CORONATION Film Interview & PANEL: DEFENDING THE TRUTH IN THE PANDEMIC: Is Whistleblowing the Magic Wand?
00:00 - Introduction by Tatiana Bazzichelli & Lieke Ploeger
08:45 - Roberto Perez Rocha
11:03 - Coronation Trailer
12:45 - Ai Weiwei & Jess Search
36:45 - María de los Ángeles Estrada
52:47 - Thuli Madonsela
1:04:53 - Stefano Fusco
1:19:53 - Discussion, Q&A
Behind the Mask - Whistleblowing During the Pandemic
March 18-20 · 2021
CORONATION Film Interview
Conversation with Ai Weiwei (Artist & Activist, CN) and Jess Search (Chief Executive of Doc Society, UK). Introduced by Roberto Perez-Rocha (Director for the International Anti-Corruption Conference Series at Transparency International, MEX/DE).
Coronation examines the political spectre of Chinese state control from the first to the last day of the Wuhan lockdown. The film takes us into the heart of these temporary hospitals and ICU wards, documenting the entire process of diagnosis and treatment. Patients and their families are interviewed, reflecting their thinking about the pandemic and expressing anger and confusion over the state’s callous restriction of their liberties. The footage was made by different film-crews across China, some paid, some volunteers and directed remotely from UK by AI Weiwei.
PANEL:
Thuli Madonsela (Professor, Stellenbosch University, Former Public Protector of South Africa, ZA), María de los Ángeles Estrada (Executive Director of the Transparency and Anti-corruption Initiative, MX), Stefano Fusco (Co-founder, Noi Denunceremo / We Denounce - Truth and Justice Committee for Covid-19 Victims, IT). Moderated by Roberto Perez-Rocha (Director for the International Anti-Corruption Conference Series at Transparency International, MEX/DE).
Whistleblowing, or the act of exposing wrongdoing has different legal, political, and social connotations depending on where you are.
Countries around the world have been forced to handle the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in different ways. In most cases their pre-existing democratic and human rights practices have guided their responses. They have all applied extraordinary measures that have curbed freedom of movement, reunion and in many cases freedom of speech and access to information. In this context, the misuse of public funds, concentration of power, discretional decision making, censorship and barriers for social oversight, have even become rampant. These are not merely outcomes of the emergency conditions but manifestations of how deeply corrupt a system is.
The concept of whistleblowing is primarily a western one. But it’s not the same across countries and regions. The legal, cultural and even linguistic differences around this term are vast. Those who expose sensitive information, including whistleblowers, activists and independent journalists have been confronted, in varying degrees, by state coercion and social tensions and therefore have been forced to exercise different degrees of caution, and apply strategies to protect themselves.
This session features social actors and experts from 3 countries from the Americas, Europe and Africa who will debate how defending the truth can be, as it often is, a dangerous activity and how different are the notions around exposing the truth and holding the powerful to account. The session will reflect on the challenges faced when exposing the truth and whether whistleblowing could be understood as a one size fit all solution.
23rd Event of the Disruption Network Lab.
Read more: www.disruptionlab.org/behind-the-mask
Twitter: @disruptberlin
Facebook: /disruptionlab
Credits:
Disruption Network Lab Berlin - www.disruptionlab.org
Live stream: Boiling Head
Graphic: Jonas Frankki
CC Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
