CEDIME-SE: Minorities and Internet
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Subject: CEDIME-SE: Minorities and Internet
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Greek Helsinki Monitor <[email protected]>
CEDIME-SE: Minorities and Internet
CENTER FOR DOCUMENTATION AND INFORMATION ON MINORITIES IN EUROPE -
SOUTHEAST EUROPE (CEDIME-SE)
P.O.Box 51393, GR-14510 Kifisia, Greece
Tel. 30-1-620.01.20, Fax 30-1-807.57.67
e-mail: [email protected]
web page: http://www.greekhelsinki.gr
MINORITIES IN THE ERA OF MODERN
ELECTRONIC MEDIA AND THE INTERNET
(Presented by Nafsika Papanikolatos, Coordinator of CEDIME-SE and
Spokesperson of Minority Rights Group - Greece, at the Seminar on "The
Role of Minorities in Electronic Media and Transfrontier
Broadcasting," Szeged, Hungary, 29-30/10/1999, in the framework of the
Joint Program between the European Commission and the Council of
Europe on "National Minorities in Europe")
In his seminal study Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1992) Benedict Anderson
shows how the advent of print helped "create the possibility of a new
form of imagined community, which in its basic morphology set the
stage for the modern nation" (p. 46). Already "the Reformation (�)
owed much of its success to print-capitalism. Before the age of print,
Rome easily won every war against heresy in Western Europe because it
always had better lines of communication than its challengers" (p.
39). Thanks to Gutenberg's invention, however, "Luther became the
first best-selling author so known. Or to put it another way, the
first writer who could 'sell' his new books on the basis of his name"
(p. 39). The imagined community of Christendom was forever shaken. Its
decline was subsequently helped by "the elevation of [various]
vernaculars to the languages-of-power" (p.42) replacing Latin.
"These print-languages laid the bases for national consciousness in
three distinct ways. (�) Third, print-capitalism created
languages-of-power of a kind different from the old administrative
vernaculars. Certain dialects inevitably were 'closer' to each
print-language and dominated their final forms. Their disadvantaged
cousins, still assimilable to the emerging print-language, lost caste,
above all because they were unsuccessful (or only relatively
successful) in insisting on their own print-form. (�) Hence the
struggles in late-twentieth-century Europe by certain
'sub-'nationalities to change their subordinate status by breaking
firmly into print - and radio" (p. 45).
Indeed, the development of electronic media has made it possible for
'subordinated' groups to reach wider audiences. Moreover, as the
technological development made printing and broadcasting cheaper,
minority media started emerging in large numbers. For example,
minority or migrant radio stations thrive in numbers in many Western
countries. Nevertheless, they are usually local which limits their
access to their potential audiences. As for the print media,
distribution is still expensive, which means that minority or migrant
newspapers cannot again reach easily their target groups. Finally, and
most importantly, all scholarly studies by communication analysts have
shown that access of disadvantaged groups to the mainstream media,
where they have a chance to present their arguments to mass audiences,
is limited if non-existent.
Enter the Internet revolution, which can be for all modern subordinate
cultures almost what the print revolution was at the time for the
vernaculars in their struggle with the dominant Latin culture: a means
to achieve parity with (rather than replace as in the case of the
print revolution) majority cultures in the Third Millenary. The key
reason is that access to Internet is almost free or in any case very
cheap. Computers with the necessary software can be purchased for less
than $1,000. Telephone costs for the necessary e-mails are usually
lower than those of a four-member household with teenage or young
children. If one accepts some advertising, or better if s/he finds
some provider or server with a sense of mission, listserves and web
pages can come for free.
Such facilities mean that a piece of news can be distributed literally
around the world through an electronic message (e-mail) instantly and
almost for free. If it is well documented and newsworthy, it can
quickly lead to a spiral of reactions, perhaps even an electronic
campaign, that, in some instances, may even change the course of
events shortly after the message is sent. Should the messenger prove
his/her credibility, future such messages will be automatically
considered credible without much additional research, and lead to
similar reactions and campaigns.
On the other hand, when such information is stored in web sites, easy
and -again- free access to them makes the work of all those who want
to react in a comprehensive and credible way much simpler, as it
secures instant access to crucial background information. Powerful
search engines tend to make access to minority sites very easy.
Nowadays, even photographs (worth a thousand words as it is well
known) may be easily available in such sites (though they need much
more space than texts).
So, for example, imagine a journalist dedicated to the cause of
minority rights and justice who wants to write a powerful front-page
story on a massacre of Serbs or Roma today, or of Albanians yesterday,
in Kosovo. S/he needs to show it is not an isolated case but is linked
to previous atrocities in this region, whether of the last year or the
last century. There is a lot of relevant information available in the
Internet, and, ten years from now, it is expected that s/he would be
in fact "embarrassed by the vast choice of available material." It
needs be mentioned here that the Internet has been used extensively
during the Kosovo crisis and many NGOs from the embattled Yugoslavia
managed to make their voice heard only through that medium, even when
eventually some of their statements were published by traditional
print media.
The problem, though, for this person will be to sort out what is and
what is not credible. Especially when the topic is not as hot as the
Kosovo conflict, but rather as obscure as, say, to use current
examples from Greece, the forthcoming trials of a Buddhist meditation
center in Halkidiki (1 November 1999) and of a Pentecostal priest from
Salonica (5 November 1999) - both charged with illegally operating
houses of worship - or of an Aromanian (Vlach) activist accused of
having spread false information by distributing a publication of the
European Bureau of Less Used Languages that mentioned the (officially
unrecognized) minority languages in Greece (9 November 1999). It is a
sure bet that all of you will find these -unbelievable for a
democratic country- trials newsworthy but could not really 'sell' them
to publishers or directors if you fail to explain what kind of
sensitivity and past history makes such human rights violations
possible.
A quick glance at the joint web site of Greek Helsinki Monitor and
Minority Rights Group - Greece could provide the answer. A report on
Greece's Vlachs or on religious freedom in that country would give you
the missing information. Let us now turn to a brief presentation of
the CEDIME project, along with its Balkan Human Rights Web Pages and
Balkan Human Rights Listserve. The Center of Documentation and
Information on Minorities in Europe (CEDIME) aims to provide
comparable, comprehensive and continuously updateable information in
the Internet on, ideally, all ethnonational, ethnolinguistic, and
religious minorities in Europe. To secure high quality, these
presentations will be reviewed by many area experts before final
publication. On the one hand, there will be presentations of
accumulated credible scholarly knowledge about each minority, along
with extensive bibliography and contact addresses of minority
institutions, including media and web sites. Plus, in a listserve will
be distributed daily postings on minority related credible
information, including of course human rights violations, that will
serve as updates of the presentations and will be eventually
incorporated in them.
At this stage, the project is seeking the necessary funding for the
creation of a European seat (possibly in Geneva) and some half-dozen
regional teams. Among the latter, the Southeast European one is
already functioning on an experimental basis with the Web Site and
Listserve mentioned above. In the coming weeks, the first
comprehensive presentations of religious and ethnonational minorities
in Bulgaria will be made available at the web address:
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/english/reports/CEDIME-Reports-Minorities-in-Bulgaria.html
In the meantime, a presentation of the project and some general
articles about minorities and minority rights in Europe are available
at the web address:
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/english/organizations/cedime.html
while information about minorities and minority rights in Greece, in
different formats, is available at:
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/Minorities_of_Greece.html
Finally, again in the coming weeks, state reports to the Council of
Europe pursuant to the Framework Convention for the Protection of
National Minorities, along with corresponding alternative, 'shadow'
reports prepared by NGOs, will be available at:
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/english/reports/CEDIME-FCNM.html
In this effort, as well as in all other efforts of minorities and
minority rights-oriented NGOs to make optimal use of the
revolutionizing Internet so as to help achieve in the end equal access
between minorities and majorities, the crucial term is 'credibility.'
Majorities have fully benefited for over a century of their domination
of the print media, so that today, although they are still producing
ample and often gross propaganda, they have also achieved a high level
of scholarly work that sets the standard of credibility, both in
scholarship and journalism. Minorities that are now given a means that
may help them bridge the gap have a serous handicap. They cannot
afford to first go through the broadcasting of what looks today as
primitive, vulgar propaganda, and then reach a similar level of
scholarship and credibility with the majorities. If they do so, they
will miss the opportunity. Instead they must very quickly adapt to the
demanding norms of this end of the second millenium.
In the nineteenth century, when modern nations were emerging,
nationalism was everywhere very aggressive, intolerant and oppressive.
That meant that even academic scholarship was busy in constructing
myths and inventing traditions, both perceived then as necessary for
the survival of the new nations. One century, dozens of wars, and
millions of victims later, this primitive form of nationalism is
considered unacceptable. This may be seen as somewhat unfair for the
contemporary, reactive and defensive minority nationalisms. On the
other hand, the mellowing of most majority nationalisms in
contemporary Europe makes it possible for minorities to voice their
concerns and advocate passionately their rights without resorting to
archaic, inward-looking, self-congratulatory, but totally inefficient
if not outright counter-productive means. The large number of
international human rights documents and mechanisms available, along
with their interplay with international politics, provides a
formidable arsenal to minorities and human rights defenders.
Unfortunately, when one surfs the Internet, s/he will find countless
primitive nationalistic pages in alleged defense of minority rights.
Their web masters believe that they are thus providing historical
service to their minorities. Nevertheless, by being instead masters of
deceit, they make their pages useless to those who want to advocate
minority rights. Often, they motivate the creation of pages of
majority counter-propaganda and listserves or chats where the hate
speech exchanged sometimes rivals the one produced by the racist,
xenophobic if not neo-nazi pages. In reality, their only achievement
may be a virtual and verbal fighting over again of the turn of the
century bloody battles for the emancipation of modern states.
One may finally wonder whether the Internet is becoming a new medium
or more a modern tool to disseminate widely information to be used by
the print and electronic media (radio and television). It seems that
the trend is for the web to incorporate other media. Already many
newspapers have full electronic editions, which - for the more
sophisticated ones - is more developed than the traditional print
editions. While radio and television stations can now broadcast though
the Internet as well. This access to the web helps these media reach
audiences they had no chance to be exposed to before. But, in the
future, when better software will dramatically improve the ability to
listen to and/or watch electronic media, 'traditional' media will
become just part of the immense menu of the Internet.
So, here are some recommendations to minorities, minority rights
groups and minority media how to make best use of the new powerful
medium of the Internet to help promote the rights of these minorities
and eventually contribute to the development of multicultural
societies in the European states.
1. When reporting a human rights problem, stick to the facts. Do it in
such a way that independent cross-checking could confirm the veracity
of the story. Include 'journalistically' detailed information (date,
names of actors, place, exact quotation of crucial excerpts from a
statement, an indictment or a verdict). Add, when available,
independent confirmation (by a local reporter, some state agent,
etc.). If not an isolated incident, briefly summarize related
background. Avoid emotional, ideological or otherwise loaded language.
If the local incident appears to be in contrast with the prevailing
trend, do mention it (it will make the authorities less defensive in
their answer). If you want to make it an action alert, provide names,
titles and addresses and/or faxes and/or e-mails of those to whom
complaints need be sent. Finally, if useful background is available in
the Internet provide the full (not just the main page) address.
2. Have a list of e-mail addresses ready to which you will distribute
the statement. Include all related listserves that could redistribute
and web sites that could post. Put a short but self-explanatory title
in the subject line. Try to discover servers that may offer you
possibilities of free access for your own listserve or make space
available for your own web pages. If you have the latter, make such
statements easily accessible with a 'what's new' page for recent
statements and a chronological and/or thematic subdivision and/or
index.
3. If you have your own web pages, try to post there only material
that is credible. In rare cases when something is important to make
available though not so credible or even polemic, post it with an
introductory note distancing yourself from the content. Background
historical and cultural material about your and other minorities is
very useful if it can meet an independent scholar's test of
objectivity. When referring to controversial historical events, always
include the other versions even if not favorable to the culturally
'authorized' one.
4. In your texts, if you want to be considered a bonafide minority
rights advocate, you must always 'side' with the international norms
with universal value, rather than with the usually parochial policy of
your 'kin state.' Sometimes this even means challenging the prevailing
national myths in the latter. For example, Turkish minorities in
Bulgaria, Greece and Macedonia must understand that their struggle is
closer to that of the Kurds in Turkey, as well as of the Bulgarians in
Macedonia, the Greeks in Albania and Turkey, and the Macedonians in
Albania, Bulgaria and Greece, rather than the oppressive policy of
Turkey towards its own minorities.
5. Minority media are urged to make their information available in web
sites. Modern software allows swift Internet adaptation of texts and
layouts prepared for broadcasting of printing. Many scholarly studies
of minorities have used past issues of minority newspapers as an
invaluable source of information, even when they had obvious
one-sidedness. Sometimes, minority media were the only ones reporting
minority-related events that majority media ignored deliberately or
out of lack of sources. Such references allowed researchers to help
trace related developments that have in some cases provided very
important insights to minority issues.
6. Since the Internet is not yet totally free, especially for large
web sites as the regional and the media ones, sponsors, including the
Council of Europe and the European Union, as well as their 'common
offspring' the Stability Pact, are urged to provide funding for such
projects. They should include the necessary training for inexperienced
minority activists or journalists to help them use software that has
become indeed very friendly to all users and no longer requires
computer experts. The Balkan Human Rights Web Pages have indeed been
developed by three consecutive web site managers who had no knowledge
of how such work was done before they started working on them,
following a rudimentary few-day training backed at the beginning by an
occasional outside advisor.
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