Rwanda: Genocide Recordings to Be Preserved Online
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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
18 July 2008
Posted to the web 18 July 2008
Kigali
A new project in the U.S. wants to collect all forms of recorded material on the 1994 Tutsi Genocide and keep it on the internet to preserve it from the 'danger of disappearing', its planners say.
A $1.2 million grant from the Bridgeway Foundation will help the University of Texas library system collect and preserve digital records of the Tutsi Genocide and other human rights conflicts around the world.
The university will use the money to add server space; create more powerful Web harvesting tools; and collect physical items including videotapes, DVDs and audio recordings, Mr. Fred Heath, vice provost for libraries at the University told The Texas Chronicle newspaper.
Information from and about activists in a totalitarian society are at especially high risk of disappearing, Mr. Heath said.
Initially, the University intended to focus on Web sites in Latin America. The Baywater Foundation suggested a broader approach and mentioned the Kigali Memorial Centre, built on the site of a mass grave in Rwanda. Some 250,000 victims are buried here, the newspaper reported.
Mr. Heath visited three weeks ago and was convinced that University of Texas had to broaden its plans.
"Interviews of (Rwandan) Holocaust survivors, records of mass exhumations, tapes of village court trials (on) acts of genocide ... they exist only on these mini DVDs," he said. "They exist in closets in the center. They're not backed up anywhere."
The ultimate goal, Davis said, is to prevent future atrocities.
"If we can somehow capture and preserve this information, people will be able to access it," she said. "People could say, 'There's the same trend that occurred before the Rwandan genocide.' ... We hope it will be a way that people can find peace."
But the first step is simply to save the records. "We have this opportunity to visit those sites, snatch the material off of them, and they will become part of the historical record," Heath said. "It's still up to the historians to assess them and put them in their place, but at least the records will be there."
The story of the fight for human rights is told, in part, through digital records in danger of disappearing.
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"The Web world is probably 1,000 times larger than the print world," Heath said. "It's more fragile. Things come and go."
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