Belgrade is a city famed for its nightlife and laissez-faire approach to partying. Now, the Serbian capital is also a home to a nascent but thriving drag scene.
It’s hard to avoid drag queens in the media these days. Bolstered by the breakout TV hit Ru Paul’s Drag Race, drag culture has exploded into the mainstream. Even relatively conservative publications have recently been “throwing shade” and “spilling the tea”.
As an art form, drag is about transformation and liberation. Performers, usually but not always gay men, dress up in a hyper-real representation of femininity.
High heels, large cleavage, even larger hair. While intended as entertainment, drag has always been political and regularly controversial. An oft-repeated story tells us that at the Stonewall riots, it was a drag queen who cast the first brick.
The trajectory of drag on the global stage is similar to that which the LGBT community had to go through in Serbia.
From invisibility and obscurity, to antagonism, and then finally tolerance. Or at least a semblance of it.
LGBT people in Serbia still remember the chaos and bloodshed visited upon the brave few who decided to hold a Pride Parade in 2001. The proceedings quickly erupted in violence as participants were viciously battered by hooligans and members of extreme right wing organisations.
Nine years later, nearly 1,000 marchers had to be protected by a cordon of police in heavy riot gear.
That day saw brutality and destruction as counter-protesters, led again by hooligan gangs and the extreme right, set fires, robbed stores, demolished cars, and clashed with the police. Around 200 people were injured. And according to estimates published by the media at the time, the material damage was in excess of one million euros.
It’s a far cry from the latest pride, held last September in the Serbian capital. While there were still some protests, this year’s event saw no significant incidents.
It is in this atmosphere of begrudging tolerance that a drag scene has begun to emerge.
Over the last few years, performers such as Dekadenca, Markiza de Sada, Sonja Sajzor, and Dita Von Bill have built up a loyal audience performing in Belgrade’s clubs.
Now there are regular drag parties, at clubs such as KC Grad, which feature a growing number of new queens. Their performances run the gamut from the classic lip sync to the more avant-garde and political.
“For me, in the beginning, drag was just a way to exist on the Belgrade queer scene,” Dita Von Bill tells Emerging Europe.
“The first time I got up on that stage, I knew I was breathing in floodlights instead of air. Meanwhile, it became great fun to think up concepts for the shows and meet new queens and collaborators. This fun and hard work led to people getting to know my drag persona. I realised then that I’ve created a platform for addressing my followers so I added a political and social note to messages in my performances.”
During our conversation Dita emphasises the strength and inspiration that can come from adversity and the positive aspects of the drag scene. But she confesses she is aware some parts of her performances can be seen as provocative.
“Everyone has their way of fighting, I do it in my own way and I’m aware that way I relate certain messages is controversial.”
In 2018, she performed at pride in Belgrade while dressed in traditional female Serbian garb. The reactions came fast and hard. Many on Twitter and other social media voiced their disapproval in no uncertain terms. The situation escalated further with Dita receiving death threats. Some organisations even lodged official complaints with the police in an attempt to get her charged with a crime.
They did not succeed.
“The death threats did not scare me. A real death sounds less horrifying than a fake life,” she says.
The situation Dita Von Bill found herself in is emblematic of the state of LGBT rights in Serbia. On the one hand, there is a growing liberalisation of attitudes toward homosexuality and gender expression. The prime minister, Ana Brnabić, is openly gay.
On the other, conservative and right wing forces do still hold a lot of sway in society and are able to intimidate and cause harm. This is one of the reasons we cannot reveal Dita’s real identity in this piece, at her request.
But Dita is largely optimistic.
“The drag scene in Serbia is in full expansion now. Negative aspects are nearly non-existent. We believe we are yet to show just how talented and skilled all our queens are,” she concludes.
Privacy advocates sound alarm as thousands of Chinese facial recognition cameras head for Belgrade
Hundreds of facial recognition cameras, supplied by Huawei, are currently deployed in Serbia’s capital Belgrade, and thousands more are on their way, as part of an initiative police officials have said will make the capital safer.
However, privacy advocates are sounding the alarm over what they claim are the far-reaching ramifications the use of the cameras could have on human rights and the privacy of citizens. They also point out that the way in which the Serbian Ministry of Interior has gone about deploying the cameras may not be lawful.
According to a May 2020 report by the Serbian Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, there is no legal basis for the way the ministry plans to use the cameras, as current laws do not specify exactly which biometric data the police can actually use.
The report came after the Ministry of Interior made public the way in which it plans to use the cameras. They will detect the faces of anyone who enters the camera’s range and will isolate this data in the form of images and short videos.
In what the ministry has dubbed “the special regime” facial recognition software will be used to identify individuals when there is grounds for suspicion or probable cause of a criminal act or misdemeanour.
Citizens who are victims or witnesses of crime can be identified as well.
In the “general regime” the recognition software will be used to identify persons to monitor traffic, inform citizens about significant events as well as for training materials and for the development and upgrade of the system itself.
But privacy advocates, such as the Belgrade-based SHARE Foundation, say that these use cases are far too wide and could lead to the police using the recognition functions arbitrarily. To identify people the police plans to use its biometric ID database which already contains photos of nearly all Serbian citizens aged 16 and over.
According to Danilo Krivokapić, director of SHARE Foundation, there are more issues than just legal technicalities and the possibility for misuse. Biometric surveillance poses a significant risk to human rights.
“Implementing a system of mass biometric surveillance is a risk to a whole range of human rights such as the right to freedom of opinion and gathering, anti-discrimination, and most importantly the right to privacy and personal data protection,” he tells Emerging Europe.
Diego Naranjo, head of policy at European Digital Rights (EDRi), a privacy watchdog, agrees about the dangers of biometric surveillance.
“The risks of increasing power imbalances, discrimination, racism, inequalities and general societal control are too high for the alleged ‘benefits’ these technologies could ever bring,” he says.
A further worry for privacy advocates is the veil of secrecy, and a lack of public debate, around all the dealings related to the facial recognition camera initiative. All the contracts with Huawei are classified, and despite several attempts by SHARE and the commissioner they have not been released to the public.
Until very recently, not even the exact number of cameras to be installed was known. According to a recent document published by the ministry there will eventually be 8,100 cameras. The number includes both static cameras in places like intersections, mobile cameras, and police bodycams.
Official numbers released by the ministry say 346 cameras are already installed. But, as part of the Thousands of Cameras (Hiljade Kamera) project, activists and citizens have already mapped 689, a number significantly higher than the official one.
Mr Krivokapić says that there is deep public surrounding the cameras.
“We are getting photos of newly placed cameras every day from all parts of the city. I think that citizens are beginning to understand what the implementation of a system like this means for a society and [they] want to fight it,” he says.
The project began in earnest last year, when the first cameras were deployed around Belgrade but it traces its origin to a 2009 agreement between the governments of Serbia and China about economic and technical collaboration on matters of infrastructure. In 2014 a memorandum between the Ministry of Interior and Chinese tech giant Huawei was signed concerning solutions to increase citizen safety through a project titled “Safe Society.” The final contract came in 2017.
According to Huawei’s case study of their Safe City solution, since deleted from the firm’s website, the interest of the Serbian public defence sector was truly piqued in 2015, when a hit and run suspect fled Belgrade and escaped to China. Using their surveillance technology the Chinese authorities were able to apprehend the suspect in three days.
But Mr Krivokapić doubts the purported efficacy of facial recognition surveillance.
“Even though this system can decrease the incidence of petty crime and misdemeanours, studies have shown that this type of surveillance is not too effective when it comes to violent and organised crime and terrorism,” he explains.
The cameras are being delpoyed at a time when China’s influence in the region is growing, and many commentators note the worrying closeness of Serbia’s and China’s governments. Human rights watchdog Freedom House considers Serbia a “partly free” country in part due to growing authoritarianism of the ruling SNS party.
Advocates and activists are concerned of what this means for Serbia once the system is truly up and running.
“In partnership with a private company – in this case, Huawei – and without any transparency concerning what the cameras are being used, nor justification for their deployment, there is a very real risk that these systems are being used to invade the privacy and abuse the data of anyone that passes by,” warns Ella Jakubowska, policy and campaigns officer at EDRi.
“These systems are designed to disempower the communities that they watch, and can have a severe chilling effect on everyone’s ability to express themselves and exist in public spaces.”
Exactly when the system will start being used in earnest is unknown. In a recent statement, the state secretary of the Ministry of Interior Milosav Miličković said that the ministry does not use and does not have in its possession the software for biometric facial recognition.
“We point out that will we will try to follow police equipment trends of all modern states in the world,” he added.
Meet Sezual, the Kazakh start-up bringing echolocation to the blind and visually impaired
Restoring the ability of the blind to see is the stuff of myth and science fiction, but one start-up from Kazakhstan hopes to be able to use technology to stimulate echolocation in humans, enabling the blind and visually impaired with the same kind of vision found in dolphins and some other animal species.
The start-up, named Sezual (from the Kazakh sezu meaning to feel) is helmed by Kazakh inventor Galimzhan Gabdreshov and received a World Bank Fostering Productive Innovation Projects grant in 2017 to further develop its prototype device, which it hopes could be brought to market by 2021.
“He [Gabdreshov] became interested in the ability of some people and animals such as bats and dolphins to produce clicks which reflect off objects and create three dimensional pictures in the brain. So, he decided to prepare an electronic device and prove that blind people can navigate with it in the same way as animals,” explains Nurbek Yensebayev, a founding partner at the start-up.
Echolocation is the ability to “see” with sound, and while it is most commonly found in animals such as dolphins and bats, there have been recorded cases of blind humans being able to locate silent objects since the 18th century. Echolocation is now considered to be an ability of all humans. Sighted individuals, who learn of their environment through vision, typically do not detect echoes from nearby objects, although with training they can learn to do so.
That is exactly what the team at Sezual hopes to do for blind and vision impaired people, using a device which emits a clicking noise which objects in the environment reflect back. Based on this, users of the device can identify the object’s shape and distance.
The company says that with its device, the blind and visually impaired can learn echolocation in as little as two months.
Additionally, users can feel the shape of the object and its composition, and even navigate among moving objects. While a full-scale study is yet to examine the device, the company says it has conducted independent trials with blind individuals that are very promising.
Sezual plans to eventually expand to the global market though a network of associations and organisations supporting the blind and visually impaired which could serve as distribution and training centres as well as a through a B2G (business to government) model.
The unique and innovative approach to health technology Sezual offers has been noticed by organisations both at home and abroad. In addition to the World Bank grant, the start-up was selected to be part of Astana Hub, a start-up hub located in Nur-Sultan, and went through a business accelerator at Nazarbayev University.
“Government support for us is the modernisation of the road map, which takes into account inclusive innovations and bringing them to the end consumer,” says Mr Yensebayev.
Inclusive innovation is at the top of Sezual’s list of priorities, he says.
“It determines the scientific potential of any country. It is an attractive field for start-ups, entrepreneurs and scientists,” he tells Emerging Europe. “For our team the employment of disabled people and their involvement in public life play a big role.”
And with the potential size of the market (Sezual says its serviceable obtainable market is worth 72.2 million euros) healthtech inventions such as these can really put Kazakhstan on the world health innovation map.
“We want to make our homeland a source of in demand, inclusive innovations and to export technologies worldwide, in order to improve the quality of life for all citizens with special needs,” Mr Yensebayev says optimistically.
According to Mr Yensebayev, the start-up doesn’t plan to stop at echolocation. It is now working on developing a high-speed version of the device that could be used by cyclists and runners, and an underwater device too. Electronic roads for the blind that could replace current tactile paths are also in the pipeline, while the start-up is also working on devices such as a mechanical exoskeleton for people with muscular dystrophy, and a device that could add tactile sensations to video transmissions called Tactile TV.
One device that has already seen use is the Sezual Braille self-tutor, an electronic device to help users learn the Braille script in many different languages such as Kazakh, Russian, English, and Chinese.
Sezual has already begun raising money to be able to donate 40 of these devices, which have received official state recommendation for use, to schools in Kazakhstan.
