June 6th, 2007
Sat photos help human rights work in Darfur
In an unusual effort to publicize human-rights violations, Amnesty International is launching a new website that uses high-resolution satellite cameras to post images of threatened villages in the Darfur region of Sudanreports the Associated Press.
“We’re hoping that by shining a light that we will deter the abuse from ever happening,” said Ariela Blatter, director of the Crisis Prevention and Response Center for Amnesty International USA.
Photographing on the ground can be very risky, as the region has been plagued by violence since 2003, when ethnic African rebels and the pro-government janjaweed militia began fighting.
But advances in satellite photography have made it possible to get excellent close-ups.
The quality of the pictures is “very, very good,” said Lars Bromley of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an international nonprofit group that publishes the journal Science and provided technical assistance for the project. “We can see cows. We can see vehicles. We can certainly see houses and fences and other structures.”
The images received are usually posted in a day or so, allowing analysts a more accurate determination on whether a village has been attacked and the severity of the assault.
“This is the Web camera moved to outer space, basically,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “It’s an absolutely logical, expected extension of the stuff that’s been going on in the Internet.”
