Apologies to all those who clicked on the http for this piece yesterday to
be taken to a page with '404 error: file not found'. For some reason the
final character 'l' in the address appeared on a separate line and therefore
not as part of the address. The correct http is given below, however, if the
'l' is missing please add it to the address before clicking.
Thanks to Jim Morrow for drawing attention to this error.
-----Original Message-----
From: Joanne Roberts [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 15 May 2000 11:28
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CSL] A hi-tech search for the truth about Kosovo
A hi-tech search for the truth about Kosovo
Once they were wary of using technology, but now human rights groups are
using IT to turn the tables on repressive regimes.
By Suelette Dreyfus
The Independent 15 May 2000
During the war in Yugoslavia last year, hundreds of thousands of Kosovar
refugees fled their homes. Were they running from the Serbian military or
Nato bombs? Was the refugee flight completely chaotic, or was someone
orchestrating it with deliberate precision behind the scenes?
In the turmoil of war, truth often disappears behind the TV sound bites. Now
an international consortium of human rights groups is hoping technology will
unearth some of those truths in the wake of the Kosovo tragedy.
The consortium recently released a watershed report, Policy or Panic: The
Flight of Ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, March-May 1999, analysing the flow
of 400,000 refugees out of Kosovo last year. The report resulted from a
nine-month joint research effort by the Tirana-based Institute for Policy
and Legal Studies (IPLS), The East-West Management Institute in New York and
the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in
Washington.
Dr Patrick Ball, deputy director of the AAAS Science and Human Rights
Programme and author of the report, said the Kosovo study reflected the new
trend of human rights groups using technology to turn the tables on
repressive governments. In the past, human rights organisations often viewed
technology, and particularly computers, with distrust. However, in the past
two years, they have been turning technology to their advantage, using it to
investigate repressive governments just as those governments once spied on
them.
For the full article visit :
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/Digital/Features/2000-05/kosovo150500.shtm
l
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|