A Timely Summit

Human Rights and Sovereignty in the Spotlight in Hong Kong

The University of Toronto Faculty of Law’s Digital Verification Corps (DVC) working group arrived in Hong Kong on the cusp of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre of 1989. In addition to being a host city for the University of Hong Kong’s DVC chapter, Hong Kong has a storied history of human rights advocacy. This rich tradition was on display on a number of occasions, including a historic vigil commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre just a few days into the summit, which drew tens of thousands of Hong Kong citizens. Some estimates reported that nearly 200,000 people took to the streets. Only days later, Hong Kong’s citizens took to the streets again to protest a controversial government extradition bill, which would allow for mainland China’s courts to have jurisdiction over Hong Kong residents and Hong Kong visitors. 

The protests, which began only a day after the DVC Toronto team left Hong Kong, continue in the city. Protestor estimates range from the hundreds of thousands, to two million. These protestors were largely peaceful in nature, with protestors carrying signs reading slogans like “Free Hong Kong.” 

We had the chance to see some of these signs with our own eyes at the Tiananmen vigil. The solemn atmosphere leading up to the Tiananmen vigil was a reminder how past events continue to inform the human rights landscape in Hong Kong, China, and Asia more broadly, to this day.

Hong Kong’s relationship with China was also the subject of many informal conversations amongst the summit’s participants. We were reminded of the influence of the three-decades old massacre during the summit. We learned that the phrase “Tiananmen Square,” and associated images, continue to be aggressively censored with the help of machine learning and image recognition software. The mainland’s most sustained response to the protests has been a decidedly digital one: the Chinese government has orchestrated a misinformation campaign using social media about the protests in response. 

Summit Overview

The third annual DVC summit centered heavily around themes of technology and online media as the nexus for issues concerning censorship and human rights abuses. Each participating university chapter presented  one or more projects about their work in the past school year. They highlighted unique techniques or effective organizational strategies that were implemented. 

Like past DVC summits, this summit included presentations from renowned human rights experts, who document the use of open source technologies and other digital tools in their human rights work. The global breadth of the DVC’s work was on display at the summit. The presentations reported on human rights and technology work across jurisdictions, geographical regions, and issue types. Among them, the Toronto DVC team in Hong Kong, including George Ghabrial, Aaqib Mahmood, Amit Singh, Sarah Bolourchian, and Milica Pavlovic, also presented the Toronto DVC’s work at the summit. 

Our presentation focused on one specific event: verifying tear gas and rubber bullet attacks on two hospitals by government armed forces following a predominantly peaceful protest in the Sudan. The University of Toronto’s DVC team worked collaboratively over two weeks to track the chronology and verify the location of this event. Through our collective efforts and using various open source technologies, including Google Earth and Google Maps, we had determined that this event spanned two different hospitals. Using stills of landmarks and physical features on the hospital structures, DVC team members corroborated this imagery to other photos and videos taken of these two separate hospitals. Once locations were verified, the team conducted research to determine whether these government forces could be held accountable for their actions under public international law. 

The summit opened with a presentation on the role of technology in two projects, one of which documented the crisis in Syria and the other which tracked abusive content towards women on Twitter. Both projects exemplified novel ways to incite accountability using digital tools. In the context of the Syrian crisis, Amnesty’s work in meticulously documenting and corroborating the number of civilian injuries and deaths resulting from the US-led Coalition’s offensives  prompted calls for further inquiry into the US’ role in these tragedies. Likewise, the Toxic Twitter report put pressure on Twitter to address policies around reporting and removing problematic content and comments.

In another timely discussion, Amnesty’s East Asia Regional Office discussed this theme of censorship in their presentation at the summit, providing an overview of the extent of social media censorship behind “The Great Firewall of China.” They discussed the creative ways that  people in China have pushed back. Popular examples include memes depicting the mythical “grass mud horse” creature (a euphemism for a similar sounding profanity), Peppa the Pig, Winnie the Pooh, and a range of others with numerous variations – all of which have acted as political commentary or stand-ins for banned content, until they themselves became subject to censorship filters.

The summit continued with presentations from other DVC university teams and human rights experts, including presentations from a Hong Kong-based organization disrupting modern day slavery practices, a remote sensing expert from Amnesty International, a New York-based accountability agency which teaches citizens to document human rights abuses, and a panel discussion with renown experts in the human rights field. 

Collaboration and Moving Forward at the IHRP’s DVC

At the summit, the various DVC chapters shared techniques and organizational tactics for successful verification, and also reported particularly challenging tasks and reflected on novel ways to overcome challenges. Another important collaborative topic was creating an accessible guide for laypersons on how to produce pictures and videos that were easily verifiable. If used effectively, easy-to-implement tips—like filming within sight of a landmark or enabling location services while filming—could make the DVC’s work significantly easier. It could also democratize the process of separating genuine online content from misinformation.

Looking to the future, participants reflected on expanding the DVC to new geographical regions, and coordinating a robust online presence where those not familiar with the group’s work could go for accessible information. The group also reflected on ways to preserve institutional memory as new members join and previous members depart the DVC.

At the University of Toronto chapter, the upcoming year will bring further collaboration with the other university groups, which will include launching a dedicated online presence for accessible information. We will also be reflecting on how to incorporate best practices showcased by other DVC teams in light of our own unique position as a human rights program at a law school. Finally, we drew helpful insights on managing the difficult emotional toll from viewing and verifying problematic content. Repeated exposure to violent and disturbing images and audio can result in vicarious trauma. From several excellent presentations and informal conversations on this topic with our peers from other institutions, we now feel better prepared as a chapter to deal with the challenges of interacting with such materials in the future.