Web site chronicles human rights abuses

This image is from a video of alleged patient abuses in a Mexican psychiatric facility. The video was produced by Witness.org, an organization that provides video and editing equipment to human rights groups to capture stories on tape.

From Allison Tom
CNN Technology

(CNN) -- From young women sold into slavery or prostitution to young men abused in African diamond mines to the mentally ill left in squalid conditions in rundown asylums, humans have suffered serious abuse all over the world. Now their stories are being shown and told on a Web site determined to protect their rights.

Witness.org provides video and editing equipment to human rights groups to document the stories of survivors and capture atrocities on tape. The "video advocacy" group was founded by British singer Peter Gabriel and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

"The main goal is really to shift the balance of power to put low-cost communications technology in the hands of locally based activists and to give them the capacity to tell their own stories in their own voices," said Witness Director Gillian Caldwell.

The non-profit organization has trained and equipped 150 groups in 50 countries with video technology. The footage is then available online for anyone to view.

"The videos are original productions developed in consultation with our partner groups and they are between eight and 15 minutes in length," Caldwell said.

Videos ranging in length from 8 to 15 minutes are posted on Witness.org for public viewing.

One activist, Eric Rosenthal, chronicled the alleged abuses of patients in psychiatric facilities. Words could not well describe what he saw in one Mexican institution, but visual images did.

"We saw children and adults totally neglected living in completely inhumane conditions, often without clothing, tied down, tied to beds, tied to wheelchairs," he said.

Another video titled "Bought and Sold" exposed the trafficking of Russian women for prostitution.

Gabriel, who helped start the group in 1992, thinks technology and the Internet are powerful tools in the human rights movement.

Witness.org was founded by British singer Peter Gabriel and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

"I think those in power have to respond quicker than they had to in the past where maybe it was much slower to get anything happening. So I think technology can definitely accelerate campaigning and activism," he said.

Rosenthal agrees. Visual images did indeed create change for one psychiatric facility in Mexico.

"Within six months the institution was closed down and we worked with the government of Mexico, brought in some experts who were able to create some very human community alternatives to that facility," said Rosenthal, an activist with Mental Disability Rights International.

As technology advances, activists said they hope the voices of the persecuted in the most remote places will be heard with greater clarity.