huridocs-tech Amnesty counters web site on HR situation in Tunisia

"Rights Group Fights a Foe With Frames"
New York Times, February 16, 1999
By PAMELA MENDELS 

  
A Web site with the address www.amnesty-tunisia.org had been operating
quietly for about nine months when officials at Amnesty International, the
London-based human rights organization, discovered it by chance last
spring.

They did not like what they saw. 

The site, posted by a French-Lebanese businessman, praises what it
characterizes as the advances made in human rights in recent years in
Tunisia, a country that Amnesty International has accused of committing
abuses like arbitrary arrest and torture of detainees.

Amnesty International officials said they feared that visitors to the site
would look at the Web address and conclude that Amnesty International had
posted the feature and was heaping plaudits on Tunisia.  This was
especially disturbing to Amnesty officials, because, they say, Amnesty
International's own official Web pages appear to have been blocked by
Tunisian authorities from display in the North African nation. 

Recently, the group responded, not with the type of lawsuit that has
typified many Internet domain name disputes in the United States, but with
an unusual -- and pointed -- effort to set the record straight.

In a site called "Rhetoric vs. Reality" at www.amnesty.org/tunisia,
Amnesty International displays the pro-Tunisia site bordered by frames
with a running rebuttal to the assertions made inside. When the
non-Amnesty site includes a section saying that a number of human rights
organizations, including Amnesty International, have members in Tunisia,
for example, the text in the frame around it declares that Tunisian
members of the group "are constantly harassed and intimidated; some have
been detained." 

Olivier Jacoulet, press officer for Africa and the Middle East at
Amnesty's London headquarters, said the frame commentary was meant to
counteract what he viewed as propaganda. "We wanted to allow people to be
able to compare the Tunisian version of reports of human rights in Tunisia
with our own version," he said. "We believe people are intelligent enough
to make up their own minds."

The "amnesty-tunisia" site was put up by Raghid El Chammah, who said in a
phone interview last week that he is French-Lebanese businessman and
lobbyist with offices in Beirut and Paris. El Chammah said he published
the site because he believes Tunisia has made progress in human rights in
recent years and deserves recognition for this. He also insisted that the
site is his private project, and not associated with authorities in
Tunisia, where he travels and conducts business.

El Chammah said that he chose the word "amnesty" to include in the URL
because the word seemed an appropriate fit for a site discussing human
rights, not because it is the name of a prominent organization that issues
reports about human rights violations in countries around the world. "The
word 'amnesty' itself is a word that exists in the dictionary and reflects
activities in human rights and is in the public domain," he said.

Jacoulet, on the other hand, described the URL as "quite ambiguous."

In the United States, disputes over Web addresses often lead to court
battles. And Web sites of competitors sometimes engage in duels, posting
virtual arguments and responses to each other. But Carl Oppedahl, a
Colorado-based lawyer who specializes in Internet issues, said he had
never seen a critique-in-a-frame approach and found the idea an
"aggressive and fascinating" response.

The idea is not original to Amnesty International, however. Brian M. 
Healy, electronics publications officer for the organization, said he knew
of at least one other frame-your-foe site. A site put up by outspoken
British critics of the McDonald's hamburger chain in 1996 began offering
what Wired magazine called at the time a "truly inspirational frames-based
guided tour -- complete with translation -- of McDonald's official web
site." This week the site, the "official McSpotlight sightseeing tour,"
responds with a "not found" site in within-the-frame portion.

As for El Chammah, he says that word of the flap, which has been reported
in French and British news media, has brought a flood of new visitors to
his site, as well as insulting and threatening e-mail. He says that no one
from Amnesty International contacted him personally to complain about the
site, although Jacoulet said the organization's dismay over the site has
received publicity since last year.

An effort to reach officials at the Tunisian embassy in Washington, D.C.,
to confirm whether the official Amnesty International site is blocked by
Tunisian authorities was unsuccessful.


http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/02/cyber/articles/16amnesty.html
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company  



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