[huridocs-tech] Web site chronicles human rights abuses

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/08/20/witness.rights/
CNN.com
Witness.org uses Net to record atrocities
20 August 2001

Web site chronicles human rights abuses
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Witness.org video
This image is from a video of alleged patient abuses in a Mexican
psychiatric facility. The video was produced by Witness.org, an
organization that provides video and editing equipment to human
rights groups to capture stories on tape.

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 >From Allison Tom
CNN Technology

(CNN) -- From young women sold into slavery or prostitution to young
men abused in African diamond mines to the mentally ill left in
squalid conditions in rundown asylums, humans have suffered serious
abuse all over the world. Now their stories are being shown and told
on a Web site determined to protect their rights.

Witness.org provides video and editing equipment to human rights
groups to document the stories of survivors and capture atrocities on
tape. The "video advocacy" group was founded by British singer Peter
Gabriel and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

"The main goal is really to shift the balance of power to put
low-cost communications technology in the hands of locally based
activists and to give them the capacity to tell their own stories in
their own voices," said Witness Director Gillian Caldwell.

The non-profit organization has trained and equipped 150 groups in 50
countries with video technology. The footage is then available online
for anyone to view.

"The videos are original productions developed in consultation with
our partner groups and they are between eight and 15 minutes in
length," Caldwell said.

Witness.org site
Videos ranging in length from 8 to 15 minutes are posted on
Witness.org for public viewing.

One activist, Eric Rosenthal, chronicled the alleged abuses of
patients in psychiatric facilities. Words could not well describe
what he saw in one Mexican institution, but visual images did.

"We saw children and adults totally neglected living in completely
inhumane conditions, often without clothing, tied down, tied to beds,
tied to wheelchairs," he said.

Another video titled "Bought and Sold" exposed the trafficking of
Russian women for prostitution.

Gabriel, who helped start the group in 1992, thinks technology and
the Internet are powerful tools in the human rights movement.

Peter Gabriel
Witness.org was founded by British singer Peter Gabriel and the
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

"I think those in power have to respond quicker than they had to in
the past where maybe it was much slower to get anything happening. So
I think technology can definitely accelerate campaigning and
activism," he said.

Rosenthal agrees. Visual images did indeed create change for one
psychiatric facility in Mexico.

"Within six months the institution was closed down and we worked with
the government of Mexico, brought in some experts who were able to
create some very human community alternatives to that facility," said
Rosenthal, an activist with Mental Disability Rights International.

As technology advances, activists said they hope the voices of the
persecuted in the most remote places will be heard with greater
clarity.




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