December 2009 marks the Hub’s official two-year anniversary and we’re looking back at the most popular videos, issues, campaigns, and blog posts since our launch. There’s a lot to cover – the Hub is now home to 3,000 videos on a range of human rights issues from all around the world. Since 2007, more than 9,700 people have created accounts on the Hub, 177 organizations have created group pages, and Hub content has been viewed more than 8 million times.
We have learned so much from all of you in the past two years and we’ve been continuously inspired by how people and groups are using video and online technologies to tell their own stories, circumvent government oppression, and defend the basic rights with which all humans are born. An enormous thank you to groups like Frontline, Amnesty International, Breakthrough, Freeforall, HCLU, a-films, Pulitzer Center, b’tselem, HR2Housing, needmagazine, TVEAP, USHR Network, EngageMedia, Human Rights Watch, SilenceSpeaks, LICADHO, Bulatlat, and many others for being such valuable contributors to the Hub community. Thank you for leading the way!
What follows is a small (and by no means comprehensive!) selection of some Hub highlights from the past two years – we invite you to explore, comment, and contribute your own ideas and thoughts about how video can and is being used to further human rights. We look forward to the conversation!
*Note: the data below reflects numbers retrieved on December 21, 2009
| TOP 5 MOST VIEWED VIDEOS* |
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| 1- Japan: Military Sexual Slavery during the Second World War — witnessed 102,709 times |
2- Egypt: Bloggers Open the door to police brutality debate — witnessed 51,263 times |
3- China: Government’s video censorship foiled — witnessed 32,128 times |
4- Malaysia: Cellphone video captures police excess — witnessed 28,694 times |
5- Rights on the Line: Vigilantes at the Border — witnessed 27,328 times |
| (see the next 5 most viewed videos here) | ||||
| TOP 5 MOST MENTIONED ISSUES* | ||||
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| 1- FREEDOM OF OPINION & EXPRESSION | 2- TORTURE & ILL TREATMENT | 3- POVERTY | 4- POLICE BRUTALITY | 5- DETENTION |
| (see the next 5 most mentioned issues here) | ||||
| TOP 5 MOST READ BLOG POSTS* |
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| 1- What image opened your eyes to human rights? [27,983 reads] | 2- Mobile Phones Document Police Killing Unarmed Man in California [14,101 reads] | 3- Hear Us, Stand with Us – Zimbabwean Women Rise Against Sexual Violence [10,295 reads] | 4- Video for Change: Bringing a Congolese Warlord to Justice [8,194 reads] | 5- Elder Justice Now! A New Campaign to Address Elder Abuse in the U.S. [4,730 reads] |
| (see the next 5 here) |
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| TOP 5 MOST COVERED (AND RESPONDED TO) ISSUES* | ||||
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| 1- Egypt Torture Videos | 2- What image opened your eyes to human rights? | 3- Video for Change: Bringing a Warlord to Justice | 4- Spotlight on LICADHO – forced evictions in Cambodia | 5- Resources, Tips, Toolkits |
| 17 videos and 5 blog posts were viewed 182,780 times | 52 videos and 7 blog posts were viewed 94,260 times | 27 videos and 7 blog posts were viewed 68,180 times | 20 videos and 11 posts were viewed 51,130 times | 6 videos and 6 posts, were viewed 41,750 times |
| (see the next 5 here) | ||||
5 EDITOR’S PICKS (listed in random order – see a quick explanation of the criteria, as well as 5 more picks from the Editor here)
1) the clean hands project – this video introduces us to a special collaboration between the Jagaran Media Center in Nepal and the Advocacy Project in the U.S.
that trained 13 Nepali activists and journalists from the Dalit “untouchable” caste to use photography and video to tell their own stories and counter the discrimination against Dalits. In three months, more than 4,000 photographs and 60 hours of footage had been produced. What I especially love about this video are the testimonies from the Nepali activists who participated in the project and the commitment to building local – and long-lasting – capacity…
(PS – for another initiative along similar lines, see this Internews video about a training program that helps refugees produce locally-relevant news for their own community radio stations in Chad)
2) Pablo Fajardo – we had the privilege of meeting and interviewing Pablo at the 2009 ELAW Conference, where we also spoke with environmental lawyers from around the world.
Pablo is an Ecuadorean lawyer and activist who is representing 30,000 Indigenous people and rainforest dwellers from the Ecuadorean Amazon in a landmark $27 billion lawsuit against U.S. oil giant ChevronTexaco for years of environmental devastation in the region. To sum it up, I’ll borrow words from Hub user Shannon0, who left a comment on the post we did about the case: “I’m proud of Pablo Fajardo and Luis Yanza for being the strength of their people and fighting for justice despite having become targets of increasing harassment, intimidation, and death threats over the years…” To learn more about the case, go to ChevronToxico.org and see this interview with filmmaker Joe Berlinger, who just completed a documentary about the legal battle called CRUDE.
3) Hub user ANIS (Brazil’s Institute of Bioethics, Human Rights, and Gender) has contributed a remarkable set of masterly crafted advocacy videos that tell poignant personal stories whilst tackling extremely complex and controversial human rights issues.
In Alone and Anonymous, for example, we are left to grapple with the nuances of human dignity with profound questions about what happens when the right to life collides with the right to die – and who gets to decide… In Severina’s Story, A Disembodied Woman, Habeas Corpus, and Four Women (later used as evidence in the Brazilian Supreme Court), we’re touched by different accounts of violence against women and introduced to the human faces of issues like reproductive rights. And finally in The House of the Dead, we are taken into a psychiatric prison in northeast Brazil to bear witness to the realities of at least 4,500 people living with mental disabilities that are incarcerated in prisons and denied adequate treatment or protection.
4) Video to circumvent repression – holding up a video camera can be an extremely risky endeavor, but people are still finding ways to do so. Here are two great examples:
In Saudi Arabia, activists organized a hunger strike via Facebook to protest the unfair detention of 11 human rights activists. In interviews with the Hub, one activist explained that the internet was “the only way of getting the message out” and that “[speaking out] was worth the risks” of political persecution and harassment. In Tibet, Tibetan filmmakers Dhondup Wangchen and Golog Jigme were arrested and subjected to torture after completing Leaving Fear Behind, a film that showcases the voices and opinions of Tibetans in Tibet about the 2008 Beijing Olympics (Golog has since been freed and the campaign for Dhondup’s release continues on – read more here and here).
5) Just plain creative. If you’re looking for new and more
“out-of-the-box” ways of communicating your issues, here are three good places to seek inspiration: *The Yes Men (a collective of activists that use pranks to shame corporations and governments who try to abuse or ignore human rights…); *Animations for Human Rights – see Breakthrough’s Oops I did it again! or Hub user Draxtor’s Virtual Guantanamo in Second Life; * Last but not least, Video the Vote’s 2008, which explains “simple” concepts like democracy, oppression, election monitoring and voter suppression with the help of bright pink stick figures… beautiful and effective.
**A huge thank you to Marianna Moneymaker for all her work on this!