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Organizing a public information space about the crimes of a totalitarian regime Ioan Rosca, PhD. in educational technology telecommunication, computer, information and instructional systems engineer researcher and conceptual architect at LICEF, Teleuniversity, Montréal [email protected] INSCIT’2006, Merida, 26 october 2006

Organizing a public information space about the crimes of a totalitarian regime Ioan Rosca, PhD. in educational technology telecommunication, computer,

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Page 1: Organizing a public information space about the crimes of a totalitarian regime Ioan Rosca, PhD. in educational technology telecommunication, computer,

Organizing a public information space about the crimes of a totalitarian regime

Ioan Rosca, PhD. in educational technology telecommunication, computer, information and instructional systems engineer

researcher and conceptual architect at LICEF, Teleuniversity, Montréal

[email protected]

INSCIT’2006, Merida, 26 october 2006

Page 2: Organizing a public information space about the crimes of a totalitarian regime Ioan Rosca, PhD. in educational technology telecommunication, computer,

Summary

Introduction

• Context created by the fall of communism in Eastern Europe

• The CE position and the passage from words to facts

• Four project objectives:

Description

• Involved Romanian institutions and need for general interaction

• Similar contexts

• Current project situation

• Conceptual architecture for the next phase

• Contradictory conditions, provocative for IS

Conclusion

• Four cooperation tracks

Page 3: Organizing a public information space about the crimes of a totalitarian regime Ioan Rosca, PhD. in educational technology telecommunication, computer,

The context created after 1989• The fall of Eastern European totalitarian regimes has created a pressing need for organising the

collective memory- as a base for citizens' spiritual revival, society redressing and necessary juridical actions.

• Although in 1989, in Romania, a lot of victims, torturers and witnesses were still alive, the installed authorities have done almost nothing to unblock the justice. On the contrary, they locked the archives for 50 years, invoking "state interests", obliging the victims to die uncomforted and allowing to the culprits to prosper unhampered.

• Those who study the "Pitesti phenomenon" (the organisation, in prisons, of demented tortures, from which the victims could escape only by becoming butchers and accepting to torture fellow sufferers) and understand that Romania has been exposed, for 45 years, to various forms of this procedure of in-chain compromising, realise the difficulties confronting the "Trial"… The repugnant conspiracy that still paralyses Justice is completing- through silence- the monstrous acts accomplished for decades, under the eyes of a powerless or indolent Europe.

• The immense scale of the crime contributes to this sinister outcome, posing a difficult problem of ... informational management. Millions of victims, witnesses, torturers, accomplices, heroes, repressive acts and events to elucidate. Tens of kilometres of pursuit records, used by the former political police, on the verge of being (at last…) made available to the civil society. A network of National Archives managed rudimentary and malevolently, that hampers the correction of economical abuses (refusing the release of proof on properties confiscated from their rightful owners) to cover-up occult and corrupt selective retrocession machinations. Historians, exceeded by thousands of testimonials already published in books, journals and newspapers. Jurists not knowing up to what level of gravity the abuses and crimes should be amnestied, so that the remaining key culprits (left reasonably few) can be tried for their actions.

• As this moral and juridical gangrene is about to be integrated in Europe, starting with 2007, it would be the case that Romanians be helped in the adequate organisation of the informational spaces necessary to treat it.

Page 4: Organizing a public information space about the crimes of a totalitarian regime Ioan Rosca, PhD. in educational technology telecommunication, computer,

CE position: the passage from words to facts…

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe position• a first promising resolution in 1996: PACE Report 1096 (Measures to

dismantle the heritage of former communist totalitarian systems)• the report advanced by Mr Göran Lindblad (on 25-01- 2006) PACE Report

10765 (Need for international condemnation of crimes of totalitarian communist regimes)

• the disappointing PACE Resolution No 1481 (2006) (Need for international condemnation of crimes of totalitarian communist regimes).

However, the document, admitting that "the fall of totalitarian communist regimes in central and eastern Europe has not been followed in all cases by an international investigation of the crimes committed by them“ and that "the awareness of history is one of the preconditions for avoiding similar crimes in the future“ will "hopefully encourage historians throughout the world to continue their research aimed at the determination and objective verification of what took place“.

So, what next?

Page 5: Organizing a public information space about the crimes of a totalitarian regime Ioan Rosca, PhD. in educational technology telecommunication, computer,

Project position

Hungary www.rev.hu/index_en.htmlPoland www.ipn.gov.pl/index_eng.html

Bulgaria www.geocities.com/decommunization/English/Main-eng.htmRussia psi.ece.jhu.edu/~kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/buk.html

Czech www.mvcr.cz/policie/udv/english/pripady/index.htmlGermany www.bstu.bund.de/nn_710332/EN/The__Law

Estonia www.historycommission.ee/

Armenians www.armenian-genocide.orgCambodians www.yale.edu/cgp/databases.html

Jews http://www.yadvashem.org/ www.jewishgen.org/databases/HolocaustGeneral www.preventgenocide.org/punish/ http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide.htm

helping these organizations:founds, infrastructure,advices

historical, political, social, juridical,anthropological joint research (translation)

information science joint research

methodology and epistemologyresearch

archives(CNSAS)

commissions(IICC etc)

conferencesforums

institutes(INSTetc)

reviews andnewspapers

actions(juridical, etc)

TV and radioprograms

books(series)

associations(AFDPR etc)

other dedicated sites

memorials(Sighet,etc)

analog spaces

SOMCRAC portalunderstanding effects of

totalitarism on human condition

organizing digital libraries to emancipate communities

applying action research andinterdisciplinary approaches

organizing collective memory

SOMCRAC portal•ontology of state made terror•bibliographic records database•document public library •forums for analyze and action•connecting and matching tools

Page 6: Organizing a public information space about the crimes of a totalitarian regime Ioan Rosca, PhD. in educational technology telecommunication, computer,

Current situation (at www.procesulcomunismului.com)

XML/relatmetadatarecords

inputforms

reference

lib

sitegenerator

asp editor

dynamicalsite

structure

program

pro

generate

localhtml

structure

adm

forumphp

backup

forummemory

observe,selectdecide,define, contact,answer

co

deploy

publichtmlsite

sitedeplorer

dialog

par

searchconsult

browser

html, pdfdocument

libraryscanner+

OCR

doc,html,pdfeditors

edit

gif,doc

scan

correctexport

ope

various information sources

mail and direct contact

email

local mail boxpaper docs

proposereact

Page 7: Organizing a public information space about the crimes of a totalitarian regime Ioan Rosca, PhD. in educational technology telecommunication, computer,

use

find/explore

contactconsult participate

D structure and behaviour

design

E gate interop

eng,pro

admin co

specs

managedefine

observedialogdecide

C1acentrallibrary C1b

archived emailsforums,chats

C1documents

publish

ope partlib

scancorrect

edit

exp

define

A semanticreferencedomains

B1 thematicmetadatarecords

URL ,ejournals

publishedtexts

and media

external emailsforums,chats

signal/index

external

C3activities

c3a site managed

C2persons

victimactivist expert witness

c2amembers

B2 forumconnectingmatching

commureact

dialogcoop

B3 mailuser

notes

Conceptual architecture

Page 8: Organizing a public information space about the crimes of a totalitarian regime Ioan Rosca, PhD. in educational technology telecommunication, computer,

Contradictory conditions provocative for IS

1. Organizing coherently and urgently… an enormous and disorganized information space

2. Greatest openness for consultation… combined with severe privacy, liability and secrecy restrictions

3. Large publishing participation… with great risks of malicious actions

4. Complex and stable semantic reference space for indexing documents… modifiable to express progressive problem understanding

5. Abstract (general) taxonomies… to retrieve particular items

6. Coherent management of documents… from very diverse sources and types ( papers, tv, chats, actions, etc)

7. Interconnecting cooperating documentation spaces …working in.intranet fortresses of many institutions