A Danish climber is interviewed in this heart-breaking film on The Hub that shows Chinese soldiers killing Tibetans on their way to see the Dalai Lama in India.
On Global Voices, John Kennedy is keeping track of new information on the riots in Tibet and the Chinese crack-down in this post. Snippets of news are coming out via micro-blogs like Twitter, but otherwise it’s mostly Chinese who are uploading comments.
Kennedy says:
**One reader has written in asking to know why there are no apparent Tibetan voices in this post. This of course is not a deliberate omission but a problem of not being able to find them. Any such related links if left in the comments or sent to chinese [at] globalvoicesonline [dot] org will be translated swiftly and everyone’s help is most welcome in this.
By now, you must have seen the musical tribute Obama on YouTube, “Yes, you can”. As a parody/homage (“parage”) Andrew Boyd and friends have made this video with a slightly different message. You’ll recognize the humor from the 2004 election-activism-hit, Billionaires for Bush.
I can’t help feeling frustrated at the news of Guantánamo’s 6th anniversary on 11 January. Hundreds of innocent people (including one journalist) locked up under inhumane conditions for SIX years, and there’s not a shred of hope something like THAT would ever become a campaign issue in the US presidential elections. Who would want to be seen supporting “terrorists”?
Amnesty International has a new campaign to collect at least 500,000 signatures on this new website that slowly eats away at an image of the prison, one pixel per signature. The audiovisual site, called Tear it Down, also provides grueling facts and dates, such as:
“Up to 86% of detainees held at Guantánamo were arrested by the Afghan Northern Alliance and in Pakistan at a time when rewards of up to US$5,000 were paid for every unidentified terror suspect handed over to US forces.”
In California, the pro bono lawyers of two Guantánamo detainees have a blog where they keep track of news about the detention facility, and also provide updates about their own interactions with their clients. Here’s the depressing news from last week:
Today I received a letter from Mr. Al-Ghizzawi in which he informs me that he has recently seen a doctor and the doctor informed him that he has AIDs. It will take some time for me to confirm this information as the government is reluctant to give out any information to the prisoners or their attorneys but you can bet I will be doing everything I can to find out the truth.
How sad that many of the countries of origin of the majority of detainees themselves have abysmal records on democracy and freedom of expression. Somehow it makes their pleas for justice and criticism of the United States ring hollow. And vice versa. Any policy condoning any degree of torture or illegal detention, perpetuates the practice worldwide. At least that’s what I think.
Fouad al-Farhan is one of the few Saudi bloggers who talks about politics using his real name. He is outspoken in favor of freedom and against political corruption. He was arrested a few weeks ago and is being held for “questioning” without charges. His family cannot speak to him. Saudi Arabia has imprisoned many journalists in the past, but this is the first time a blogger has been arrested. A global movement of bloggers are campaigning to free him. Please sign the petition, it may really help.
Authors who want feedback on a book or text from online readers have experimented with publication in both wikis and blogs, but both methods seem a little stunted. I did a story for Danish radio recently on the future of the book, where I try to describe a new Wordpress theme by the Instute for the Future of the Book called CommentPress that allows people to write “in the margins” of a book to offer feedback on a specific paragraph or point. (Go ahead, you try to explain that on the radio.)
Imagine how wonderful it would be if something like this were used in UN Summit context, where delegates pour over sentences and paragraphs for weeks in order to generate “a document” for the meeting. Imagine if it were also live on the internet for the whole world to see at the same time. In a perfect world the delegates would use the tool themselves. In the meantime, who will be the first activist to sit in on the process and do it for them? It’s such a complex bureaucratic process – having a more visual representation of what goes on would be great.
Hello? Is this Desmond Tutu? Of course I don’t mind if Mary Robinson and Graça Machel are on the line. Happy Human Rights Day. Oh, and thanks for everything you’ve done to make the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration for Human Rights such a positive occasion. So how are you?
And that is pretty much how the conference call did not go.
Me and five other Global Voices bloggers were given the opportunity to ask questions of these incredible human rights leaders who have recently joined forces with other great leaders as The Elders. The conference call system was very bad, and we didn’t all get to ask the questions we prepared, but the conversation was fluid, and the Elders on the line were genuine and friendly. I’ve written more about what they said on openDemocracy and Global Voices. Hopefully, next time there is such a call, hundreds more bloggers could listen in.
The Elders want to reach out to bloggers because they’ve launched a campaign to help “reclaim human rights for individuals”. It’s called Every Human Has Rights and it involves getting around a billion people to sign the Declaration of Human Rights (go sign, you’ll be impressed to read the plain text version). They’re also asking people and groups to upload human rights videos to The Hub.
So much gets hidden in the world of NGOs, IGOs, conferences and summits, that reaching out to ordinary citizens (or “extraordinary,” as Tutu says) is key. Technology is enabling people everywhere to document and broadcast their own life situations via websites like Global Voices and The Hub. It’s exactly the ammunition human rights leaders need to help push for change.
It’s remarkable that citizen media has come this far. When global heroes like the ones above are asking bloggers for their help, advice, and attention, it means there’s real power there to be tapped. We need to think hard about what more we can do to amplify the voices of people around the world who really need to be heard.
Over on Global Voices, Chinese editor John Kennedy is doing a tremendous job of covering a mass protest of ant farmers (yes, ant farmers) in Shenyang, China which is being systematically silenced by the government.
It’s a huge scandal where a major company selling health supplements (the active ingredient is ants) has filed for bankruptcy taking thousands of workers’ personal investments in ant farming equipment down the drain.
Pictures, videos, and forum comments posted on Chinese websites are quickly being removed by the authorities, but John and other bloggers are copying and translating them on other sites before they disappear forever.
More than 11,000 people in China have visited the post already.
Here’s an interesting idea – a group of peace activists calling themselves Enough Fear, are organizing live person-to-person conversations on public phones between passers-by in America and Iranians at house parties in Iran. Next dial-up is on November 13 on the Boston Commons. Any topic is up for discussion, and translators will be at hand. It can’t hurt for people to talk to one another.
Bravo to Ricken Patel for his performance on BBC’s HardTalk. The questions were intelligent and fair, and some of the answers are necessarily inconclusive. I only wish social justice activists could find that kind of airtime and well-prepared journalists in the United States. Can Avaaz really claim to know what the world’s “silent majority” is thinking? If they involved members in the nitty gritty of policy on the Middle East would they still find such strong consensus?
It’s true that pretty much everyone (including depots at the UN) would agree to more peace, freedom and human rights. But Avaaz is one of the few organizations that actually pushes back and asks for those promises to come true. Ironically, they somehow end up reverting to representational democracy, even when the promise of internet activism is to put power in the hands of individuals across borders and party lines. Their true power will lie in gaining the trust of people to make decisions for them. How many people signing their petitions really know what would be best for Pakistan right now? Or even Burma?
As Ricken himself says, their target audience is an average mother checking email at home after a long work day. Short attention span, rather than (but not instead of) thousands of engaged activists, deeply involved in the formation of the campaign. I think Avaaz will find acceptable legitimacy in numbers of people who support them, but I still have hopes that even more democratic, and perhaps more decentralized, models for change through global online people power will take shape in the next years.
