Obraz
Encyclopedia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
n far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
organization. The organization is classified as an Orthodox
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
clero-fascist
Clerical fascism
Clerical fascism is an ideological construct that combines the political and economic doctrines of fascism with theology or religious tradition...
by several organizations and state institutions, including Assembly of Vojvodina
Vojvodina
Vojvodina, officially called Autonomous Province of Vojvodina is an autonomous province of Serbia. Its capital and largest city is Novi Sad...
and the Serbian Ministry of Interior. While swearing allegiance to the Serbian nation and to the Serbian Orthodox religion, Obraz is committed to a struggle against those groups which it views as enemies of the Serbian people, such as "Zionists, converts to Islam, Ustashe, democrats, false pacifists, perverts, criminals and drug addicts".
Activities
Members of "Obraz" Movement are also active at the Philological Faculty. In late 2001 they staged the First Assembly of the Orthodox-National Youth at the Belgrade University after 1944. Participants in the Assembly were members of society “Sveti Justin Filozof”, Serbian Assembly"Dveri", and the Serbian Orthodox priests. However most emphasised was the “Spiritual vertical of the Serb history
History of the Serbs
The History of the Serbs spans from the first mention of the people by Roman historians to present.Serbs are a South Slavic people who live mainly in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, to a lesser extent, in Croatia. They are also a significant minority in the Republic of Macedonia...
and Serb people
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
”. The rally underlined the spiritual authority of Justin Popović
Justin Popovic
Saint Justin Popović was a theologian, a philosopher of the Eastern Orthodox theology, a Dostoyevski scholar, a champion of anti-communism, a writer, and a critic of the pragmatic church life...
and Nikolaj Velimirović and urged creation of the Serb state in line with their ideas. There were many priests and also girls dressed in Serb folk-costumes
Serbian dress
Serbian folk costumes, like any traditional dress of a nation or culture, has been lost to the advent of urbanization, industrialization, and the growing market of international clothing trends...
. The Assembly also called on reconciliation between followers of Draža Mihailović
Draža Mihailovic
Dragoljub "Draža" Mihailović was a Yugoslav Serbian general during World War II...
, and dissemination of their ideas in schools.
Obraz praised war criminal indictees Ratko Mladić
Ratko Mladić
Ratko Mladić is an accused war criminal and a former Bosnian Serb military leader. On May 31, 2011, Mladić was extradited to The Hague, where he was processed at the detention center that holds suspects for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia...
and Radovan Karadžić
Radovan Karadžic
Radovan Karadžić is a former Bosnian Serb politician. He is detained in the United Nations Detention Unit of Scheveningen, accused of war crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats during the Siege of Sarajevo, as well as ordering the Srebrenica massacre.Educated as a...
: "We salute the last of Serb heroes! Gen. Ratko Mladić [...] and Dr. Radovan Karadžić [...] led Bosnian Serbs in their fight for survival; we thank the great men for ther sacrifices with a hope that our pages will strike a spark of inspiration for future generations."
According to Professor Dr. Ljubiša Rajić, the message on the Obraz' web site: "re-hashes old ideas of Svetosavlje, which attach primary importance to assembly-making, monarchy, clericalism, conservatism, and patriarchal culture. Moreover those ideas are currently openly espoused by contemporary ideologues of Serb nationalism, the far-right parties and some Serbian Orthodox priests”.
But that LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
bashing
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
is characteristic also of other organisations, like Homeland Front "Obraz", which according to Nebojsa M. Krstic, president of movement "verbally fights against abuses of human rights committed for the sake of legalisation of
sexually deviant homosexuals and lesbians and numerous sects in our country"
In February 2008, Obraz symbols were displayed at a Kosovo Serb rally in the northern part of the city of Kosovska Mitrovica
Kosovska Mitrovica
Kosovska Mitrovica , is a city and municipality in northern Kosovo. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous district....
and during the Kosovo is Serbia rally in protest against the independence of Kosovo. And in September 2009, they openly defied through propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
posters the realisation of the Gay Pride Parade
Gay pride parade
Pride parades for the LGBT community are events celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender culture. The events also at times serve as demonstrations for legal rights such as same-sex marriage...
in Belgrade.
On February 28, 2009, the Human and Minority Rights Ministry of Serbia sought to close Obraz and submitted an initiative to look into the legality of its work.
On July 11, 2009, after the burial of 543 victims in Srebrenica
Srebrenica massacre
The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide, refers to the July 1995 killing, during the Bosnian War, of more than 8,000 Bosniaks , mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by units of the Army of Republika Srpska under the command of...
, a group of men and women associated with Obraz "chanted insults directed towards the victims and in support of the Chetnik movement, calling for eradication of Islam".
Literature
- Byford, J.T. (2002). Christian right-wing organisations and the spreading of anti-Semitic prejudice in post-Miloševic Serbia: The case of the Dignity Patriotic Movement. East European Jewish Affairs, Vol. 32(2), 42-60.