The uploader’s identity was unknown, as was the location and date of the footage. The disturbing YouTube footage appeared to show Fijian authorities torturing men in the cab of a pickup truck. Such was the case with a video that emerged online in Fiji in early 2013. If a viewer is lucky, visual clues can help corroborate where and when the event occurred, but not if the video was taken in open fields, prisons and private residences. The hallmark of a citizen video is that it is taken by an ordinary, often anonymous, citizen, and uploaded online, where metadata is stripped. However, it can be challenging to respond to citizen video that appears to show evidence of abuse, as it is not always possible to verify its authenticity. The police officers involved were swiftly arrested. After the video of Mido Macia emerged, the president of South Africa and officials from Macia’s native Mozambique spoke out condemning the brutality it exposed. It was a montage of these videos, verified by the CIA that was presented to members of Congress as the president made a case for intervention.īut Syria was only one example in a year in which citizen videos moved political and diplomatic leaders to act. More than 100 videos documented victims of the August 21 st chemical weapons attack, reaching online audiences within hours, and President Barack Obama shortly thereafter. While reporters and human rights monitors have documented the Syrian war for nearly three years, it was citizen videos that moved the world toward intervention this summer. But as the importance of citizen video becomes clear, so too do the challenges it involves, including the need for verification and the potential of misuse. Never before have YouTube videos brought egregious abuse to such influential audiences. Collectively, they reveal not only what citizen journalists filmed this year, but how that video was seen and used. In 2013, the Human Rights Channel curated nearly 2300 videos from 100 countries. We listened to Haitian earthquake survivors, who testified that officials, landowners, and thugs were attempting to force them out of tent camps and into the streets.Īnd in the pre-dawn hours of mid-August, we ran through the corridors of a suburban Damascus hospital, witnessing in horror victims as young as babies suffering from what would later be confirmed to be a chemical weapons attack. We were in Daveyton, South Africa in late February, watching with other shocked bystanders as officers handcuffed Mido Macia to their van and drove away, dragging the taxi driver down the gravel road behind them. Through the lenses of bystanders, witnesses, and sometimes even perpetrators, we were transported to this year’s the darkest episodes of humanity, all with the ease of a click, and the speed of an upload. Police brutality, torture, chemical weapons attacks.
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