Beirut, the capital of Lebanon is home to diverse communities and has a rich and lively culture. Spending the majority of my summers in Beirut since I was a child, has given me insights into the love people have for the city, but also the daily struggles of Beirut citizens since the 15-year civil war started in 1975. More recently, Lebanon has simultaneously been dealing with five crises which are heavily centred around governmental mismanagement (Moore, 2023). These include the Syrian refugee, economic meltdown, and post-covid crises; as well as dealing with the aftermath of the August 2020 Beirut port explosion and the continual effects of climate change. In fact, the World Bank (2021) listed Lebanon as one of the top 3 countries experiencing the most severe crises since the mid 1900s. These crises combined, specifically, the lack of effective governance and severe economic crisis have resulted in an almost complete loss of electricity in the city. I do not pretend to understand the full extent to which the communities in Beirut have been affected by my short yearly stays in Lebanon, however, I will attempt to provide community-led alternative solutions to the energy crisis that move away from government involvement, the root cause of the current conditions in Lebanon.
A shorter version of this article was used in the author’s keynote speech at the RC21 conference in Athens, August 24, 2022.
“I shall continue on the path of building more solid democratic institutions”. – PM Konstantinos Mitsotakis, August 8, 2022 “The economic and military tyranny of today has been established”. – John Berger, Hold Everything Dear, 2006
It is a moving occasion for me to be here in this room, not because of who is here–please do not get me wrong, it is wonderful to know and feel we are finally among friends that we have not seen for a while, for reasons only too obvious. But it is also a moving occasion because of the where and then when we meet.
The where, of course, we all know: we are in the historic campus of the Athens Polytechnic, right in the heart of the Exarcheia neighbourhood. And as for the when? We are here right when our neighbourhood is coming under attack. Those of you who made your way here through Exarcheia this afternoon will have surely seen that what was once its square is now a barricaded mass, a construction site for a new metro stop guarded 24/7 by scores of riot police. For those of you who have not visited Athens for a while, or those who may have heard so much about the neighbourhood’s past but only happen to visit now for the first time, this image must surely come as a shock. This is equally a shock to those who frequent Exarcheia more often: an unprecedented situation, and the reason why I have decided to dedicate this intervention to Exarcheia and its square in particular.
At the time when the so-called “first place” (the home) and the “second place” (the workplace) merge, the future of third places is thrown wide open: anything and anywhere that is not private or corporate is severely questioned and pushed to become at least one of the two. It is in this context that Lurfova’s report has a rare urgency. Her perambulation starting with the Stalin Plaza in Prague and her drawing of lessons on what post-communist nostalgia might signal for the current state affairs in the Czech society (and beyond) is an apt reminder of a cunning ability of third places: the ability not only to preserve public memory and emit nostalgia but to tell us, in the process of so doing, much about the current status quo. And Lurfova’s report has become even more urgent and timely as Russian imperialism is invading Ukraine and as Western imperialism is fanning the flames of the present war while confronting the spectres of its own imperialist past. From the toppling of slave trader statues in Bristol to the struggle against the regeneration of public spaces in Athens, people are fighting for their right to representation in third place present and past. This report is an apt reminder of what is at stake in this struggle.
Julia Lurfová’s report is the final product of her engagement with the St Andrews Research Internship Scheme (StARIS) and her collaboration with all other RUL members, which is ongoing. The StARIS Scheme offers the opportunity for undergraduate students to enhance their learning experience by working on academic research projects. Julia’s report also ties into a broader exploration of Third Place under the auspices of the Radical Urban Lab.
Introducing the case of the Stalin plaza
For a brief period of seven years, an imposing granite monument of the Soviet Union’s Generalissimo, Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, surrounded by archetypes of Soviet and Czechoslovak citizens, towered over the city of Prague. The statue was the winner of a 1949 competition honouring Stalin’s 70th birthday, commissioned by the Czechoslovak communist political party chaired by Klement Gottwald. At the time, Stalin – as Czechoslovakia’s “liberator” from Nazi Germany – was becoming a near-sacred and hence frequently monumentalized figure among communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Eventually finished in 1955, the socialist realist monument of Stalin in Prague became the world’s largest depiction of the Soviet leader. But it did not loom for long. As a result of Khrushchev’s 1956 confidential speech “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences” that heavily criticized the Stalinist regime and provoked a gradual wave of de-Stalinization, the monument was toppled in 1962.
In 1991, a giant red Metronome was erected on the pedestal left bare after Stalin’s statue was demolished by explosives. The Metronome, as a reminder of time’s passage and finiteness, mocks the propagandist narrative of a Soviet-Czech partnership “for all eternity”. Ticking from East to West, the symbol of freedom bridges the two worlds in the newly-independent Czech Republic. Six decades later, in the nation’s collective memory, the place once dominated by Stalin’s monument continues to be strongly associated with the demolished landmark, kept alive through narrative accounts. Nowadays, among Czechs, the term “Stalin” refers to the plaza around the Metronome, turned into a meeting point popular among young people and an open air cultural hub hosting a variety of DJ and film-screening events, beer gardens, and a pop-up bar during the summer months.
The smooth concrete surfaces of the plaza have also been repurposed by the city’s skaters. In 1970s communist Czechoslovakia, skating emerged as an important anti-establishment subculture resisting the totalitarian regime, which recently became the subject of ‘King Skate’, a 2018 documentary directed by Šimon Šafránek. Skating remains pivotal to both Prague’s urban youth culture and to Stalin, “a square with no boundaries and no regulations”. However, the future of skaters at Stalin – and, as a matter of fact, of the public space as a whole – came under threat in September 2019, when the city temporarily closed the plaza in order to structurally refurbish it, while also re-opening a longstanding debate on potential commercial development in the area. Critics of proposals to replace the Metronome with a church or an aquarium have condemned these developments as pathways towards “cultural amnesia”, attempting to erase the contentious yet critically important history of the place within the Czech landscape of memory. Skaters and other Prague locals have since protested the closure and the redevelopment discourse by organising a ‘Save Stalin Plaza’ protest. “[D]on’t touch the genealogy, don’t touch the heritage of this place”, urges urban architect and local skateboarder Martin Hrouda. “Keep it like it is.”
Stalin Monument in Letná Park, Prague. Source: Pichova, 2008, p. 618.
Stalin plaza nowadays. Source: U/U Studio and Kevin Loo for Design Disco, 2019.
As a response to migration and fears regarding diminishing border controls globally, governments and international organisations increasingly experiment with digital technologies and biometrics for border and migration management. The unequivocal aim of contemporary migration management is to prevent people from reaching the global north. In this report, Sofia Sanz-Kimura spells out the risks and benefits of these technologies and their implications for humanitarian border management. Biometric border and immigration management and the widespread use of facial recognition technologies are radically transforming our traditional understanding of public spaces and freedom of movement.
The report is the final product of Sofia’s engagement with the St Andrews Research Internship Scheme (StARIS) and her collaboration with Evie Papada. The Scheme offers the opportunity for undergraduate students to enhance their learning experience by working on academic research projects. Sofia’s report ties into the broader aims of the Critical Understanding of Preventive Policing (CUPP) an international and interdisciplinary research project funded by Nordforsk, managed by Dr Evie Papada and Dr Antonis Vradis.
1. Introduction
Since the early 2000s, there has been a rise in the deployment of biometric technologies in humanitarian border management and refugee settings. This has come as refugee crises have exacerbated globally, with refugees, particularly from Africa, Asia and the Middle East fleeing their native countries to escape political, racial, or religious persecution, war, famine, and other disasters, and to seek safety and opportunity. In this report, I will explore the benefits and risks of the use of biometric technologies in monitoring the movement of refugees and asylum seekers. I will first briefly define biometrics and explain the history of biometrics in humanitarian aid. I will then discuss the benefits of using biometric technologies in such a context, particularly highlighting its usefulness for verification and identification, its registration speed, and its prevention of fraud. I will then consider the risks of the use of biometric technologies in humanitarian aid, particularly emphasising the issues of consent, exclusion, reliability, reusability, and data security. Finally, I will provide recommendations for future uses of biometric technologies in refugee settings.
