Sameer Padania

Human rights, video, technology, media, journalism, and, occasionally, other stuff

10/02/2010 • 11:17 0

In Media Res: Ubiquitous video, local humiliation, networked dignity

Late last year I curated a week of posts for In Media Res, a superb project that brings anthropologists together to talk about online video.  Writing fascinatingly alongside me were Sarah Van Deusen Phillips, Melissa Gira-Grant and Leshu Torchin.  Here’s my post, originally published here:

Shaky, grainy, traumatic footage filmed on mobile phones wielded by brave citizens – from Burma to Tibet to Iran – has fast become both part of and fuel for contemporary narratives of uprising, struggle and repression – and it increasingly represents one of the key acts of resistance that individual citizens in repressive societies can make.  While this now makes it seem almost commonplace in the rituals of human rights media, it wasn’t always thus.

I’ve been tracking, analysing and curating human rights video online for the human rights organisation WITNESS since the middle of 2006, initially via a blog aiming to unearth examples of activists using new technologies to document, expose and bring an end to human rights violations.  A large number of stories were about mobile phone video – from police cells in Egypt to the execution of Saddam Hussein – and strikingly the most compelling, unvarnished and actionable footage often came from the cameras of the human rights abusers themselves.

Most of these cases showed networked technologies could reinforce repression – specifically taking mobile footage of humiliation, beatings, abuse, torture, happening in secret places, to show it directly to those you want to intimidate, and to circulate it more widely via Bluetooth “pour encourager les autres”.  But in a certain number of instances case the videos found their way into the hands of outraged activists who spread and publicised the abuses online, to often global attention, with the long-term effect of focusing attention, activism, and advocacy to the governments tolerating or sponsoring these abuses, or at the very least, to undermine officially sanctioned or imposed narratives of law, order, justice.

Some videos, however, don’t make the same dent.  Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Central Asia & Caucasus, Cyber-Activism, Human Rights, Mobile, Video, Violence, War & Conflict, Women, cellphone, online video , , ,

12/03/2007 • 17:53 1

“Live Working Or Die Fighting” – Paul Mason’s new book on the global labour movement

BBC Newsnight‘s indefatigable Paul Mason has a book out soon.

I’m waiting for an advance copy of this (hint, hint), but in the meantime, read more here, listen to an extract here, and order it here.

Filed under: Freedom of speech, Human Rights, Journalism, Law, Politics, Protest, REGION, Unions, Violence, Women, technology

14/02/2007 • 10:11 0

Caught On Camera: Human Rights Video on GV [via GV/WITNESS]

[Originally published here as part of WITNESS’s collaboration with Global Voices Online]

It has been a bumper few weeks on GV for human rights video, so let’s get straight into it…

Bandh of brothers… [via Neha]

This footage, filmed by Dinesh Wagle, of United We Blog!, shows motorcycle riders being turned backed by members of the National Federation of Nepal Transport Entrepreneurs in Kathmandu. The NFNTE had called a bandh (strike) prohibiting vehicles from running on the streets, after public buses were torched in an earlier protest during the instability in Terai.

I’d love to know what’s actually said in the exchange between the two sides – any offers to post a transcript or to subtitle via dotsub or elsewhere?

Wagle offers a worrying perspective on the unpredictability of life in Nepal at the moment:

“[...] it’s indeed hard to predict the political and other developments in today’s Nepal. The trend of creating anarchy and take advantage of such situation has increased over the past several months. There is a kind of planned competition to exploit the situation. You never know what’s going to happen when. Anyone can call a Nepal banda any time. General public has to face the difficulties caused by such prompt and unnecessary decisions. Public have always become the victim of such bandas in the past. What can they do other than quietly suffer?”

FarsiTube, Alexander Litvinenko, strikes in Lebanon, maids protesting at the beach in Peru, vlogging from UAE, and clashes in Bolivia after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: GV, Human Rights, Journalism, Law, Protest, Unions, Violence, War & Conflict, Women, cellphone, citizen journalism, internet, online video, technology, witness

16/01/2007 • 16:08 0

Caught On Camera: Human Rights Videos on GV [via GV/WITNESS]

[Originally published here as part of WITNESS’s collaboration with Global Voices Online]

You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s been Saddam, Saddam, Saddam, in recent weeks, but GV has covered other human rights videos that deserve a bit of limelight – so, in this regular new feature, I’m going to round up the best of those recent stories.

Something for WITNESS’s Amazon Wishlist [via Veronica]

First to Pawlina, host of a Ukrainian radio show in Vancouver, Canada, who blogs about human trafficking at The Natashas. After her post in late December commending Ukrainian pop star Ruslana for releasing a video condemning human trafficking, Pawlina praises another musician, Peter Gabriel, for founding WITNESS, but, under the title “Some human rights abuses harder to expose than others”, offers some advice:

It’s very commendable of rock stars to help expose human rights abuses around the world.

British rock legend Peter Gabriel has formd an organization called Witness that provides video equipment to human rights activists to record such abuses.

I suspect he may not be aware of the horrific abuses suffered by hundreds of thousands of young women and even children, at the hands of human traffickers pandering to men seeking instant, no-strings-attached sexual gratification.

In which case, someone should send him a copy of The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade.

Then again, no doubt it would be extremely difficult to film what goes on behind the closed doors and barred windows of brothels and “breaking grounds”, much less expose it to public view.

In fact WITNESS did produce a documentary about trafficking in 1997, Bought And Sold, but Pawlina’s right – it’s proving quite difficult to find footage from behind those “closed doors and barred windows” – so if you have seen, or even filmed footage of that kind, please email me (email address at the end of the article) to let me know.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Dalits, Governance, Human Rights, Law, Military, South Asia, Trafficking, Violence, Women, cellphone, elections, internet, online video, technology, witness

03/10/2006 • 16:00 0

Iraq: Rare testimony of abuse by the Iraqi Security Forces [via GV/WITNESS]

[Originally published here as part of WITNESS’s collaboration with Global Voices Online]

Torture in Iraq, says the UN, is “out of control”, and “worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein”. So it was especially timely for Brian Conley at Alive In Baghdad to e-mail us to say that he had an interview with a man who claims to have been beaten and abused by Iraqi security forces in Ramadi:

Click on the image to play video


The man in the video, referred to as “Majed”, talks of being arrested without charge by members of the Iraqi National Guard – now known as the New Iraqi Army – on 13 July 2006. The abuses he alleges include arbitrary detention, persistent beating and kicking, and whipping with an electric cable. He shows the camera the physical scars of his ordeal.

There are some questions about this case that the video interview doesn’t answer: did Majed make a complaint to any official authorities? If he did complain, did the Iraqi Security Forces deny the allegations or agree to investigate them? If the allegations are true, and the perpetrators are identified, is there any prospect that they will be punished? What about the US officer whom Majed refers to?

Nonetheless the alleged maltreatment described in the interview should be enough to make us all sit up and take notice.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Freedom of speech, GV, Governance, Human Rights, Law, Middle East & North Africa, Military, Militia, North America, Violence, War & Conflict, citizen journalism, police, witness

20/09/2006 • 12:30 0

Eastern Europe: Video documents homophobia on the rise [via GV/WITNESS]

[Originally published here as part of WITNESS's collaboration with Global Voices Online]

The latest twist in the long-running saga of anti-gay violence and state oppression took place yesterday in Moscow, as an appeals court upheld the earlier lower court ruling to ban Moscow’s Gay Pride March in May 2006. The gay rights activists who brought the case will now attempt to challenge the rulling in the European Court of Human Rights, and they say they expect to win.

As GVO’s Eastern and Central Europe Editor Veronica Khokhlova reported in May 2006, Moscow’s Mayor, Yuri Luzhov, banned the Moscow Gay Pride march from taking place. The religious leaders of Moscow met – on the one issue they could agree – to back his decision and called for violence against anyone who tried to march – a call that was unfortunately heeded. The video below – apparently uploaded to YouTube from a Russian anarchist site – doesn’t directly show the violence that took place, but does give a very immediate sense of the atmosphere in Moscow that day, and of who was involved:

Just as sites like YouTube can be used as a dissemination tool for less savoury content, they can also be used as a tool for solidarity and support, and potentially as evidence. In the case of anti-gay violence, users have tried to upload their own footage (as with the videos in this post), and, where first-hand footage is not available, they have uploaded clips from their local TV news (here’s a clip from Serbian TV’s coverage of the 2001 Gay Pride in Belgrade).

And that solidarity and support may well be needed. Human Rights First, a US-based organisation, released a report earlier this year citing an increase both in rhetoric and in hate-crimes of a homophobic or racist nature in Russia (PDF) over the past year. But it’s not just Russia where this is a trend. Since the accession of 8 Eastern European countries to the EU in May 2004, the spotlight has come to rest increasingly on the rise in official, or state, homophobia across Eastern Europe.

The most high-profile manifestation of this is how governments handle Gay Pride marches – which are now held all over the world – in which lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT organisations march to commemorate LGBT rights, and to celebrate LGBT pride.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Cyber-Activism, Freedom of speech, GV, Governance, Human Rights, LGBT, Law, Mobile, Protest, Sexuality, Violence, cellphone, citizen journalism, online video, police, technology, witness

07/07/2005 • 19:48 0

John Kamau on today’s bombings in London

[Originally published on Panos London's AfricaVox here.]

After this morning’s terror attacks on London, the atmosphere around the Gleneagles media centre changed markedly, and the tone of John’s piece for BBC Online reflects that sombre mood:

The air is now extremely gloomy up here and I am not finding the excitement and energy that I usually see with journalists.

Those from London will be worried about friends, family and colleagues, and those from abroad will perhaps be feeling cut off from the real theatre of action, even as they are appalled at the loss of lives and threats of further terror.

Like John, many of the journalists have seen the aftermath of violence and terror in their own countries, and they’re all shocked by this morning’s events, and, like John, offer their condolences to the people of London.

Filed under: Blogging, Journalism, Media, Violence, africa

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