Posts Tagged ‘activists’
January 22, 2014
This blog has often referred to the growing role of images in the protection of human rights. The Activists Guide to Archiving Video produced by the NGO Witness is one tool that can greatly help those who want to be part of this development. The term “archive” may turn off many human rights defenders as something boring or at least not deserving priority but to neglect it would be a big error. As the Witness guide explains very clearly:
- Do you want your videos to be available in the future?
- Do you want your videos to serve as evidence of crimes or human rights abuses?
- Do you want your videos to raise awareness and educate future generations?
The risks of not archiving are big:
- Your videos may exist somewhere, but no one can find them.
- Someone may find your videos, but cannot understand what they are about.
- Your videos cannot be sufficiently authenticated or corroborated as evidence.
- Your videos’ quality may become so degraded that no one can use them.
- Your videos may be in a format that eventually no one can play.
- Your videos may be accidentally or deliberately deleted and lost forever.
In further sections the Guide help to understand how videos can be made accessible (shared) and brings clarity to tricky issues such as the different formats and copyright.
Worth a visit!!
Activists Guide to Archiving Video | archiveguide.witness.org.
Posted in films, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: activists, archiving video, Civil society, copyright, documentation, Education, evidence, human rights abuses, Human Rights Defenders, human rights films, images, NGOs, short documentary, THF, training, video, video formats, Witness (human rights group)
October 26, 2013
On Saturday, the 19th of October 2013 , around 1:00 pm, Rocío Mesino Mesino, leader of the Peasant Organization of the Southern Sierra (OCSS ), was killed in the town of Mexcaltepec, municipality of Atoyac de Alvarez, in the state of Guerrero, Mexcio. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders | 1 Comment »
Tags: activism, activists, campesinos, Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, environmental issues, Extrajudicial killing, Forced disappearance, Guerrero, Hilario Mesino, Human right, Human rights defender, Human Rights Defenders, kili, Mesino, Mexico, Miguel Angel Mesino, murder, OCSS, Peasant Organization of the Southern Sierra, Rocío Mesino, Rocío Mesino Mesino, Truth, woman human rights defender
May 20, 2013
Sagaing Region in Burma (credit: Wikipedia)
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) condemns in the strongest terms the announcement of the commander of the Sagaing Region Police Force, Myanmar, that the police will arrest and charge eight human rights defenders whom it blames for inciting protests against the army-backed copper mine project in Monywa. The Commission also condemns the latest round of needless police violence against demonstrators there. According to an undated announcement just issued by the regional commander of the Myanmar Police Force, a copy of which the AHRC has obtained, the police will lodge charges against eight persons for allegedly provoking demonstrations and other supposedly illegal actions. The persons named include six members of the Yangon Peoples Support Network. The other two persons are Han Win Aung of the Political Prisoners Families Beneficial Network and Thaung Taik Oo of the Yangon Institute of Technology Students Union (18 charges!). The announcement goes on to warn that failure to provide information leading to the apprehension of these persons or harbouring of them constitute criminal offenses. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in AHRC, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: activists, AHRC, asian human rights, Asian Human Rights Commission, Burma, copper mine, criminalization, Han Win Aung, Human Rights Defenders, impunity, Myanmar, Myanmar Police Force, police brutality, police violence, protection, Sagaing Region, Yangon
April 17, 2013
Last week I reported on the Natalia bracelet and yesterday my eye fell on a lengthy piece posted on Amnesty International‘s Livewire by Technology and Human Rights Project Officer Tanya O’Carroll. It describes how emerging digital tools will help activists and human rights defenders. http://livewire.amnesty.org/2013/04/15/how-to-turn-a-mobile-phone-into-an-alert-system-for-activists/.
As a student activist speaking out against the government, Hassan is at constant threat of being arrested. The Sudanese government tracks and harasses members of the student movement he belongs to. Reports of his friends and contacts being detained, tortured and even killed by the authorities are frighteningly regular. But Hassan’s network is also well organized. His phone is always on him and he uses it to help organize demonstrations, to record and disseminate video of violent crackdowns against the students and to keep his network updated every minute – a network that stretches from Khartoum to the rest of the globe in the time it takes to send a tweet. If he is able to get word out that he’s been arrested, Hassan knows that his network’s response will be swift and structured. The problem is that he knows the first thing the authorities will seize is his mobile phone. And here’s the double danger of not getting word out: the authorities will use the phone book, call log, messages and any open apps – such as G-Mail or Facebook – to identify and track others. Without knowledge of the arrest, the whole network will be easily compromised. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in AI, Amnesty international, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | 2 Comments »
Tags: activists, AI, Amnesty International, Human right, Human rights defender, Human Rights Defenders, information technology, Livewire, mobile phones, Natalia project, Panic Button, protection, Security-in-a-box, technology, ThoughtWorks, tool
February 28, 2013
Thai authorities should immediately investigate the murder of Prajob Nao-opas, a prominent environmentalist in Chachoengsao province, Human Rights Watch said today, 27 February 2013.
The government’s measures to protect human rights defenders, including environmentalists, who stand up for their communities have consistently proved to be inadequate. On February 25, 2013, at around 2 p.m., a gunman shot 43-year-old Prajob four times at a garage on the Phanom Sarakham-Ban Sang road as he was waiting for mechanics to repair his pickup truck. Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that Prajob was seriously wounded from the 11mm bullets and died while being rushed to the hospital by villagers at the shooting scene. The gunman escaped in a getaway car. “The cold-blooded killing of Prajob marks yet another example of the fundamental failure of Thai authorities to protect activists who risk their lives while defending their communities,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “The government must undertake a serious investigation to bring those responsible for his death to justice, regardless of the status or political affiliation of the killers.”
Since February 2012, Prajob had led villagers in a campaign to expose the dumping of toxic waste in Chachoengsao province’s Phanom Sarakham and Plaeng Yao districts. Many ponds in the area have been filled with dangerous chemicals from industrial estates along Thailand’s eastern seaboard. The Thai government took little action until Prajob managed to get the issue into the national news headlines in August 2012. Only then did the Justice Ministry’s Department of Special Investigation DSI announce that it would treat the chemical waste disposal in Chachoengsao province as a special and urgent case under the DSI’s purview. In December 2012, Prajob told his family that he had received warnings from the Chachoengsao police that there might be an attempt on his life. Since then, he noticed and reported to the police that he was frequently followed and photographed by unidentified men on motorcycles. Despite these explicit threats, no one at either provincial or national level proposed any protective measures for Prajob. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in HRW, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: activists, Asia, Chachoengsao, Chachoengsao Province, civil society organizations, death threats, environment, environmental issues, Government of Thailand, HRW, Human rights defender, Human Rights Watch, killing, Prajob, right to health, Thailand, Toxic waste
February 27, 2013
On Thursday 28 February 
OMCT and FIDH organise a meeting in room XXI in the Palais des Nations of the UN (starts 13h00) on the topic: ‘RESTRICTIONS ON NGO FUNDING: FROM HARASSMENT TO CRIMINALISATION“. Many of my recent posts have dealt with this increasing phenomenon which is simply the more sophisticated way of Governments repressing the voices of human rights defenders, activists and dissidents.
The programme looks as follows:
Introductory remarks
Ms. Kyung-wha Kang, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights
H.E. Mr. Colin Wrafter, Director, Human Rights Unit, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ireland
Chair Antoine Bernard, FIDH CEO
Panel speakers:
Gerald Staberock, OMCT Secretary General
Olga Sadovskaya, CAT –member of the OMCT GA– (Russia)
Farida Makar, CIHRS (Egypt)
Adil Rahman Khan, ODHIKAR –member of the OMCT GA- (Bangladesh)
Entrance is free and public but one should get access to the UN building.
Posted in FIDH, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, OMCT | 4 Comments »
Tags: activists, civil society organisations, funding, Human right, Human Rights Defenders, International Federation for Human Rights, legal restrictions, meeting, NGOs, Non-governmental organization, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, OMCT, repression, side event, United Nations
February 22, 2013
An impressive list of 20 human rights organizations have signed a statement regarding Omani human rights defenders who are currently in detention, especially those undertaking hunger strikes. 24 defenders and activists including Basma Al-Kiyumi, Bassima Al-Rajhi, Saeed Al-Hashemi, Hamad Al-Kharusi, and Bassam Abu Qasida undertook a hunger strike on 9 February 2013 in Samail Central Prison, protesting the delayed ruling on the appeals that they brought to the Supreme Court against the judgments that were passed against them. Confirmed reports reveal that the conditions of some of the hunger strikers have deteriorated seriously to the point that some are currently at risk of death. Saeed
Al-Hashemi was transferred to the Royal Hospital in Muscat, where a neurologist examined him and confirmed that he is in urgent need of physiotherapy or surgery as a result of an injury on his right side sustained when he was beaten by unknown assailants during peaceful protests in Oman in 2011. The same reports reveal that Hamad Al-Kharusi and Bassam Abu Qasida were transferred to the jail’s clinic due to exhaustion caused by their hunger strike.These human rights defenders were incarcerated following the decisions of the Appeals Court on 5, 12, and 19 December 2012 which upheld sentences of between 6 months and 1 year in prison issued against them by the Muscat Court of First Instance in July and August 2012.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in FIDH, human rights | Leave a Comment »
Tags: activists, Al-Haq, Arab Organization for Human Rights, Bahrain, Cairo Institute for Human Rights, coalition, FIDH, Human right, Human rights defender, Human Rights Defenders, hunger strikers, hungerstrike, illegal detention, illtreatment, International Federation, judicial harassment, Middle East, Oman, politics
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 