I'm based in London, UK, where I run a small digital media and human rights consultancy, Macroscope.
For the last three years I worked for WITNESS in New York, where I ran the Hub, a video-sharing website focused on human rights. Prior to that I worked in the field of media development for six years, on projects and strategies supporting local media in developing countries (particularly in Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean).
Latest posts by Sameer Padania from September, 2006
Tunisia: Opening prisons to the world
At this site, I’m trying to show videos that show or speak about human rights abuses, and – as in the Tunisian video above – the impact of human rights abuses on ordinary people. I don’t speak Arabic, so how do I know what this video’s about? It's thanks to...
Eastern Europe: Video documents homophobia on the rise
The latest twist in the long-running saga of anti-gay violence and state oppression took place yesterday in Moscow, as an appeals court upheld the earlier lower court ruling to ban Moscow's Gay Pride March in May 2006. The gay rights activists who brought the case will now attempt to challenge...
China: Government's video-censorship foiled
When a young teacher is found dead outside her apartment building in Ruian, the police report concludes suicide, but her family and students suspect a cover-up. Over a thousand people take to the streets in protest, and are met with police violence. Protestors film the clashes on their cellphones, and...
Malaysia: Cellphone video captures police excess
When the Malaysian police started accepting crime reports sent in by members of the public from their cellphones, little did they expect that their own misdemeanours would one day be caught in the frame. Malaysians have had to put up with police corruption and misconduct as a part of everyday...
