slashed with a box cutter, hit on the head with a can of beer and sodomized with the wooden handle of a plunger, the police said. And he was interrogated about the 30-year-old and asked if they had had sex.
The teenager said that they had. The gang members set him loose, warning him to keep quiet or they would hurt his friends and family. The teenager walked into a nearby hospital and said he had been jumped by strangers on the street and robbed.
At 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, the police said, the group members grabbed a second 17-year-old, beating and likewise interrogating him about his contact with the 30-year-old. He, too, said he had had sex with the man. They took his jewelry and held him while the 30-year-old arrived for what he thought was a party, his arms filled with 10 tall cans of Four Loko, a caffeine-infused malt liquor. He had cleaned out a store of its entire stock.
He was immediately set upon and tied up. Then the assailants ordered the second teenager to attack the 30-year-old, and they joined in the beating. The beating lasted hours, the police said. The attackers forced the man to drink all 10 cans of liquor — each about twice the size of a can of beer, with a higher alcohol content, 10 percent to 12 percent, according to Four Loko’s Web site.
While the man was held captive and attacked, five of the Latin King Goonies went to his house, which he shared with his 40-year-old brother. Using a key taken from the 30-year-old to get inside, they found his brother in bed. They pulled a blanket over his head and hit him, demanding money. When he refused, one placed a cellphone to the brother’s ear, and he heard the voice of his younger brother, who said he had been kidnapped and who pleaded, “Give them the money.”
The brother complied. The men took $1,000 in cash, two debit cards and a 52-inch television.
The brother managed to free himself about three hours later, and he called the police, leaving out the fact that his brother was being held. By then it was Monday morning. Detectives went to the brothers’ home and, upon leaving, saw the 30-year-old, passed out on the landing from the alcohol he had consumed. But having no reason to believe he had been a victim of a crime, they did not question him.
Detectives returned later that day, suspicious of how the robbers had entered the brothers’ home without using force, and the 30-year-old told them he had been picked up in a van by strangers and forced to give them his keys and address, the police said.
Officers still had no idea about the first teen who had visited the hospital, because he had not called the police, and hospitals are not required to inform the authorities about assaults, the police said. The man had said he was robbed near 1910 Osborne, and police officers tried to obtain a search warrant for the house but were told they did not have enough cause, the police said.
Late on Tuesday the second teenager walked into a Bronx police station house and gave a version of what had happened, the police said. None of the three victims, in their first interviews with the police, were fully forthcoming, fearing reprisal and wanting to keep their lives a secret. But the second teenager gave an address, and a second request for a search warrant was granted.
On Wednesday morning, officers entered 1910 Osborne Place and found a surprising sight: an immaculate house, with fresh coats of paint and the smell of bleach hanging thick in the air. One detective called the house “the cleanest crime scene I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Kelly said.
“Lots of bleach and paint were used to cover the blood shed by their tortured prey,” he said. “They even poured bleach down the drains.”
Rugs and linoleum had been ripped out. Detectives were able to scrape evidence, including pubic hair and empty liquor cans, from the house, but not much was found, Mr. Kelly said.
The break in the case came later Wednesday when someone in a crowd of onlookers outside the house quietly slipped an officer his phone number and, when a detective called, gave the name of the man believed to be the ringleader of the group of nine: Ildefonzo Mendez, 23. Officers later learned the name of the first victim from the other teenager.
By Wednesday night, all three victims had given full accounts of the attacks, and for the next 36 hours, officers with the Hate Crimes Task Force, the Gang Division and Special Victims squad worked up a list of nine suspects.
Arrests began Thursday.
The other suspects under arrest were identified as David Rivera, 21; Nelson Falu, 17; Steven Carballo, 17; Denis Peitars, 17; Bryan Almonte, 17; and Brian Cepeda, 16. They were being held by the police in the Bronx on Friday night, with no arraignment scheduled. Still being sought, the police said, are Elmer Confessor, 23, and Ruddy Vargas-Perez, 22.
One suspect confessed, a law enforcement official said, others have not given statements.
One suspect was taken to the hospital unconscious Friday night, with an undisclosed medical problem.
BBC Article: Caroline Wozniacki Is A Nice Girl But Is She The Number One Female Tennis Player In The World?
Wozniacki benefits from absent Serena 
Post categories: tennis
Jonathan Overend | 18:03 UK time, Sunday, 10 October 2010
Caroline Wozniacki, the golden-curl-girl from Denmark, has undoubtedly been the player of 2010 so far on the WTA Tour and on Monday, at the age of 20, becomes the 20th woman to top the world rankings.
Effervescent Wozniacki, the seventh-youngest woman to become world number one, has won five titles this season (make that six if she wins the rain-delayed Beijing final on Monday) thanks to a combination of almost unbreakable groundstrokes and magnificent movement around the court.
It sets her up perfectly for a natural counter-punching game.
She retrieves a lot, plays a lot, wins a lot. But let’s be honest, she is top of the pile because Serena Williams doesn’t play as much as she does.
Much like Dinara Safina and Jelena Jankovic before her, Wozniacki has been rewarded for consistency on the WTA Tour rather than her Grand Slam record.
Williams, who hasn’t played since Wimbledon after cutting her foot, would almost certainly still be number one were it not for that broken piece of glass. Or, for that matter, had she played more frequently in a six-tournament, part-time season.
She has two major titles this year and, although it pains me to say it, not being a fan of her ego-trips, she is correct when she says “everyone knows who the real number one is”.
Interesting that Serena’s comeback, all set for Linz in Austria this week, was cancelled on the eve of the tournament. Will she make the Sony Ericsson Championships in Doha, or is her season at a close?
Having said all that, there is nothing Wozniacki can do about the schedule of her rivals. Nobody runs a schedule like Serena. Except perhaps Venus.
It may work for them (and it’s the key reason for their incredible longevity) but it’s not something which helps the tour.
It makes it almost inevitable that another player will overtake her, as Wozniacki has done, on the strength of frequency of play rather than success at the biggies.
Inevitable too that people will question the suitability of the incumbent. And so, rather unfortunately, we have to scrutinise Wozniacki’s credibility as a number one.
The press release from the WTA trumpeted the fact she reached at least the fourth round of every major championship this year.
Is that really something for a world number one to be proud of? Would Serena be happy with two fourth rounds, one quarter-final and one semi?
Unfortunately the PR folk, desperate to boost Wozniacki’s anonymous profile among non-fanatics, would have been better leaving that one out. It’s not that impressive.
Don’t forget Wozniacki was humbled in the fourth round of Wimbledon by Petra Kvitova, winning only two games, and lost to Vera Zvonereva in straights sets when well placed to make a second successive final at Flushing Meadows.
What is impressive is her consistency on the tour and her ability to win top-tier events such as Tokyo and Montreal.
Is she better than Safina and Jankovic? In my opinion, yes. She has fewer weaknesses and is mentally stronger.
I like the way she plays with a smile and I believe she will win a major, perhaps starting in Australia in January.
Until then, she will always be in that second group of challengers behind the big four major champions of the past decade: Serena, Venus, Henin and Clijsters.
No disgrace there, that is reality – no matter what the rankings say.
Gayblackcanada 