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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
INSCIT’2006, Merida, 26 october 2006
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
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.
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?
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
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
local mail boxpaper docs
proposereact
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
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