- Protest. Resist. Exist. #RightToRecord, A Sacred Covenant to Protect. This blog post marks the official launch of WITNESS’s global campaign ‘Right to Record: Protest. Resist. Exist’. For an optimal reading experience via your mobile phone, rotate your screen horizontally, to landscape mode. This blog post is available in Spanish. Dounya Zayer’s Story On the night of 29th May 2020, Dounya Zayer, an activist, went […]
- From Capture to Justice Published October 20, 2021. Protesting in Nigeria is an act of extreme courage. There have been countless moments in Nigeria’s history when the government responded with brutal force to peaceful protests. But none in recent history has been as violent and premeditated as the one we witnessed on the night of October 20, 2020. I […]
- Behind The Scenes: Visions for Immigrant Justice Our partners at the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network recently released two videos that we are proud to have collaborated on. These videos paint a vision for a more just world for the immigrants and southern border communities in the U.S. that RGV Equal Voice represents and supports. This vision is one that prioritizes […]
- Ugandan Elections: ‘We Made Sure the Cameras Kept Rolling for Safety’ Preceding the widely discredited Ugandan presidential elections of January 14 2021, the main opposition candidate Mr Robert Kyagulanyi “(popularly known as “Bobi Wine”)” urged his supporters to use their smartphones to record cases of poll fraud and violence. “They fear the camera. Use your camera as much as possible, go live wherever you can, expose, […]
- The Power of Video in 2020: Police Brutality in Africa Author: Loui Mainga In 2020, debate on increased visibility of police abuse gathered momentum in Africa following their heavy-handedness under the guise of enforcing COVID-19-related restrictions and much later, the #EndSARS protest movement in Nigeria. Given the pivotal role social media is playing in exposing and bringing heightened awareness to police abuse, a number of […]
- The Role of Video and the Right to Record in Exposing Systemic Racism WITNESS has responded to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ call for submissions to inform her report on systemic racism and violations of the international human rights of Africans and people of African descent by law enforcement. WITNESS’ submission emphasizes how video has played an essential role in exposing institutional discrimination around the […]
- The role of video evidence in Nigeria’s #EndSARS movement 20 October 2020 On October 3, a video showing the extra-judicial killing of two civilians by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police, sparked outrage on social media. It led to more and more Nigerians sharing videos and personal stories of their brutal encounters with SARS operatives – a unit that became notorious […]
- Want to Record The Cops? Know Your Rights While not any sort of panacea for police violence, videos of police officers in the US killing unarmed Black men like George Floyd, Oscar Grant and Eric Garner have undeniably been an essential part of the conversation around racist, brutal policing in the United States. Police violence is a much longer lasting pandemic than COVID-19, […]
- In Africa, Fear of State Violence Informs Deepfake Threat Our deepfakes preparedness workshop in South Africa revealed that perceived threats from synthetic media vary greatly by region, especially where repressive government is a factor.
- The Right to Record in Africa – Law versus Reality The Nigerian police force has a popular phrase which you will find displayed in most police stations. It says: The Police is your friend. But the average Nigerian does not know this to be true. The high levels of police violence coupled with the absence of accountability has sparked social movements such as #EndSARS and […]
- Who Can We Trust? I am a young, black, first generation American woman from New York City. Following the indictment of George Zimmerman and the murders of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Akai Gurley by the police, I began to feel extremely weary of authority figures and fearful of any potential interactions between my family and friends […]
- Promoting and Defending the Right to Record Secrecy breeds impunity. But the ability to record the police and military can expose human rights abuses to the world. International human rights law confirms the right of everyone, not just the press, to record military and law enforcement without fear of arrest, violence, or other retaliation. But unfortunately, the reality is that right isn’t […]
- Occupying Dhaka Inspiring widespread activism on social media, a nation-wide youth-led movement for road safety emerged across Bangladesh and in cyberspace, as students in Dhaka drove the city to a standstill.
- Cracolândia: A Public Health Crisis Treated with State-Sponsored Violence Originally published in Portuguese. Brazil currently faces the world’s largest crack epidemic, with an estimated 1 million crack users. Sharing a border with 10 countries, Brazil is a prime transit hub for the coca producers of the Andes region. While the increasing use of crack there is often attributed to the war on drugs in […]
- Deadly, deadlier: Rio favela under fire by joint Police-Army forces Last week in Brazil, military police joined lethal forces with the Brazilian Army for an operation in the Rio de Janeiro favela of Maré, leaving 7 dead. Residents using mobile phones captured the deadly use of helicopters and over one hundred bullets fired during the attack.
