Security workshop (English)
Security Workgroup
12/09/2003: Workgroup D - French Chairperson:
Michel Forst Rapporteuse:
Delphine Roch
Workgroup D is comprised of French-speaking black African defenders from West & Central Africa, apart from Pierre Espérance, from Haiti.
1) Communication problems (telephone/fax/email):
Electronic Communications:
Internet Café Surveillance: the participants are known by the authorities in their countries and are generally under surveillance. As public places, the authorities have free reign in Internet cafés to examine the sites that users have accessed during the day, and read any emails they would have sent during the day (for example, in Mauritania). Elsewhere, the owner may prevent a defender from printing emails he has read during the day in his Cyber café for fear that it would cause problems with the government.
Email accounts: those defenders present confirm that their email accounts have often been blocked, sometimes up to several weeks: they are unable to access their email accounts and cannot get access to their messages. Some have seen their email accounts saturated with tens even hundreds of emails, or even infected by viruses sent by government agents or infected on the Internet.
Recommendations:
1) Obtain several email addresses, and change them regularly; one example from a participant from Democratic Republic of the Congo gave us 4 addresses for her organisation and 3 personal email addresses.
2) Training for participants in using the Internet and anti-virus precautions. Frontline will send virus alerts as they become available, to a list of regional representatives tasked with forwarding the information to defenders in their region (network system).
3) Prior to the next meeting, participants recommend that Frontline organise a practical workshop of small groups covering electronic surveillance of communications, with simple and practical advice that participants can pass on to other Human Rights Defender NGOs on return to their countries (based on the tools and manuals provided).
Phone Tapping:
Landline telephone / fax: the majority of participants indicate that their home and office telephones as well as faxes have been tapped by government organisations. They would also like to know how to alert their fellow contacts at home and abroad of any difficulties or arrests.
Mobile phone: the majority of participants indicate that their mobile phone is tapped. This makes it all the more difficult to use the mobile phone to pass on important information or arrange meetings.
A participant from the DRC explains that to avoid phone tapping she has decided not to use her mobile phone when passing on highly confidential information but instead use a public phone booth for such communication. Unfortunately she has realised that most of the people on the other end of the line are also being tapped (she cites the example in the Monuc Human Rights section)
Recommendations:
Several participants have provided the following tips they have found useful in avoiding mobile phone tapping:
1) Always have a back up number that you only give to a small number people and that is only to be used by the defender in serious cases, or where he/she has been arrested (method used by Radhia Nasaroui). Several defenders have mobile phones that they have been advised not to use. It is important to have a back up mobile phone with a secret number, never to be used for daily communications but only in case of danger. (Recommended by Michel Forst). The participant from Burundi informed us she had 3 numbers, each one used for a specific purpose previously defined with colleagues. Of course, all colleagues do not know all the numbers.
2) Regularly change the SIM card for your mobile phone, this way you will also change number. After making one or more important calls, you change your SIM card, making it harder for the authorities to tap your phone.
2) Problems protecting HRDs who are in danger:
Recommendations:
1)In certain high-risk countries, Human Rights Defenders NGOs could with the help of Frontline create a database containing up to date information on threats to defenders. In DRC, given the quantity of information, we could set up several regional databases, kept up to date by specific contacts in each region. With the help of these regularly updated databases, Frontline along with other international organisations would be able to react more rapidly to attacks on Human Rights Defenders in that country.
2)Set up or reinforce a regional defenders’ protection alert system between Human Rights Defenders NGOs. Golden Misabiko (DRC) who had to leave the Congo for security reasons had benefited from the protection offered by the Human Rights Defenders of the Afronet network in Zambia. Another participant from the East of DRC has advised that a defender in danger in Uvira should be able to flee to Burundi with the logistical aid of a regional protection network of Human Rights Defenders based around the Great Lakes area. He would be secured in a safe place in Bujumbura, with the support of the HRDs based in Burundi. Frontline could assist in setting up or supporting these regional networks, taking into account the initiatives already in place (cf similar work already underway by AI in Africa).