Activists Use Net as Protest Tool
Oct. 18, 2000 -- The pen is still mightier than the sword, but so is e-mail and it’s faster. That’s the message many activists are sending these days as they turn to the Internet to tackle old socio-political problems.
Amnesty International, the world’s largest human rights organization, today kicks off an Internet-based campaign against what it calls “the pervasive problem” of torture.
“The quicker we can mobilize around the world and the quicker those people can respond, the more likely it is that we will be able to save people from torture or get it stopped if it’s already happened,” says Bill Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
Acting FAST for Human Rights
Capitalizing on the speed and efficiency of the Internet, the Fast Action Stops Torture (FAST) network is a rapid response campaign designed to put thousands of activists in direct touch with torturers, would-be torturers and their superiors through electronic messages. When Amnesty International receives information someone is under threat, the organization will alert FAST members immediately by e-mail or cell phone about the imminent danger, and within hours, thousands of e-mails can be sent to the would-be perpetrator.
“If torture is going to take place, it is most likely to take place within the first 48 hours of incarceration or arrest,” says Schulz. “It is a practice that needs to be stopped quickly if it’s to be stopped.”
An update to the group’s successful Urgent Action Network, which worked similarly using mostly letters and faxes, the FAST network is just one element in a larger year-long campaign to stop torture — a global problem detailed in a report Amnesty International is releasing today. Based on research conducted worldwide from 1997 through mid-2000, “Torture Worldwide: An Affront to Human Dignity” found torture to be a major human rights issue in more than 150 of the 197 countries and territories studied.
Technology, the report indicated, can be a double-edged sword when it comes to torture, providing both a means of inflicting it and the possibilities for combating it. “Electroshock devices have been developed to restrain, control or punish,” the report says. “At the same time communications technology means that anti-torture campaigners can organize in new ways.”
Solidarity on the Net
Tom Hansen, director of the Chicago-based Mexico Solidarity Network, understands this first-hand. Hansen, who was once arrested by Mexican authorities for working on human rights efforts in the country while on a tourist visa, has been mobilizing people through the Internet for two years now, trying to affect human rights changes in Latin America.
“I’m an organizer who comes out of the 1970s before we even had computers,” says Hansen. “What used to take three people a week to do now one person can do in a matter of a couple of hours.”
Activities such as organizing programs or events and distributing education materials and action alerts are quicker and more far-reaching with Internet tools such as the World Wide Web and e-mail.
Hansen started the Mexico Solidarity Network in response to the massacre of 45 people in the Chiapas region of Mexico in late 1997. He sent out 50 e-mail invitations for a rally — 250 people showed up, and the numbers kept growing. Today, the network represents a coalition of 90 organizations and boasts an e-mail list of 2,500 members. And that doesn’t include “reflectors,” automatic mail forwarding that expands the group’s message to thousands more, said Hansen.
“We’ve grown amazingly in the last two years,” says Jason Wallach, a coordinator for the group. “You don’t see a grassroots group form from nothing and a lot of that’s due to the Internet.”
Cybercitizens
Just how much the Internet has to do with the group’s success is difficult if not impossible to quantify. Pam Fielding, co-founder of e-advocates.com, a Washington-based e-lobbying company, knows the technology available to the masses can help “change the world.” Fielding got the idea for e-advocates after launching a successful cyberadvocacy program at the National Education Association.
While working for the NEA, Fielding noticed a flaw with the traditional ways the group was trying to problem-solve public education. All too often, when a contact team would be called in to writer letters in an emergency situation, before the letters had been written and sent out, the issue had come and gone. Fielding saw e-mail as the quick fix to the situation.
She got involved with the Fairfax County, Va., schools and used the Net as the sole organizing strategy to boost funding. Her cyberoutreach efforts helped deliver 1,000 people in person to what became the largest rally for public schools in the county’s history. The overwhelming number of people who showed up translated directly into more dollars for the school.
“It showed me how incredibly powerful this medium was,” said Fielding. “What the Internet does is take away a lot of what is scary about communicating with our elected officials.”
Worldwide Connections
Irene Weiser is a case in point. Weiser, “an average citizen from upstate New York,” turned to the e-advocates when she wanted to do something about the Violence Against Women Act, which was set to expire. She felt in her gut the Internet was the way to get her message out. With some guidance from the firm, Weiser created the Web site Stopfamilyviolence.org, and in just 12 weeks, the site has generated more than 160,000 e-mails to Congress. She has amassed an e-mail activism list of some 36,000 people who have vowed to keep up the fight with her.
VAWA has yet to be resolved, but Fielding thinks recent House and Senate votes for it — 415 to 3, 95 — 0, respectively — are telling.
“What the Internet has done has made it not only to get information in real-time, it has turned somebody like Irene into a publisher. She has no radio power or TV station — yet she can build a Web site and get people together.”
This type of citizen activism worked in Belgrade and Serbia to help young people organize against Milosevic, and that technology can be a way to get the message out even under oppressive controls continues to be shown, said Schulz.
Desi Mendoza, a doctor in Cuba, used the Internet to publish his warnings about what he felt was a serious outbreak of dengue fever. Despite “gag” efforts of the Cuban government, the news organization CubaPress printed Mendoza’s first-hand information about the disease, and the story was picked up by the international press and disseminated on an even larger scale over the Net.
”The Internet is an incredible tool,” says Schulz. “Now it’s virtually impossible for a government in a remote part of the world to engage in torture without having that known instantaneously around the world.”