Human Rights Watch: Cuba’s Government Targets Social Media Influencers. “On October 14, police arrived at the homes of four Cuban YouTubers about to participate in an online forum discussing Cuban politics. Two—Jancel Moreno and Maykel Castillo—were detained, Iliana Hernández and others had their internet cut. One, 21-year-old Ruhama Fernández, had to hide to participate in the discussion by phone.”
human rights
The Guardian: China has built 380 internment camps in Xinjiang, study finds
The Guardian: China has built 380 internment camps in Xinjiang, study finds. “China has built nearly 400 internment camps in Xinjiang region, with construction on dozens continuing over the last two years, even as Chinese authorities said their ‘re-education’ system was winding down, an Australian thinktank has found…. The information has been made public, including the coordinates for individual camps, in a database that can be accessed online, the Xinjiang Data Project.”
Japanese Canadian internment: Over 40,000 pages and 180 photographs digitized by the DigiLab (Library and Archives Canada)
Library and Archives Canada Blog: Japanese Canadian internment: Over 40,000 pages and 180 photographs digitized by the DigiLab. “Landscapes of Injustice is a major, seven-year humanities and social justice project led by the University of Victoria, joined to date by fifteen cultural, academic and federal partners, including Library and Archives Canada. The purpose of this project is to research and make known the history of the dispossession—the forced sale of Japanese-Canadian-owned property made legal by Order in Council 1943-0469 (19 January 1943) during the Second World War.”
RadioFreeEurope: Iran Jailed, ‘Coerced’ Canadian Facebook Whiz To Turn Informant, He Says
RadioFreeEurope: Iran Jailed, ‘Coerced’ Canadian Facebook Whiz To Turn Informant, He Says. “Thirty-seven-year-old Facebook engineer Behdad Esfahbod has made the same wintertime trip every year since 2015. Yet this past January, the 37-year-old programming whiz’s visit to Iran to see his family took a wildly different turn. Within days of his arrival, the Iranian-Canadian dual national and graduate of Tehran’s top Sharif University had been thrown in jail and was being pressured by Iranian security forces to become an informant.”
Malay Mail: Facebook shares data on Myanmar with UN investigators
Malay Mail: Facebook shares data on Myanmar with UN investigators. “Facebook says it has shared data with United Nations investigators probing international crimes in Myanmar, after the lead investigator said the company was withholding evidence. A Facebook representative told Reuters yesterday it had given the Independent Investigative Mechanism on Myanmar (IIMM) data from pages and accounts associated with the Myanmar military that it had removed in 2018 to stop hate speech against Rohingya but declined to describe the content.”
Reuters: Kenyan museum, Mau Mau fighter shed light on British colonial abuses
Reuters: Kenyan museum, Mau Mau fighter shed light on British colonial abuses. “The camps, where tens of thousands are thought to have died, are a traumatic but largely forgotten part of Kenya’s past. They were set up to jail activists and sympathisers during the Mau Mau uprising of 1952-1960, in which [Gitu Wa] Kahengeri, born in the 1920s and a Secretary General of the independence movement’s Veterans Association, participated. Using eye-witness accounts, documents and field visits, Kenyan and British historians from the Museum of British Colonialism are now building an online archive of the period, complete with 3D recreations of some of the camps.”
Michigan State University: Social Scientists Awarded National Parks Service Grant
Michigan State University: Social Scientists Awarded National Parks Service Grant. “This grant will be used to develop The Internment Archaeology Digital Archive, an open digital archive that will host, preserve and provide broad public access to digitized collections of archaeological materials, archival documents, oral histories and ephemera that speak to the experiences of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II in the United States.”
Military .com: Little-Known Archives Discreetly Testify to Europe’s Wars
Military .com: Little-Known Archives Discreetly Testify to Europe’s Wars. “They are gathering dust on shelves, but could make war criminals tremble: the archives of the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe], an international organization addressing security-related concerns, are increasingly becoming a source for those who seek to prove abuses committed during conflicts in Europe.”
National Accord Newspaper: Ethiopia experiences Internet blackout after musician Haacaaluu shot dead
National Accord Newspaper: Ethiopia experiences Internet blackout after musician Haacaaluu shot dead. “A blanket shutdown of the Internet in Ethiopia is being reported by Access Now, an organisation defending the digital rights of users at risk around the world. This came hours after prominent and outspoken Oromo musician Haacaaluu Hundeessaa was shot dead in Addis Abeba, the country’s capital. There have also been reports – via social media – of people taking to the streets demanding justice.”
NPR: Parts Of Myanmar Unaware Of COVID-19 Due To Internet Ban, Rights Advocates Say
NPR: Parts Of Myanmar Unaware Of COVID-19 Due To Internet Ban, Rights Advocates Say. “An Internet shutdown that began a year ago in parts of Myanmar is keeping some villages unaware of the coronavirus pandemic, humanitarian groups say. Restrictions on mobile Internet were put in place in eight townships in the state of Rakhine – and one in nearby Chin state — in June of last year amid fighting between the country’s military and an ethnic minority, the Rakhine, and their Arakan Army.”
MIT Technology Review: Human rights activists want to use AI to help prove war crimes in court
MIT Technology Review: Human rights activists want to use AI to help prove war crimes in court. “The initiative, led by Swansea University in the UK along with a number of human rights groups, is part of an ongoing effort to monitor the alleged war crimes happening in Yemen and create greater legal accountability around them. In 2017, the platform Yemeni Archive began compiling a database of videos and photos documenting the abuses. Content was gathered from thousands of sources—including submissions from journalists and civilians, as well as open-source videos from social-media platforms like YouTube and Facebook—and preserved on a blockchain so they couldn’t be tampered with undetected.”
The Register: Internet blackout of Myanmar States that are home to ethnic minorities enters second year
The Register: Internet blackout of Myanmar States that are home to ethnic minorities enters second year. “The internet blackout in towns in two states of Myanmar (Burma) has entered a second year. Myanmar’s government imposed the blackouts in Rakhine State and Chin State on June 21st, 2019, citing security concerns as justification.”
ProPublica: The Prison Was Built to Hold 1,500 Inmates. It Had Over 2,000 Coronavirus Cases.
ProPublica: The Prison Was Built to Hold 1,500 Inmates. It Had Over 2,000 Coronavirus Cases.. “Nationwide, Marion [Correctional Institution] ranked as the largest recorded coronavirus outbreak of any U.S. institution in a New York Times analysis. Three other prisons, including another packed one in Scotia Township, Ohio, were in the top five. The fifth is the Smithfield pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
NBC News: Detained migrants say they were forced to clean COVID-infected ICE facility
NBC News: Detained migrants say they were forced to clean COVID-infected ICE facility. “Asylum-seeking migrants locked up inside an Arizona Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center with one of the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases say they were forced to clean the facility and are ‘begging’ for protection from the virus, according to a letter obtained exclusively by NBC News.”
Council of Europe: No Hate Speech Training Course goes online
Council of Europe: No Hate Speech Training Course goes online. “The course gathers some 40 multipliers active with young people on combating hate speech, experts working on standards on fighting discrimination and hate speech, and activists using human rights education and counter-narratives for awareness-raising against hate speech. The participants represent various stakeholders in society, notably youth movements, educational organisations, local authorities, equality bodies/ ombuds-offices, and Human Rights NGO’s.”