European Institutions and Goal 16.
Every time I read about United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, I think about the Goal 16 and how it applies to European institutions. And what really gets me thinking, is the bit about ‘effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.’ One could compile a long list of examples of European governmental institutions’ lack of effectiveness, accountability and inclusivity. Sometimes this happens literally on a criminal level.
Two such criminal examples immediately spring to mind. First one is the racist murder of an internet café owner in Kassel in the German state of Hessen in 2006. Involvement of the German domestic intelligence agency in this murder is a very murky affair. The second example is drowning of as many as 600 people, when a fishing boat capsized on Mediterranean Sea in summer 2023. Here the Hellenic Coast Guard (HCG) is implicated. What links both cases is that government officials were somehow culpable. And in both cases government agencies were denying doing anything illegal, despite various evidence implying otherwise.
The Forensic Architecture.
There is something else that ties-up these two events. It is a multidisciplinary research group called Forensic Architecture, and the way science and digital technologies are used by them to try to get some accountability of the governments. Their practice mainly evolves around broadly understood violations of human rights; be it armed conflicts, police brutality, or environmental devastation.
Investigating state violence and human rights abuses is of course nothing new. But what makes Forensic Architecture’s work so unique is harnessing traditional and latest technologies and new digital tools. These are then used together with different scientific approaches and disciplines to carry out investigative projects. It is a layered amalgam of architectural, spatial and forensic analysis, open-source data, digital and real-life-resembling 1:1 modelling, immersive technologies, academic collaborations. And most importantly eye witness’ testimonies and situated interviews. In attempt to answer some uncomfortable questions about European governmental institutions and their conduct, all these techniques were used in reconstructing both the Kassel murder and the Pylos shipwreck.
This may sound a little on the technological side (and undeniably, it is), but seeing Forensic Architecture’s investigations and reports reveals remarkably broad and versatile practice. A practice that straddles various field and allows their humanitarian work to exist in many dimensions: forensics, law, human rights, digital technologies, architecture, and in some cases sound engineering, cartography, ballistics and art installations.
The NSU.
Sometimes it almost resembles a spy drama. Such is the case of the murder of Halit Yozgat in the German city of Kassel in spring 2006. Yozgat was shot and killed in his family internet café by members of the neo-Nazi terror group NSU (National Socialist Underground). NSU was active between 1999 and 2011, and responsible for bank robberies, bombings and at least 10 murders. Police investigation into the Kassel murder revealed that an employee of Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz (the State of Hessen Domestic Intelligence: regional equivalent of UK’s MI5) – Andreas Temme – was present at the shop when the shots were fired. Temme testified that he was surfing the internet and has not seen, not heard, nor smelled anything.
In 2016 Forensic Architecture was asked to work on recreating the Kassel crime scene in order to forensically verify if Temme tells the truth. Using extensive police records from the crime scene (these were leaked online in 2015), Forensic Architecture reconstructed the internet shop at the time of the murder. This was first done digitally as an immersive experience, and then 1:1 physical replica was created. Testing such factors as the sound of gun shots, the smell of the gun powder, and positioning of the body and the blood splatters, lead to conclusion that Temme’s testimony was most likely untruthful.
For a variety of reasons Temme was never prosecuted, and Forensic Architecture’s investigation and report could not be used in the court of justice. Nonetheless the investigation is an impressive dive into how science, forensics and modern technologies can be harnessed to reveal violations of human rights at the hands of the government. Forensic Architecture’s findings are part of so called NSU Complex: an umbrella term for collusion, complacency and sloppiness of various German state agencies, as well as loose and organised neo-Nazi sympathies and structural racism in German society.
Apart of its forensic and legal dimension, the Forensic Architecture’s findings into Yozgat’s murder also exist in the media and information spheres as journalistic investigations, a documentary film, a dramatized TV mini series, an art installation, and a theater play. From information and communication point of view, this is a remarkably wide spectrum of exposure. Especially considering that initially the reconstruction sounds like a geeky technical and academic exercise. It is important to mention that there are still many unanswered questions regarding NSU’s crimes and how much various officials of the German state knew about it while the terror group was active for over a decade.
The Pylos Shipwreck.
Much more recent case involving Forensic Architecture is the sinking of Adriana (also known as the Pylos Shipwreck) in June 2023. The Adriana was heading from Libya to Italy with an unknown number of migrants aboard (estimates are of at least 750), hoping to claim asylum once reaching the shores of EU. After sending a distress signal and encountering a Hellenic Coast Guard’s (HCG) boat, the Adriana capsized and sank. Only 104 of her passengers were rescued. The survivors testified that the HCG boat attempting to tow Adriana out of the Greek territorial waters. One of the unsuccessful towing attempts supposedly caused the vessel to capsize. Although the Greek authorities strongly denied the accusations, the existing records (logbooks, satellite records, official testimonies of the Coast Guard boat’s crew) strongly contradict that.
Forensic Architecture’s work in the Pylos Shipwreck case is a digital reconstruction of Adriana and her trajectory, done by creating an interactive cartographic platform allowing to follow the tragedy as it unfolded minute by minute. Also situated testimonies of the survivors were used to digitally create an interactive simulation of the capsizing. This is a very comprehensive undertaking, which combines interviews with witnesses, records of distress signals, the European Space Agency maritime traffic data and satellite data, as well as videos and photographs taken by the HCG, the Frontex, and a commercial ship present in the area. All this was then compared with HCG’s vessels tracking path data, and the officially recorded logs and testimonies from the HCG vessel that came in contact with the Adriana.
The Silver Bullet?
The Adriana tragedy happened only few months ago and it is yet to be seen how it will affects the attitudes towards migration and asylum in Europe. At present, there is an ongoing Greek government’s internal investigation into the tragedy. On top of that the EU Ombudsman started their own inquiry into the role of Frontex in the SAR (Search and Rescue) activities. There is also a lawsuit against Greek authorities filed by the survivors at the Naval Court of Piraeus.
It is to be seen what role (if any) the high-tech investigation by Forensic Architecture will have in the investigations and court cases. Needless to say, it is open to speculation if rigorously academic, highly technical, and facts-based approach of such investigations is an effective tool for social change. I think it would be naïve to think of immersive reconstructions and situated testimonies as a silver bullet solution that will quickly put the end to state violence and make the truth prevail.
As we live in the era of alternative facts, politically biased algorithms, and social media rife with misinformation, there are serious questions to be asked about the place of factual rigour in the context of human rights violations. Some of those questions are what is the truth, the role of global information environments in influencing politics and public opinion, and the ethical challenges in investigating human rights in the digital world.
I will try to shed some light on those questions in my next post.
UPDATE 22 October 2023: Forensic Architecture is now involved in reconstructing of the bombing of al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City on 17 October 2023.