Guinea-Conakry: standing up to a power-hungry President [via GV/WITNESS]

[Originally published here as part of WITNESS’s collaboration with Global Voices Online - this post was written by Gavin Simpson]

The technological revolution that enables ordinary citizens to capture and upload video footage on the web has been slow to take root in West Africa. Up to now we haven’t featured any video content from this part of the world on the Human Rights Video Hub Pilot. So this week we’re bringing you a rare clip that has made it online from Guinea, the francophone nation whose capital Conakry has been in a state of siege in recent weeks, and where it appears that the struggle continues towards self-rule and sustainable peace:

The clip shows the Guinean Army firing indiscriminately on a crowd of civilians who were demonstrating their growing discontent with the increasingly autocratic ways of President Lansana Conté. Such eye-witness video footage is especially valuable because voices from the Guinean grassroots are difficult to find in the blogosphere. Most of the online commentary about Guinea in crisis has come from international news agencies and bloggers from elsewhere in Africa.

Forced evictions in Guatemala: whose land is it anyway? [via GV/WITNESS]

[Originally published here as part of WITNESS’s collaboration with Global Voices Online - this post was written by Gavin Simpson]

Land ownership and occupation are complex and highly contentious issues in many parts of Latin America, and the tropical, resource-rich plains of northeastern Guatemala are no exception. On the one hand, legal title to land is generally brokered in formal processes between governments and private buyers. On the other hand, indigenous peoples who have lived in an area for several generations see themselves as having a traditional or ancestral entitlement to remain there. The following video, released by the pressure group Rights Action, shows how a Canadian mining company recently called in state prosecutors and armed law enforcement officers to move indigenous peoples off land it had bought from the Guatemalan government:

The villagers being forcibly removed here are indigenous Mayan Q’eqchi’ peoples, who claim this territory near Lake Izabal as part of their ancestral lands. They want to carry out arable farming, as their forefathers had done peacefully on these plantations until the 1960s. The indigenous perspective on mining is generally negative, fearing harm to the environment and destruction of the local culture and communities.

However, beneath these same lands lie rich seams of nickel, a metal whose scarcity on the world market has this week caused its value to reach a record high…