An example of how (making) film can teach young people to become human rights defenders. This comes Essex county in the USA.
The Speak Truth To Power student video competition encourages school students to become engaged in human rights. The video contest is sponsored by New York State United Teachers and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights and is based on Kerry Kennedy’s book Speak Truth To Power. Students who participate in the contest must choose one of the individuals identified by the RFK Center Human Rights and create a three- to five-minute short film. The contest is looking for student films that utilize creative storytelling to teach others about a human rights issue. The format is open to documentary, stop motion, narrative, digital photo essay or other innovative explorations that involve filmmaking components.
Two Bloomfield Tech students, Christopher A. Rodriguez and Julio Villegas, won the first place in the video contest with a five-minute film about genocide and focused on Holocaust survivor and human rights activist Elie Wiesel. This feat was proudly reported in the local media on 21 April:
“Essex County Executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo, Jr. and the Essex County Vocational Technical School District …… are all very proud of Chris and Julio for winning the top prize in the RFK Human Rights Center’s student film contest. ……..It was important to share their film with our Essex County audience to raise awareness of this emotional issue and to highlight the exceptional work of our students”.
The first public premiere of the film was made Tuesday, April 21st during the afternoon celebration in Newark. In addition, the will be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on Thursday, April 23rd.
Elected and school officials shared their pride about the students’ accomplishment:
“I want to thank our students for their courage and their hard work,” Essex County Vocational Technical School Board President Father Edwin Leahy said. “Every time you speak the truth, you don’t get a crowd like this. You have to continue to do what is right even if you don’t have a lot of support”.
“Today is an amazing celebration of education,” said Bloomfield Tech Social Studies Teacher Jennifer DaSilva, who gave the students’ the assignment. “Both students have flourished in our Diaspora class. Their film is extraordinary and helps raise awareness about the tragedies taking place in the world today”.
Also sharing words of encouragement were Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver, Freeholder Patricia Sebold, Sheriff Armando Fontoura and Chief of Staff Phil Alagia.
The Hollywood Reporter (THR) of 20 April 2015 contains an interesting and detailed piece by Paul Bond who went with the Human Rights Foundation on a trip to South Korea, to see how defector send films, television shows, books, and offline versions of Wikipedia into North Korea. The experience inspired nine articles, all of them published on THR’s website, but the centerpiece is this one: ‘The Interview’ Sequel: Inside the Frightening Battle Raging on the North Korean Border’. The articles all together give an interesting picture of the powerful role that film can play in the case of closed societies where there is hardly any internet (here North Korean), but also how the South Korean authorities out of fear for retaliation limit the human rights defenders’ actions.
Left: U.S. resident Thor Halvorssen filled bags with The Interview,leaflets and American music to be ballooned into North Korea but was stopped April 9 by South Korean police. Right: Lee Min Bok prepared a balloon with Interview,Zero Dark Thirtyand U.S. dollars but was prevented from launching it by two guards.
To trick North Korean authorities, Interview begins with state propaganda clips before switching abruptly to a 12-minute subtitled edit of Interview — a bit from the beginning, middle and end, with the more vulgar parts removed.
The conference “Defending the defenders!”, hosted by the six women Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, will bring together 100 women human rights defenders and organizations working to support them in order to advance the global agenda to protect women’s human rights defenders. During two days, participants will examine trends of threats that women all over the world face, and the strategies they employ to address these threats.
The conference is designed for maximum interaction, learning from each other, open dialogue and strategizing. It will include panels, participant-led discussions, skill-related workshops and strategy sessions. Participants will be able to showcase their work, including relevant films and documentaries, and have time to socialize and reconnect with each other. Invited participants will be women who are:
• Civil society activists and women human rights defenders from at least 20 different countries
• Academics
• Government officials
• Corporates
• Donor organizations and philanthropists
• Media (including journalists, filmmakers, writers and social media experts)
From 24-26 April 2015 in Duin & Kruidberg, Netherlands
In a post of 10 March 2015, Rachel Finn of the Enough Project describes an interesting but in Europe mostly unknown gathering of US student leaders preparing to become human rights defenders:
From 21-13 February 2015, the Lemkin Summit: A National Gathering of the Next Generation of Human Rights Defenders took place in Washington DC. During the three-days students networked with one another, developed their advocacy and movement-building skills, and engaged with experts on current conflict areas including Burma, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, and Syria. Participants were from 28 States, including D.C., as well as the UK, Canada, India, Rwanda, and South Sudan, with 48 different high schools, colleges, and universities represented.
Students arrived Saturday night for a screening of Watchers of the Sky, as well as two special presentations by community leaders. Sunday’s program included panels on sexual & gender based violence, the financial leverage of combatting atrocities, and conflict-specific overviews; advocacy trainings, communications and storytelling workshops; and an Open Space for students to capitalize on the collective knowledge they brought to the Summit themselves. Sunday’s program included student participation in a Keynote Discussion with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, who skyped into the Summit, moderated by John Prendergast.
The final day of the Summit was an advocacy day on Capitol Hill, during which students discussed these ongoing issue areas with various congressional offices, and urged Congress to support the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and additional expert capacity to the Treasury Department to investigate and enforce sanctions on people in the DRC, Sudan, South Sudan, and Central African Republic. Students met with 43 offices in the House, 27 in the Senate, and one at the State Department, with Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region and DRC Russ Feingold.
For a visual representation of the students’ experience over the weekend through social media, check out the Storify below or click here.
True Heroes Films (THF), is a non-profit organisation working to ensure audiences outside the usual human rights community are reached and engaged by human rights stories. THF is looking for a coordinator to keep the team running smoothly and to ensure the organisation’s further development.
Reporting directly to the Committee of the THF Association, the coordinator is charged with managing the administration and functioning of the organisation. The coordinator is responsible for overall organisational coherence and THF’s reputation, as well as maintaining the organisation’s relations with stakeholders and coordinating the projects and work that our team is doing.
In close collaboration with the Institutional Developer, the Coordinator contributes to the development of the organisation’s strategy, to raising core funds and specific project funding, and to maintaining relationships with the organisations core stakeholders.
RESPONSIBILITIES
– Maintaining relations with partners, among THF associates and with the Committee.
– Planning day-to-day activities and overseeing to strategic planning
– Overseeing organisational accounting
– Logistics (office, transport, etc)
– Fundraising
– Role of Producer on films (Organisational view on deadlines, quality, resources and relations with client; troubleshooting when needed)
CORE COMPETENCIES
– Excellent organisational and project management skills
– Good interpersonal skills and experience coordinating teams
– Previous experience with fundraising (project drafting, discussions with donors, reporting) – A dedication to highlighting human rights issues
– Speaking English and French fluently, German a valuable addition
– Having a valid work permit for Switzerland
ADDITIONAL COMPETENCIES
– Experience in communications and audio-visual work
– An existing network or knowledge of human rights organisations, actors and donors
DETAILS
Salary: CHF 3200.- (brut) per month for a 50% position (21hrs/ week), with possibility of increasing both percentage worked and remuneration depending on projects received. Location: based in Geneva, but work times and location of work (office, home, etc) are flexible and to be agreed with associates; limited travel
Starting date: 1 June 2015
APPLICATION
Send CV and email explaining why you feel you fit the description and what you would bring to the team to info@trueheroesfilms.org.
The 13th edition of the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) has started in Geneva. It will run until 8 March at:
MAISON DES ARTS DU GRÜTLI | 16 RUE GÉNÉRAL DUFOUR
PHONE +41 (0)22 809 69 00 |
Human rights defenders in the Philippines have been using information technology to advance their advocacy work. Launched in 2011, the human rights website http://www.hronlineph.com started by Egay Cabalitan and Jerbert Briola is used by human rights defenders for updates on most recent social issues in the country. The website has produced a video featuring testimonies from various advocacy groups – medical, anti-mining, human rights defenders, and international support NGOs – on the usefulness of the website.
Recently HRonlinePH launched two videos about human rights and internet rights now shared on social media outlets.
“Human rights defenders fully realize the potential of video to bring about change, And this video, a groundbreaking information tool for the HRonlinePH, is a supportive infrastructure how we can harness the power of technology and to help realize our shared interests in promoting and defending human rights, offline and online,” Human Rights Online Philippines said.
Featured in one of the videos are human rights defenders from Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM), Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM ASIA), Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Asia-Pacific (CATW-AP), Medical Action Group (MAG), Partido ng Manggagawa (PM), Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA) and Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ).
Today, 20 January, a verdict is expected in the trial of Nabeel Rajab, an internationally recognized human rights defender in Bahrain. President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), Deputy Secretary General of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and a member of Human Rights Watch’s Advisory Board, Rajab is charged with insulting public institutions via Twitter. A huge number of NGOs (see below) strongly condemn the politically motivated prosecution of Nabeel Rajab and call on the Government of Bahrain to drop all charges against the peaceful human rights defender. The video statement was prepared by True Heroes Films (THF).
On 1 October 2014, Rajab was arrested after hours of interrogation regarding one of his tweets. Rajab had just returned to Bahrain from a months-long advocacy tour, which included appearances at the 27th Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and the European Parliament in Brussels, as well as meetings with foreign ministries throughout Europe. Charged with insulting public institutions under article 216 of Bahrain’s penal code, Rajab was granted bail on 2 November 2014, but was banned from leaving the country.
[Rajab is one of many Bahrainis who have been victimized by the government’s intensified campaign to silence dissent: On 28 December, Sheikh Ali Salman, General-Secretary of Bahrain’s largest opposition party Al-Wefaq, was arrested for his political and human rights activism. Earlier in December, human rights defender Zainab al-Khawaja was sentenced to four years in prison for insulting the king and ripping up his picture, while her sister Maryam al-Khawaja, Director of Advocacy of the Gulf Center for Human Rights, was sentenced to one year in prison for allegedly assaulting a police officer during her arrest in August 2014. – https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/bahrain-travails-of-a-family-of-human-rights-defenders/]
What better way for a blog that is interested in the power of images for human rights than this overview – courtesy of Witness – which published this compilation on 10 December 2014. To see the original videos used in this montage and more about them, as well as a map of videos curated on the Human Rights Channel in 2014, an accompanying article by the curator, and more, click on the following link: http://bit.ly/HRC-2014
The music is from: We Always Thought the Future Would Be Kind of Fun by Chris Zabriskie.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 