Serbia surveilled

In 2019 hundreds of Chinese police officers took to the streets of Serbia’s capital Belgrade to go on patrol with their Serbian counterparts. Great! They care for the security of their smaller ally.

That same year suddenly almost overnight, surveillance cameras were installed in the city.

Nevena Ruzic of Open Society Foundation Serbia is concerned: Being observed all the time affects one’s dignity. We have a different understanding of human rights and privacy than the Chinese have.

She and her group mapped more than thousand Huawei cameras in the city of 1.3 million inhabitants. Only a few Serbians are aware that data gathering and sharing info of sensitive nature can pose a problem. They have other things in mind, they do not care for politics.

Nevena wants to alert them. Particularly the ball-shaped cameras that move and follow a target are equipped with facial recognition capacity.

Serbian police said that facial recognition is not activated. They declined further comment.

Nevena is missing transparency. Criminality is low, so what for does Serbia need surveillance? There was no deliberation in parliament or amongst experts. No newspaper reported on the topic, no opinion forming comments reached the public. Government did not issue any official announcement forestalling public debate. All was shrouded in secrecy. Government-to-government negotiations were apparently held in backrooms.

In 2016 then president Tomislaw Nikolic received Xi Jinping. The two leaders confirmed ‘steel-strong friendship’. But many Serbians think that cozying up to China is injurious to Serbia. They fear the debt trap.

Telecom giant Huawei is planning to build a ‘regional innovation center’ in Belgrade to promote digitalization in finance, education and energy sectors.

The word ‘regional’ in the balkanized (dismembered into splinter states) Balkans includes Greece, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia and the ever China-friendly Albania. All these mini states are poor, unstable, prone to corruption and authoritarian rule by strongmen. They are China’s welcome partners. The wolf warrior diplomats can negotiate from a strong position in order to force upon the small countries their will. Once they have gained a foothold they manipulate politicians, intimidate the citizens, and influence elections with their propaganda.

Most of these states are in accession talks with the European Union but accession is still distant because a requisite is democratic institutions, an independent justice system and at least credible efforts to curb corruption. For the Chinese no such strings are attached.

China has already leased Athens’ Piraeus Port for 99 years. From here they are building a railway through North Macedonia, along the Montenegro border, through Serbia and into the European member state Hungary. President Victor Orban is a renegade European, so he is Xi’s ideal partner. From Hungary’s capital Budapest they can go on invading Europe.

Freedom-loving Filipinos, watch out for the sudden appearance of the ball-shaped cameras. Wear your masks high not only against the Chinese Communist Party virus but also against facial recognition by that evil democracy-despising CCP.

The embrace of the dragon can squeeze the breath out of a peaceful dove.

Erich Wannemacher

Lapu-Lapu City