Romania’s High Court of Cassation and Justice ruled on Tuesday that pretending to be someone else on Facebook is an offence punishable under the country’s criminal law.
The ruling arose from the case of a man sentenced to three years and eight months in prison for blackmail, digital fraud and breach of privacy for posting intimate images of his ex-girlfriend on a social network and opening pornography site accounts in her name.
According to the indictment, the man created the false social network account after threatening his former girlfriend in December 2018 that he would publish several videos of them having sex, as well as pictures in which she appeared naked, if she did not resume the relationship with him.
The case reached the High Court after the Court of Appeal in the Transylvanian city of Brasov in central Romania asked for its opinion about whether “opening and using an account on a social network opened to the public” to publish real “information, photographs, video images, etc.” could be considered digital fraud as defined by article 325 of the criminal code.
The High Court concluded that “opening and using an account on a social network open to the public, using as a username the name of another person and introducing real personal data that allows for that person’s identification” meets the requirements to be considered as digital fraud.
The Brasov court referred the case to the High Court because other Romanian courts had previously reached different and contradictory conclusions in similar cases.
Social media giant Twitter’s transparency report for the first six months of 2020 said Turkey continued to lead the world in terms of Twitter censorship in many categories, including the highest number of third-party takedown requests, court orders and accounts and tweets withheld.
Turkey had the highest number of combined requests including court orders and other legal demands, with 45,776 requests. It was followed by Japan and Russia, which made 45,776 and 30,436 requests respectively.
Turkey also at the top of the list when it comes to the number of court orders it sent to Twitter. It sent 6,513 such requests in the first half of 2020. Russia followed far behind with 2,972.
In other legal demands categories, meaning non-court order requests, Turkey again topped the list with 39,263 requests made in the first half of 2020, followed by Japan, which made 38,814 requests, followed in third place by Russia, which submitted 27,464 such requests.
Turkey also sent 347 information requests to Twitter, which did not comply any of them.
Turkey remains in number one place for the total number of accounts specified for closure/action under court orders and other legal demands. It specified 99,840 accounts for closure or other actions, followed by Indonesia, which sought action on 74,660 accounts. Japan came third, with 47,472 accounts.
In terms of accounts withheld by Twitter, Turkey again had the highest number globally with 2,501 withheld accounts, followed by Russia with 340 and India with 238.
In terms of tweets withheld by Twitter, Turkey was also number one globally, responsible for 12,135 of the total of 28,542 tweets withheld in that period. Some 42 per cent of all tweets withheld globally were from Turkey.
According to the Twitter report, 58 accounts of verified journalists and news outlets from around the world were subject to 333 legal demands in the period in consideration. Most of these legal demands originated either from India, 149, or from Turkey, 142 – together making them responsible for 291 of the 333 legal demands.
While Turkey leads in terms of Twitter censorship, and made the highest number of requests in several categories, it now aims to expand its control over social media companies with a new digital law.
Experts fear that if it does appoint an official representative to Turkey, as demanded, Twitter will have to respond more often to official demands.
“The removal of content rate [based on Turkey’s requests] was [only] 0.33 per cent for the first six months of 2020. Turkey wants Twitter to come to the country [in terms of a representative] for this reason,” Yaman Akdeniz, a Turkish digital rights activist wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.
“Coming to Turkey will result with Twitter becoming complicit in rights violations and would be against the current approach and policy adopted by Twitter regarding demands from Turkey,” Akdeniz added.
So far, only YouTube and Russia’s VK social media platform have appointed legal representatives to Turkey. Facebook, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, has said it will not appoint a representative while Twitter is still undecided on the matter.
We’re looking for people who are willing to share their experience with us to help in a story we’re currently working on. Scroll down for information on how to part take.
The key things we want to know:
What type of violations have you reported?
In what language was the content?
How was the report processed?
What do we consider to be violations of social media community guidelines:
Violent threats (direct or indirect)
Harassment, which entails inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others
Hateful conduct, which entails promoting violence against or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease.
Things to note:
We are looking for social media users that reported content in the Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Albanian, and Macedonian languages. We want to hear as many different experiences from all around Southeast Europe.
Your stories will be used to help us with an ongoing investigation.
How to take part?
To submit your experience, all you need to do is fill out this form.
Turkey’s Information and Communications Technologies Authority, BTK, on Friday imposed fines of 30 million Turkish lira, equal to 3.10 million euros, on digital media giants including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Periscope and TikTok, following the first 10 million lira fine a month ago.
“Another 30 days were given to those companies [to appoint representatives] and this time expired this week. Another 30 million Turkish lira fine was imposed on each of the companies which did not comply with the necessities of the law,” BTK told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.
In the past month, none of the social media giants has made any attempt to appoint official representatives, as the Turkish government demanded. The only social media company to appoint a representative is Russia’s VKontakte digital platform, VK.
“We require social media companies to appoint representatives in our country. We aim to protect our citizens, particularly children, who are more vulnerable than adults,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on December 1.
“We hope they voluntarily respond to our request. Otherwise, we will continue to protect the rights of our citizens at all times,” Erdogan added, accusing the social media giants of creating an uncontrolled environment in the name of freedoms.
If the media companies comply within three months, the fines will be reduced by 75 per cent. If not, they will face an advertising ban for three months. As final sanctions, their bandwidth will be halved and then cut by 90 per cent.
The government is also asking the online media giants to transfer their servers to Turkey.
Opposition parties and human rights groups see the new law as President Erdogan’s latest attempt to control media platforms and further silence his critics.
The new regulations might also prompt companies to quit the Turkish market, experts have warned. PayPal quit Turkey in 2016 because of similar requests and Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey for more than two-and-a-half years.
According to Twitter, Turkey has submitted the highest number of requests to Twitter to delete content and close accounts. Turkey asked Twitter to close nearly 9,000 accounts, but it only shut down 264 of them, in 2019.
More than 40 per cent of female victims of human trafficking have also been subjected to some form of online abuse, according to a report by a Serbian NGO looking at the correlation between the two.
In interviews with 178 women and girls who received support from the organisation Atina over the past five years, 42 per cent reported being the target of online abuse, ranging from cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking, hacking, catfishing, revenge porn and ‘doxing’, the online publishing of private information to publicly expose and shame the victim.
For 31 per cent, the online abuse was directly linked to the process of human trafficking.
“He was posting my half-naked photographs on Facebook and I couldn’t do anything about it,” said one victim of human trafficking who was 18 years old at the time and found refuge in a shelter run by Atina.
“People were commenting on these posts, they were insulting me, he called me a slut online, but no one ever wondered what I might be going through.”
When she reported the case to authorities, the woman said they looked at the photos and “laughed.”
“Later, after I went to the gynaecologist, I gave them the medical report that confirmed I was also sexually assaulted,” she told BIRN, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“At one point I even thought about killing myself, or killing him. The photos are still online.”
Serbia failing in fight against human trafficking
Women and girls make up the vast majority of victims of human trafficking, often for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
According to the latest Trafficking in Persons Report by the US State Department, published in June, the Serbian government “does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.”
While foreign women and girls also become victims in Serbia, Serbian women and girls are frequently trafficked abroad – to neighbouring countries and across Europe, particularly Austria, Germany, Italy and Turkey.
With lives becoming more digital, the Atina report highlights the threat from cyber-trafficking in the recruitment of victims for the purpose of sexual exploitation, as well as the live streaming of forced sexual exploitation.
There are fears that the COVID-19 pandemic may fuel the growth of cyber-trafficking given the restrictions on movement imposed by states.
Society ‘blames the woman’
In July, United Nations warned of the dangers posed by the loss of jobs, growing poverty, school closures and the rise in online interactions as potential drivers of trafficking.
Women and girls already account for more than 70 per cent of detected human trafficking victims and are among the hardest hit by the pandemic, Ghada Waly, the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in a statement. Women often face more difficulty finding paid jobs in the aftermath of crisis, Waly said, and urged “vigilance”.
Gender-based violence is prohibited under numerous international conventions, as well as under national laws in many countries, including Serbia. But the legal framework is often hazy when it comes to online gender-based violence, despite the fact the consequences can be equally as destructive. Online perpetrators frequently go unidentified.
One victim said society “always blames the woman.”
“She is response for being mistreated, she provoked it, she asked for it…,” the woman, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, told BIRN. “I also blamed myself for a being a victim of online harassment, but I was lucky enough to have the support of my family and that my case did end up in the media. Sadly, many women are usually left without any support.”
Atina Programme Manager Jelena Hrnjak said it is vital that the victims are heard – “Not only to be heard, but to be understood and respected.”
To read the full report “Behind the screens: Analysis of human trafficking victims’ abuse in digital surroundings” click here.
Turkey on Wednesday imposed ten million Turkish lira (one million euro) fines on digital media giants including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Periscope and TikTok because they did not appoint official representatives in the country as required by a new digital media law adopted in July this year.
If appointed, the company’s representatives would have to remove any piece of content that the Turkish authorities consider illegal within 48 hours of an official request.
“As the deadline for social media companies… for informing the government about their representatives is over, ten million lira fines are imposed,” Deputy Transport Minister Omer Fatih Sayan said on Twitter.
Sayan called on the companies to appoint their representatives in Turkey immediately.
“Otherwise, other steps will be taken,” he warned.
According to the new digital media law, the online media giants now have 30 days to appoint their representatives. If they do not, 30 million lira (three million euro) fines will be imposed.
If they still do not comply within three months, they will face an advertisement ban for three months.
As final sanctions, their bandwidth will be halved and then cut by 90 per cent.
The government is also asking the online media giants to transfer their servers to Turkey.
So far, none of the major companies have complied.
Opposition parties and human rights groups see the new law as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to control media platforms and silence his critics.
The new regulations might result in these companies quitting the Turkish market, experts have warned.
PayPal quit the Turkish market in 2016 because of similar requests and Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey for more than two-and-a-half years.
Turkey has submitted the highest number of requests to Twitter to delete content and close accounts, the company has said.
According to Twitter, Turkey asked it to close nearly 9,000 accounts, but it only shut down 264 of them.
Montenegro’s Deputy Ombudsperson, Nerma Dobradzic, on Friday said police had violated the privacy rights of Democratic Front MP Nebojsa Medojevic and his wife Marina when they posted a video on Twitter of them being moved to quarantine.
The police directorate posted the video on March 17, which was then aired on the country’s public broadcaster, RTCG.
Deputy Ombudsperson Dobradzic said the police had failed to provide any objective reason that justified publication of the video. “Publishing a video or delivering it to the media without consent is an interference with the right to respect of a private life,” Dobradzic said.
Police defended their action, saying the event was filmed in a public space and that the faces in the video were kept blurred in order to protect the privacy of Medojevic and his wife.
But the Deputy Ombudsperson noted that the Police Directorate published Medojevic’s and his wife’s names in full in a press release, which they did not do when Navy chief Vesko Tomanovic, the mayor the resort of Tivat, Sinisa Kusovac, and an athlete, Srdjan Mrvaljevic, violated their self-isolation health measures.
The Ombudsman’s office has intervened before on complaints related to the pandemic. On April 1, Ombudsperson Sinisa Bjekovic noted that various citizens were complaining about the constitutionality and legality of the government implemented health measures.
On July 23, the Constitutional Court annulled a government decision to publish the names of citizens ordered to self-isolate during the coronavirus, though it did not rule that the government violated the human rights of citizens in doing so.
The government published the names on March 21 despite warnings from opposition parties and civic society organisations that it risked violating constitutionally guaranteed human rights.
The government said it had a right to publish the names because some citizens were not respecting self-isolation obligations. It also said it had approval for its actions from the Agency for Personal Data Protection.
It stressed that the security forces could not control every citizen who should be in self-isolation, adding that anyone who failed to self-isolate posed a threat to the entire community.
The Democratic Front is a constituent part of the For the Future of Montenegro coalition which, alongside two other coalitions, Peace is Our Nation and Black on White, narrowly won parliamentary elections held on August 30, ending the decades-long rule of the Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS.
The rapid spread of the internet and growing use of social media in Albania has significantly affected the behaviour of existing or traditional media as well as native digital media. The emergence of online media outlets has dramatically changed the media landscape.
BIRN Albania’s latest report, “Internet Governance in Albania and Its Role In Media Freedom”, explores a number of topics where Internet governance and regulation intersect with online media, market conditions, financial regulations, access to information and data protection, and copyright and cyber-security.
The report aims to provide a clear overview of the rights and responsibility of online publications in the Internet environment and the governance of this environment by public institutions, while encouraging a multi-stakeholder debate with the goal of supporting and strengthening freedom of expression and the professional practice of journalism on the Internet.
Freedom of expression and media freedom under threat
Photo: Raphael Nogueira
Although there is no specific law on online media in Albania, constitutional principles on freedom of expression and freedom of the press do extend their rights and restrictions to online outlets, while the regulatory environment on Internet governance, both domestic and foreign, influences how these outlets operate and do business.
Newly proposed regulations and amendments on the subject met strong resistance from the journalistic community and rights organisations in Albania and abroad. These moves were also contested by the European Commission and the Council of Europe.
In spite of the government’s attempts to shrink the space for professional journalism, freedom of expression and media are clearly defined in the Albanian constitution as well as in the international treaties and agreements that the country has ratified.
While Albania’s broadcast media and the press are controlled by a handful of powerful families, which have affiliated businesses in regulated markets, online media outlets are more diverse.
Many are start-ups owned by journalists, and allow more diverse viewpoints and reporting angles.
But, even though online media have become one of the main sources of information in Albania, Albanian legislation currently provides no definition of online media. Nor does the audio-visual media law or the e-commerce law.
Access to the internet is vital to free speech
Access to the Internet as a means of communication to exercise freedom of expression and information is guaranteed in Albania in the context of the domestic legal framework.
A survey conducted in 2019 on the use of information technology by families and individuals conducted by the Albanian National Institute of Statistics, INSTAT, showed that 82.2 per cent of all households now have access to the Internet, compared to 80.7 per cent a year earlier, and 66.4 per cent in 2016.
INSTAT found that 68.8 per cent of all individuals aged between 16 and 74 in Albania had used the Internet within three months of the survey being conducted, 87.1 per cent of whom used it daily.
Article 1, of the Law on Electronic Communications in Albania, no. 9918, of 19 May 2008, refers to net neutrality under the principles of the law – but it contains no specific provisions on how to enforce it.
Emerging from the same problematic principles that underpin net neutrality, The Electronic Communications law does not regulate zero rating; it is left to the companies to negotiate or offer such services.
One service previously excluded by data caps from ISPs in Albania has been Facebook Zero. The lack of clarity from the government regarding zero rating is concerning, as it is particularly relevant to journalism and media organisations.
Domain registration is linked to press freedom
Domain name management and administration is central to broader Internet governance, and directly affects press and media freedom within a country.
Domain registration in Albania for the ccTLD .al is regulated in the Electronic Communications law. It stipulates that domain names are registered “to serve the general interest of the public” and “to ensure especially the protection of intellectual property”. Web hosting companies are also mainly regulated by the the Electronic Communications law.
The main institution administering the .al ccTLD and its subdomains is AKEP. This maintains and updates a list of reserved and forbidden names and collects data and documents from the physical persons and legal entities that register.
The BIRN report states that blocking domain names is a key form of censorship imposed around the world, and is often used to prevent access to information and silence dissent.
Social media companies have unfair tax advantage
Online media in Albania operate on the same financial rules and tax regimes as other businesses registered in the country. No specific tax or financial rules, subsidies, or incentives are designed specifically for online media outlets.
Albania’s legal framework does not provide for any form of subsidies for journalism and the media, either for legacy or online media outlets.
Social media companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter, along with other online media not registered in Albania, should have a registered agent in the country and pay a tax rate similar to native online media outlets.
The BIRN report notes that the lack of taxation of their advertising products gives them de facto an unfair advantage to local online media outlets; these are taxed at the rate of 20 per cent.
Online media in Albania have often been the target of verbal abuse by politicians at the highest levels of power. Research conducted by BIRN also indicates that the biggest factors influencing the Albanian media’s editorial line are the political and economic interests of media owners, which in turn place pressure on many journalists to self-censor.
Thus, media outlet ownership transparency is important for the public to identify any political and economic bias that might influence the coverage of a certain topic or issue, as well as recognise conflicts of interest.
However, Albanian legislation does not provide any specific provision for the public disclosure of the ownership of media outlets.
Restrictions on freedom of expression online
Photo: Unsplash/Laura Lee Moreau
Although the Albanian constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights recognise fundamental rights to freedom of expression and freedom of the media, they also provide for proportional restrictions.
Defamation in Albania remains a criminal misdemeanour, punished by fines, while the main legal instrument against hate speech is the provision of several anti-hate crimes and misdemeanours in the criminal code. Hate speech is also addressed, albeit indirectly, in Albania’s anti-discrimination law.
In the context of the infringements, copyright violations are considered one of the biggest problems facing the online media, followed by the lack of quality information and financial difficulties.
Criteria and conditions for copyright protection are listed in the report. Despite the legal protection granted to audio and visual products via copyright, the country’s copyright law (Article 12.1) does not protect news and press information, both offline and online, which are simply informative in nature.
Journalists safeguard the public’s right to know
The growing number and influence of online media have certainly given journalists more space and freedom to express their views and report on different issues in ways that might not always be welcome in traditional media.
Journalists have the right to inform about news of public interest, preserving the essence of information, but they are also obliged to avoid references to personal data when possible. All actions taken by journalists should be shaped by the public interest.
The report lists two sets of special instructions and considerations (Protection of minors and court and crime reporting) for journalists on how to protect personal and sensitive data.
The most recent Code of Ethics for Journalists was drafted in 2018. This was done by the Albanian Media Institute, AMI, with the support of the project Reinforcing Judicial Expertise on Freedom of Expression and the Media in SouthEast Europe, JUFREX – a joint initiative led by the European Union and the Council of Europe.
According to a set of Ethical Guidelines for Online Journalism , online journalism must respect all professional code of ethics and the core values of journalism, irrespective of the forum or format it uses.
No clear rules for content removal
Recognising that content moderation and removal policies are widely debated – and divisive – on the global level, the report provides a non limited list of potential solutions that may contribute to a healthier online environment.
In Albania, no specific law explicitly regulates the filtering and blocking of illegal Internet content. However, the provisions of several laws regulate illegal Internet content. The Electronic Communications law empowers the AKEP to enforce its requirements.
There is no official or published list of what is considered illegal and/or harmful content, or of the competent authorities that can ask the ISPs to remove illegal content. For this reason, the key institutions mandated by law to order the removal of illegal content are listed below, based on the caseload developed by AKEP.
Judicial and law enforcement agencies can request the removal of illegal content based on the relevant articles in the criminal code. One of the most problematic requests from law enforcement agencies, passed on to ISPs through AKEP, was the blocking of the domain of the popular online media Jeta Osh Qef (Joq.al) following the deadly 26 November 2019 earthquake in Albania.
The report also mentions other relevant agencies and bodies dealing with content removal, such as the Audio-visual Media Authority, AMA, and the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection.
Progress in cybersecurity legislation
Albania has made significant progress in recent years in developing the ICT sector and the use of information technology, IT.
Albania ratified the Convention on Cybercrime – known as the Budapest Convention – on 25 April 2002, with Law no. 8888. Its criminal code is mainly in line with this important international instrument, containing several specific articles dedicated to fighting cybercrime.
Although not directly related to cybersecurity, the criminal code also details the consequences of engaging in various anti-social electronic and/or online activities.
Another important law governing cybersecurity is Law no. 2/2017, “On Cybersecurity”; the entity responsible for applying this law is the NAECCES.
The law’s main aim is to achieve a high level of cybersecurity within Albania by defining security measures, rights, and obligations, as well as mutual cooperation between entities operating in the field of cybersecurity.
With a full-time job and a family, Safija Vucenovic, now 67, from the central Bosnian city of Zenica, could rarely find time to commit to music and sewing – her two great passions – when she was younger.
It was only when she was pensioned and her children grew up that she started singing in a local female choir, performing solo at music events and designing her own dresses for them.
But her newfound pleasure was shaken this spring by the arrival of COVID-19, tying her to her home without social contacts or performances.
To banish the feeling of uncertainty and anxiety that overwhelmed many of her peers, she began recording herself with a smartphone while singing her favourite “sevdalinke” songs and making clothes, sharing the videos with her friends via Facebook and Viber.
“It helped me, and the others, to keep our spirits up,” Vucenovic recalls.
Even though it is not mandatory to stay inside any more, many older people still spend most of their time at home, especially since the number of COVID-19 cases began rising in early July.
People aged 65 years and older make up about 14 per cent of Bosnia’s population, according to the 2013 census, and their share in the overall population is increasing.
The UN estimates that this age group will represent more than 30 per cent of the population of Bosnia by 2060. Many seniors live on the edge of poverty and are socially excluded. Average pensions of around 200 euros a month often cannot cover even basic expenses.
Several reports, including those published by Caritas BiHand the Institution of the Human Rights Ombudsman of BiH, have noted that the lack of activities in which elderly people can take part makes them isolated and prone to mental illnesses, particularly depression.
Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, media have reported that the elderly are the most at-risk group from COVID-19, although the evidence shows that the disease can be deadly to anyone.
At the same time, regular health care services, slow and inadequate even under normal conditions, have now become almost inaccessible to many seniors now because of the special COVID-19-related working regime.
For Safija and other members of the Zenica-basedNas most (Our Bridge) association, the only way to keep up with their peers, rather than depressing news, was to turn to technology.
From their own homes, they have been engaging in collective creative work and socializing – the same as they had been doing during the gatherings held in Our Bridge’s art centre before the pandemic – but this time over the Internet.
Virus puts centre’s work on hold
The Our Bridge local association has organised artistic and cultural activities for seniors and persons with disabilities in Zenica since the beginning of 2013.
It has staged numerous arts and crafts classes, art exhibitions and music and theatre performances involving the elderly – mostly women – in order to foster their social inclusion.
While other bigger cities in Bosnia have government-supportedcentres for healthy ageing to aid the socialization of the elderly, Our Bridge’s work is mainly funded by members’ own fees and is based on the volunteer work of senior activists.
The number of its activities and its members has steadily grown in the last two years but, as the association closed in March due to the pandemic, all of its initiatives have been halted.
But, soon after the initial shock caused by the crisis, the association began organising Facebook-based creative challenges and live streams of art workshops, art classes on Viber and online art residencies for international artists.
“We wanted to stay connected and motivate each other to create arts and crafts so that we can distract ourselves from our worries,” says Zdena Saric, president of Our Bridge. “It’s been really a blessing that we have the Internet and smartphones to do so.”
Saric, a locally renowned artist and art activist helping women, seniors and persons with disabilities to overcome mental health struggles through art, began giving online painting classes via Facebook live streams in April.
Her first live-streamed video class on the so-called encaustic technique – using molten wax that is then ironed – has been viewed over 1,000 times.
Many of Saric’s Facebook friends began contacting her about additional tips and tricks on how to use the iron as a painting tool, which is why she decided to continue to hold live streams once a week until the end of May.
Some of her virtual “students” even sent her the photos of the paintings they made during the lockdown that have been inspired by her online classes.
She also began regularly posting on Facebook her art works created in isolation at home, trying to encourage others who felt depressed and apathetic to lift their dark thoughts through the bright colours of paint and start painting themselves.
Meliha Bico Druzic, 65, one of Our Bridge’s volunteers, was one of those who needed such a stimulus.
She was having a hard time adjusting to the new reality of not being able to leave her home for weeks.
As an Our Bridge activist, she had been busy for years with the association’s activities. She also loves to paint but couldn’t find any inspiration. Suddenly, after being stuck at home, she realised she had a lot of time on her hands and didn’t know what to do with it.
“I wanted a [real] spring to come, which is why the first painting I made in isolation was a vase full of lilacs,” said Bico Druzic, who after some days of persuasion accepted Zdena’s virtual creative challenge.
She began painting at home and posting her works on Facebook, and challenging her Facebook friends to follow her lead.
Bico Druzic has since exhibited her paintings created during the lockdown at the “My Quarantine” (“Moj Karantin”) art show held at the Our Bridge centre in July. The exhibition included art works of other Our Bridge members as well.
Shifting from offline to online activities
Last year’s offline creative activities for seniors in Our Bridge. Photo: Ajdin Kamber
The response from their online creative communities encouraged Bico Druzic and Saric to continue painting and sharing works on Facebook. As other Our Bridge members began doing the same, their Facebook news feeds have become full of photographed paintings and other handicrafts.
To continue these efforts, but in a more varied and structured manner, they gathered Our Bridge’s members in an art-focused Viber group.
The initiative, called “There is some secret connection” (“Ima neka tajna veza”), has been designed in collaboration with the Serbian association Art Aparat, whose co-founder and music teacher, Maja Curcic, started producing video singing lessons in Belgrade and sharing them with the members of the Viber group in June.
Apart from singing, the women teach each other how to paint, design bags and do handicrafts via video messages. The Viber group also serves as a channel of everyday communication.
The project was originally designed to bring together seniors from Zenica and the Serbian capital Belgrade through music and painting classes.
In both countries, the elderly suffer from an absence of systemic protection of their rights, not only related to health and social protection, but to their cultural needs as well, according to Curcic.
Apart from cultural programmes in homes for the aged and the activities of local pensioners’ associations, seniors have limited options to participate in cultural initiatives.
Similar to the centers for healthy aging, Serbia also has daily centres for seniors that provide some cultural activities, but these are limited in their number and capacities.
That is why Art Aparat and Our Bridge established a partnership, though the initial idea had to be adjusted due to the pandemic and transformed into a remote creative exchange, focused only on Zenica.
“Projects like this one encourage seniors to use new technologies and learn how to adapt to the new times,” Curcic says. She believes it helps the elderly to overcome barriers such as physical distance or inability to move, and restore a sense of belonging to their community.
This is the first time Curcic, who has been using music as a tool of social integration for vulnerable groups of children and youngsters in Serbia for a decade, has worked with seniors. Judging by the feedback from the members of her Zenica online choir, she has succeeded.
“I can’t wait to meet Maja in person and sing with her,” Vucenovic says. Bico Druzic agrees, adding that Maja’s choice of the song for the lessons – which is Imagine life in the rhythm of music to dance to (Zamisli život u ritmu muzike za ples – a song of from the popular Yugoslav band Film – fits her taste perfectly: “I love music, especially the songs that are closer to my younger age, and that have a soul.”
Bico Druzic is also participating in another Our Bridge international collaboration that was re-shaped from an art residency in Zenica into an online artistic platform when the pandemic broke out.
The project called “Urban Herstories – The female face of Zenica” – aims to document social, political and urban changes in Bosnia since the 1950s through the eyes of Zenica’s elderly women, and Bico Druzic’s story, related to her elementary school, is part of it.
Artists from Slovakia and Ukraine were about to visit Zenica in mid-March and work with Bico Druzic and five other women just when Bosnia – and Europe – began to close down. The stories will, however, still serve as a female audio guide to the city and as a basis for online-based art residencies of Slovakian and Ukrainian artists.
‘It’s nicer when you can see a person live’
Our Bridge members learning how to use Viber and social media on smartphones during training. Photo: Facebook/Nas most Zenica
Although new artistic ideas have arisen from the necessary adaptations of the “Urban Herstories” project to the online sphere, physical encounters between the women in Zenica and the Slovakian and Ukrainian artists – which could not take place – are an irreplaceable part of the experience, says Katarzyna Zielińska, manager of the Polish cultural institution Strefa Kultury Wroclaw, one of Our Bridge’s partner organisations on the project.
“I had a feeling that we have lost the human aspect due to the lack of the real, person-to-person contacts with the storytellers [women] and the lack of a first-hand experience of the place we were supposed to work in [Zenica],” Zielińska says.
Curcic from Art Aparat shares that sentiment, warning that it can demotivate people who never before attended an online education class to follow the instructions of a teacher who they can see only on a screen.
“It’s nicer when you can see a person live, encourage him or her or explain [in more detail] what you wanted to say. The pre-recorded rehearsals are not the same as the real contact,” Curcic adds.
Working with people not used to communication platforms like Viber or social networks like Facebook is another major challenge. Adjusting to the new ways of socialization and collaboration has been difficult for most of the Our Bridge’s membership, whose average age is 60.
The association ran several offline training sessions on how to use smartphones once the strict epidemiological measures had been lifted. But a few women still felt discouraged by the amount of information they needed to absorb, and haven’t continued to participate in smartphone-based activities.
Despite the shortcomings of such initiatives, the online-based creative programmes might remain the safest – and possibly the only – way to work with the elderly during the pandemic.
“Organisations like Our Bridge, which facilitate online creative connections, are of great importance for the elderly,” says Zenica-raised psychologist and psycho-therapist Dzelila Mulic Corbo. “In that way, they [elderly] stay in touch with the outside world, have contacts with others, and make their days meaningful.”
Recalling that adjusting to the “new normality” imposed by the pandemic has been hard for practically everyone, Mulic Corbo says that for the elderly, whose flexibility in new circumstances is naturally lower, the adaptation process is much harder.
Our Bridge will keep developing online-based activities as long as the risk of COVID-19 infection continues, according to Saric. In the meantime, it is looking for other innovative ways to help motivate seniors stay connected through their mobile phones and so mentally overcome the challenges of the pandemic.
“Nothing would make us more happy than to be able to freely gather in our space. But, until then, our [mobile] phones will have to play their role,” Saric concluded.
This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of BIRN and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
Facebook’s security department has shut down several accounts belonging to a publication that presents itself as an independent global news organisation primarily based in Romania, “for violating our policy against foreign interference”.
The accounts were operated by people associated with the Russian government who used fake accounts and spread anti-Western propaganda.
Their use of environmental concerns and pacifist arguments to discredit Western democratic institutions has been described as reminiscent of the tactics used by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which funded front organisations in Western countries to influence public opinion against democratic governments.
“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identity and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with past activity by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA),” the social network said in its August security report.
The network, which gravitated around the news website Peacedata.net, targeted audiences from “on the left of the political spectrum”.
It posted global news and comment on current events “relevant to left-leaning communities”, including social and racial justice issues in the US and UK, NATO and EU politics, alleging Western war crimes, corruption and environmental issues.
One of the articles shared by Peacedata charged the British government with creating “a myth of a migrant crisis to distract from its failures”.
Another article published on Facebook by the same network accused France of following neo-colonial practices in its former African colonies. The third example given by Facebook officials of content distributed in the disabled accounts had the title: “Boogaloo Movement: USA Far Right is Growing Thanks to Donald Trump”.
Another item published by Peacedata.net called the Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya “a Western regime change puppet”.
The network consisted of 13 accounts and two Facebook pages with a following of 14,000. According to the social network, it was in the “early stage” of building a wider audience.
It produced content in English and Arabic and “focused primarily on the US, UK, Algeria and Egypt, in addition to other English-speaking countries and countries in the Middle East and North Africa.”
They also “recruited unwitting freelance journalists to write on particular topics”.
Peacedata.net website is still on air and has rejected Facebook’s accusation that it is a tool of the Kremlin in a lengthy statement that calls The New York Times and The Washington Post “brainwashing machines”. It also called Facebook’s CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg an “adversary of freedom and democracy” who “proudly walks alongside such monstrous figures as Donald Trump”.
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Our Bridge members learning how to use Viber and social media on smartphones during training. Photo: Facebook/Nas most Zenica