Boban Stojanović

Boban Stojanović is a Serbian-Canadian peace and LGBT human activist, author, public speaker, and LGBTQ+ refugee in Calgary. Currently, Boban works as a settlement practitioner and outreach worker for LGBTQ+ Services at the Centre for Newcomers in Calgary. He was a founder and one of the key organizers of the Belgrade Pride Parade. In 2013, Stojanović was the first gay person to participate in the Serbian edition of Celebrity Big Brother. In the same year, he published his autobiography As If Everything Was OK. He was International Grand Marshal at Montreal Pride 2014. A year later he was shortlisted as one of the top five LGBTQ activists in the World (David Kato – Vision and Voice Award).

Boban’s Story

In the autumn of 1998, a friend of mine invited me to become part of her project. I was to create an educational play for children who lived in refugee camps all over Serbia. The play covered three stories about three topics: education, friendship, and personal hygiene. I thought it would be easy to do because I had some previous experience working on a refugee project. During the war that broke up Yugoslavia (1991–2001), I had helped at a camp for refugees not far from my hometown. The camp was crowded with people from Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. Some were young, healthy, and seemingly ready to fight for life, while others seemed weak and exhausted. Thanks to all of them, I realized that becoming a refugee is not the end of life, but a rebirth. I accepted the invitation.

During rehearsals for this new Serbian project, we had to decide about props—just something simple, because we would be playing in a limited space. Everything had to fit into one trunk. Our first performance was in a big house located in a village in central Serbia. This villa belonged to the Serbian Royal Family, who ordinarily used it as a weekend home. But now it was filled with refugees from Bosnia and Croatia. When we approached the building, I saw women who were doing laundry by hand and men who were standing around smoking in the courtyard. They watched us carefully. The only sounds were those of children screaming, crying, and laughing. Theirs were the only human sounds in that environment.

The children were happy to have us there because somebody was doing something for them. Every place was the same: people without basic things, people full of fears and suspicions, and kids who wanted to be accepted. Clearly, acceptance is something that anyone who is marginalized struggles to find. Although I had sympathy, I could not identify with these refugees. I was living in my own country, with access to education and health care; I had my family and a cozy apartment. When I was not happy with what my grandmother decided to cook for dinner, I ordered pizza or some meat. I couldn’t imagine becoming a refugee because I lived in a democratic country, although not a perfect one. But my experience with those refugee children made me aware of how life can take a turn for the worst. For me, a refugee seemed to be a person who doesn’t have a choice. Then it was my turn to be a refugee.

The moment my partner and I decided to leave our country was the moment we became tired. On the way back from a meeting in August 2016, I was assaulted both verbally and physically. It happened in the middle of the day in the centre of Belgrade. But it was not the assault that was so disturbing (I had had to deal earlier with numerous incidents of one kind or another), but the reaction of the observers. I was quickly surrounded by about fifteen people who just watched without any reaction. Obviously, they viewed the assault as something that did not involve them. They were not under attack and had no interest in or sympathy for the victim. Maybe they were also afraid. Later, after another futile visit to a police station to report the assault, my partner and I decided to leave the country. Reporting the attack was futile because, like all the other incidents that we had reported earlier, it would never be solved. One of the worst of the previous attacks had come in 2013 when a neo-Nazi group called Combat 18 (18 was the symbol of Adolf Hitler’s acronym and stood for the first and eighth letters of the alphabet [A and H]) smashed our windows and left a threatening note on our door.

As a visible gay activist, I had had enough. My country was not safe for me. I felt like a sick dog that had been kicked out of the house and left to wander. Our application for a tourist visa to come to Canada was approved very quickly. My partner, Adam, and I arrived two months later with four suit- cases, a collection of perfumes and our beloved cat, Macy. It was the first day that the new international terminal at the Calgary airport was open, and we were on the first flight to go through the new customs and immigration area. We received an enthusiastic welcome, including the waiving of the $30 entrance fee for Macy. This country is promising, I thought to myself. Life here will be better. Learning about the new society is not easy at all.

The first time I came to Canada was by invitation. I was there as an Inter- national Grand Marshal during Pride Week in Montréal in August 2014. I found the LGBTQ community so connected. When I was introduced to someone, I received hugs and kisses. Going past the gay bars I got compliments. Getting such a comment in the middle of the street was strange to me because of the kind of animosity I had experienced on the streets of Bel- grade. For me, that reflected freedom. Canada looked like heaven on earth. We came to Canada again in 2016 with the intention of applying for refugee status after we arrived. We met people who helped us financially with hiring a lawyer to help us with our application. We got library cards and opened a bank account. We had a place to stay and we found people every- where smiling and saying sorry and thank you. Strangers held a fundraising dinner for us, and we saw a United Church wrapped in rainbow flags. It all seemed so unreal, so different from our lives in Serbia. For the first time in my life I did not have the weight of political responsibility on my shoulders. I was physically here, but as a refugee claimant I was in limbo. Once our application was accepted and favourably adjudicated, which only took a few months, we began the task of integrating into Canadian society. As protected persons, we had the right to work while waiting for our permanent residence papers to arrive (a much longer process). My new life in Canada began with more questions than answers. Who am I now? What can I offer society? How will Canadians see me? All these questions revolved around the issue of identity because identity is the fundamental issue facing all refugees who have surrendered their past realities.

As my new life unfolded, I began rethinking my perception of refugees. My life became one of lost privileges, limited rights, dependence on elementary things, and the inability to make any plans. Also, uncertainty. However, there is one liberating moment in the decision to become a refugee—there is no tomorrow. From the moment when we decided to leave Serbia till the moment when the Immigration Board member announced his positive decision regarding our claim, we were in a strange way free. We no longer had passports. We didn’t have any money to speak of. We didn’t have a house. We didn’t have anything to lose because we had given all of it up. We left our lives in the hands of the people who offered us help. We believed in the power of people more than ever. But we also learned to respect what the future would bring.

Besides the nerve-wracking experience of going through the refugee application process (our basis of claim was 23 pages long!) that so absorbed us, we also had time to reflect on our work and suffering in Serbia. Being LGBTQ activists in a corrupt society was not easy. Fear, blackmail, and insecurity are integral parts of a corrupt society, and anyone who is a rebel and insists on the truth and on their rights becomes an outsider. I learned very early in my life that every single person must fight for justice. My parents were members of labour unions in the companies they worked for and advocated for a better position for the workers. My grandfather was a dedicated Communist in a high-ranking position. He was one of those who believed in the Communist system and the idea that all people are equal. I could not become anything but an activist.

When I joined the peace, feminist, and LGBTQ movements in Serbia, there was very little activity regarding LGBTQ rights. For the next fifteen years after becoming involved, I fought for our rights. My activism took me from holding workshops in small towns for just a few people to speaking in front of almost half million people at Roma Pride. It took me from sleeping on the bus during a long journey home from a distant city to having my own driver as a Grand Marshal at Montréal Pride. But the struggle remained uphill, whether I was in a big or small venue. I remember vividly when someone spat in my face on the very day I was named one of the top five. most prominent LGBTQ activists in the world. My activism included discussions with politicians. Most politicians treat people as either tools or commodities to be exploited, so I always wanted to challenge their attitudes. From my feminist friends I accepted the idea that disobedience to the system is a vital factor in trying to change society. So when officials demanded that I wear a suit, I wore my favourite activist T-shirt. When others carried expensive leather notebooks at some VIP event, I carried my ordinary one covered with LGBTQ stickers. I never wanted to become part of the establishment just to be accepted. I believed that I should speak publicly about my life, repression, love, and all that I had experienced. I was a guest on political talk shows in Serbia, but also a participant in the local version of Big Brother. I gave a TED talk and wrote a book about my life, but I also spent nights answering questions from young LGBTQ people who wanted to commit suicide. In a small, post-communist and post–war country, where many human values seem to have disappeared, my goal was to organize Pride. And I did.

With a group of dedicated people, we made changes that we could only dream about a few years earlier. Serbia Pride is more than a celebration ofLGBTQ rights. After all the wars in the region where I lived, I found Pride to be a place to show our ability to love, to show our willingness to cross borders, to rise above nation and religion, to be above separation and hate, and to accept and learn from everyone who is different from us. But it was a hard job. In Calgary, we attended the LGBTQ group at Hillhurst United Church and became clients at the Centre for Newcomers in Calgary, and we got to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday on July 1, 2017. It was all so relaxed and wonderful compared to our life as activists in Serbia.

An important milestone in a refugee’s life occurs when the refugee begins contributing to their new society. A refugee wants to give something back. As a political activist, I recognize the importance of sharing our story and. our experience with others. I have given numerous speeches all over Alberta, and together with my partner I volunteer in many organizations in Calgary. Adam has decided to continue his education, which was abruptly cut off in Serbia because of discrimination against gays. But I chose to seek work so that we could survive economically. My first job in Canada, which I still have, was as a Settlement Practitioner at the Centre for Newcomers. The centre is supportive of LGBTQ newcomers and refugees. I am using all my knowledge and connections from my past as an activist and organizer to make Canadian society a better and more inclusive place. Like me and LGBTQ people from around the world who come to find refuge in Canada, LGBTQ refugees and newcomers need time to heal and to build trust in people and institutions. I am happy to help. And there is a lot of help that is needed.

When I started working at the Centre for Newcomers, I learned never to tell clients that they were completely safe. Canada is a society like any other society: unpleasant things happen here too. One of the unpleasant things is bureaucracy. The process of becoming part of Canadian society involves the completion of numerous application forms. Countless times, the same questions are asked, and the same answers are given. I am sure Canadians are unaware of the amount of paperwork that refugee claimants face. Moreover, after filling in the forms there is the endless waiting for the response. What is most unsettling is not being able to communicate with a human being in the government about one’s application. The only available option is going online, and online the status is always “In process.” In our case, I imagined that an envelope with our application was lying unopened on some desk in an office somewhere in Canada. Moreover, that it would stay there forever. I was upset and sad. The acceptance I felt on my first visit to Montréal did not exist in the government bureaucracy. Sometimes I even wondered whether I am welcome here. In the process of seeking asylum, the waiting and failure to know are the most difficult, even though my position at the Centre for Newcomers offers a privileged insight into the system. Honestly, sometimes I think the whole system, no matter how good, is inhumane.

Today when I can help other LGBTQ asylum seekers, I often ask them: Do you feel like this? They mostly say, with tears in their eyes: Yes. They ask how I know. I tell them: I was there. Perhaps my thoughts are utopian, but I believe that there should be people somewhere in the system who can be contacted in person. I know that being lonely is difficult. People need human support. Asylum seekers need to find someone who can provide a package of tissues when they face difficult times. No online application can replace a warm human word or understanding. While I was waiting for different decisions on various permits and changes in immigration status, I was con- fused and wondered if I was the only one who felt nervous. After a year of working with LGBTQ asylum seekers, I understood that I was not alone in that feeling. My partner and I were lucky enough to meet very supportive people. Although we do not have our families and both our parents have died, we feel like we have “Canadian” parents. When someone finds themself in a position to leave their whole life behind and radically change their life by seeking asylum, they deserve to have someone answer their questions. An answer is not just an answer, it is the meaning of life.

I came to this country with hope for a better life, and that hope has been realized. While I am creating a new identity for myself that reflects my values, my beliefs, and my aspirations of equality and justice for everyone, I realize that a positive new identity is what I also wished for the refugee children that I worked with so long ago. Their road and my road to belonging now intersect. The look in their eyes has, in a way, become my look as well.

Stojanović, B. (2021). From LGBTQ+ Activist to Refugee. In G. Melnyk & C. Parker (Eds). Finding Refuge in Canada: Narratives of Dislocation. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press.