WITNESS partnered with Memorial in the mid 2000s to co-produce advocacy videos about forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings, and torture committed by the Russian military during the Chechen wars. The videos, “Missing Lives: Disappearances and Impunity in the North Caucasus” and “Crying Sun: The Impact of War in the Mountain of Chechnya,” centered the voices of communities directly impacted by so-called “counter terrorism operations,” and called for accountability.  

Based on our experience with Memorial and many other groups over the past 30 years, we know that frontline witnesses are navigating immense risks as they capture and share video documentation of potential human rights violations and war crimes. 

Building on learnings from these collaborative experiences, we evolved our training model to provide resources and best practices to millions of people. For example, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, we tailored and began distributing resources for witnessing war in multiple languages. And we continue to support documentation efforts during the protracted conflict. 

Memorial’s decades-long efforts to document abuses by the government against its people led to it being disbanded by the Putin regime last year. But its legacy lives on. And the voices of its leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov and Natalia Estemirova, head of Memorial’s Chechnya office who was murdered in 2009, will not be silenced. 

We thank Memorial for its lasting contribution to the global movement championing video for human rights. 

The Russian activist group LGBT Guide asked WITNESS’ Human Rights Channel (HRC) to review the video, which revealed the victim’s identity. In response, WITNESS contacted the uploader—an LGBT activist who wanted to spread awareness about homophobic violence in Russia—and encouraged him to use YouTube’s Face Blur function to prevent further re-victimization. Our HRC Curator, Madeleine Bair, wrote a blog post about the importance of visual anonymity and reached out to media outlets that had embedded the original video on their site. After WITNESS staff contacted several media outlets, Gawker Media and the Huffington Post subsequently replaced the videos they had published with the newly anonymized version, which concealed the victim’s identity. Building off of this momentum, PBS’ MediaShift reposted the blog, and HuffPo Live aired a segment that included Madeleine as an on-air expert speaking about the importance of visual anonymity.

With video-enabled mobile phones now in the hands of billions, and online video exposing everything from chemical weapons use in Syria to LGBT abuse in Russia and police brutality in Illinois, the need for tools, strategies and policies to enable the effective and safe use of citizen video has never been greater. While our outreach was too late to make a difference for this teenage boy, his story illustrates the unprecedented opportunities and challenges that video technology presents—and WITNESS’ efforts to confront those challenges with proactive solutions. WITNESS and the HRC are internationally trusted leaders. We instigated and influenced the implementation of YouTube’s Face Blur function in 2012, highlighting the importance—and far-reaching impact—of working with technology companies to make products safer for human rights activists.