Direct Eyewitness Research Articles

Handling Child Victims of Incestuous Sexual Violence by The PPA Unit (A Case Study of Sexual Violence by Biological Fathers at the North Jakarta Metro Police)

The process of handling cases of incestuous sexual violence against children by the Child and Woman Protection Unit (PPA) of the Criminal Investigation Unit of the North Jakarta Metro Police Department begins with the receipt of reports from victims. Investigators provide initial services, including counseling and preliminary assessments. Legal psychology is crucial in understanding victims and compiling strong reports. Investigators use cognitive interview methods and various interviewing techniques. Victim support involves multiple parties, and inter-agency cooperation and coordination are essential to provide optimal protection and recovery for victims. Evaluating the competence of investigators in the PPA Unit of the North Jakarta Metro Police Department based on indicators set by Spencer and Spencer. This evaluation shows that investigators have adequate abilities to handle cases of child sexual violence, including incest. Motivation, physical characteristics, self-concept, knowledge, and skills of investigators are key in handling these sensitive cases. Identifying several challenges in the investigation process of child rape faced by the PPA Unit of the North Jakarta Metro Police Department. These challenges include difficulty in obtaining statements from victims, lack of direct eyewitnesses, and delays in the forensic examination process. However, the PPA Unit of the North Jakarta Metro Police Department ensures that the investigation process is carried out in accordance with applicable legal procedures, considering steps such as notifying the Prosecutor's Office, examining witnesses, preparing reports, conducting investigations, holding case hearings, and using coercion to apprehend suspects.

Мемуарний твір «Deux années en Ukraine (1917–1919)» Шарля Дюброя

In modern historical science, more and more attention is paid to the study of sources of personal origin, in particular memoirs, memories, notes, etc. Memoirs, which were created during historical events, more accurately convey the character and essence of that period. Therefore, now there is an increase in the attention of scientists to the study of social and cultural spheres of society's life in various historical periods, including during the First World War, through the study of memoir sources of foreign political and public figures. Foreign authors paid a lot of attention to the issues of Ukrainian statehood, socio-political and socio-economic problems. It has been determined that one of the vivid examples of this genre is the memoirs of French teacher and public figure Charles Dubreuil «Deux années en Ukraine (1917–1919)», who spent two years in Ukraine and was a direct eyewitness of military and socio-political events that took place in Ukraine. It has been noted that Charles Dubreuil's memoirs, which are devoted to the history of Ukraine in the period 1917–1919, are historically valuable both for the study of national history and for the analysis of the foreign vision of Ukraine as an independent state. In his work, the author not only provided his own observations and memories, but also thoroughly researched all spheres of the life of Ukrainian society: the political situation in the state, the situation and prospects of the Ukrainian economy, culture. He also paid attention to the historiography of the history of Ukraine, that distinguishes his work from among other memoir sources of a similar subject. Therefore, the translation of this work into Ukrainian is very relevant today. The translation of the 1st chapter of Charles Dubreuil's memoirs is presented in the article.

“Прийшли рускі”: пам’ять про радянську владу 1939-1941 років у біографічних наративах найстаршого покоління жителів Західної України

The oral history of Ukraine in the 1930s and 1940s is an important independent body of sources for the study of this period. An encumbered story about one’s life or specific historical events best conveys experience, the world of ideas and perceptions, and the individual vision of direct eyewitnesses of past events. Pre-planned methods of the interview process, experienced interviewers, a selection of narrators, a sufficient number of recordings with the “saturation effect” are the keys to the success of the oral history project. The article analyzes the oral biographical narratives of the oldest generation of Western Ukraine residents about the Soviet government in 1939‒1941, highlights the main content lines of stories and dominant images of the first Soviet occupation, the transformation of moods. The empirical basis of the research are interviews recorded as part of the project “Social Anthropology of Filling the Void: Poland and Ukraine after World War II” and processed by the author for their publication by the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv. The interviews were recorded by an interdisciplinary group of Polish-Ukrainian female researchers in 2017‒2019 with residents of villages and towns of Ternopil, Lviv, and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts born in the 1920s‒1930s. The stories are biographical and pertain to the whole life interviewees, with a special focus made on the 1930s‒1940s and World War II. The oldest participants were born in 1923 and the youngest were born in the late 1930s. Their stories are biographies of average native Halychyna residents, who shared their life experience for the first time and, consequently, shared what in their opinion was important to remember, as no recorded memory will be left when they pass away. The narration of the “big” story is made of a palette of “small” reactions to events, it is the inner world of a person – their worries and experiences, successes, hopes, and expectations. The images of Soviet authorities and the Soviet people in the memories of children are not holistic and meaningful, but are connected with the outer world – home and parents, close family and friends, the street and acquaintancies, neighbors, school, religious traditions and the church. Children’s memories recorded not so much everyday routine, but crucial and traumatic, strong emotional experience, which was filled with the years of the first Soviet regime in the region; their stories are replete with numerous unique case stories that may not have reached or come into view of adults. After having met the Red Army in September 1939, the hopes placed on the Soviet government by the adult population vanished almost immediately. People, then children, explained the first disappointments with the brutality of the Red Army: accidental or deliberate executions of innocent people, repressions in autumn 1939. For Galician peasants and small-town residents the image of the Soviets in 1939‒1941 is a radically changed world of their childhood with a fairy-tale palace and a local landowner with his family; depending on the social status of the family, the allotted land and the joy of harvesting their own field; inhuman deportations of Polish neighbors in the frosty winter of 1940. The primary “own” grief was the emotional culmination of life stories from the period of the first Soviet occupation: mostly in June 1941 they lost their loved ones due to the last, fourth, wave of deportations or executions in prisons during the retreat of the Soviets. In the memoirs of Galician villagers, unlike to the memoirs of the inhabitants of the cities, there are almost no mentions of the reaction of Poles and Jews to the arrival of the Red Army in September 1939.

The Terror-Famine Trauma Through the Narrative of Novella "Holodomor" by Yevhen Hutsalo

One of the tasks of modern humanities, in particular Ukrainian one, is textualization of trauma as a memory that comes to life in “narratives of national identity”, since all the traumatic experience of previous generations, reflected on the mental map of Ukrainians, still remains not fully textualized, the whole situation is exacerbated by a new genocide, unleashed by Muscovy (Russia) against Ukraine. This article is devoted to the analysis of the novella “Holodomor” by Yevhen Hutsalo as a narrative of the collective trauma of the Holodomor, a terrible crime of the Moscow-Bolshevik dictatorship. The "trauma studies" methodology helps to research the narrative strategy, temporal-spacial modeling, ideological and literary sense of macro- and micro-images.
 The work of Ye. Hutsalo was not written not by a direct eyewitness, yet it shows to way future generations inherit traumatic experience. The story's narrative focuses on the adherence to the historical and literary truths regarding the terrible "experiment" of the Moscow executioners and it is emphasized at the chronotope modeling level: " "tightness" of space horizontally - openness vertically; an exit from this locus of suffering is only through the grave. The author depicts the continent of the painful death of Ukrainian peasants, their struggle for life and for the salvation of their souls, the loss (or presence) of faith in the moral values that have been structuring their lives (the theocentric vertical) and all of that becomes a target of ruthless Moscow authorities who eagerly destroy everything, using food as a weapon.

Natural Disaster on Twitter: Role of Feature Extraction Method of Word2Vec and Lexicon Based for Determining Direct Eyewitness

Researchers have collected Twitter data to study a wide range of topics, one of which is a natural disaster. A social network sensor was developed in existing research to filter natural disaster information from direct eyewitnesses, none eyewitnesses, and non-natural disaster information. It can be used as a tool for early warning or monitoring when natural disasters occur. The main component of the social network sensor is the text tweet classification. Similar to text classification research in general, the challenge is the feature extraction method to convert Twitter text into structured data. The strategy commonly used is vector space representation. However, it has the potential to produce high dimension data. This research focuses on the feature extraction method to resolve high dimension data issues. We propose a hybrid approach of word2vec-based and lexicon-based feature extraction to produce new features. The Experiment result shows that the proposed method has fewer features and improves classification performance with an average AUC value of 0.84, and the number of features is 150. The value is obtained by using only the word2vec-based method. In the end, this research shows that lexicon-based did not influence the improvement in the performance of social network sensor predictions in natural disasters.
 HIGHLIGHTS
 
 Implementation of text classification is generally only used to perform sentiment analysis, it is still rare to use it to perform text classification for use in determining direct eyewitnesses in cases of natural disasters
 One of the common problems in text mining research is the extracted features from the vector space representation method generate high dimension data
 A hybrid approach of word2vec-based and lexicon-based feature extraction experiment was conducted in order to find a method that can generate new features with low dimensions and also improve the classification performance
 
 GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Introduction

Introduction

Skin and heart histopathology in fatal electrocution with otherwise inconclusive autopsyfindings: A case series

The macroscopic evidence of low voltage electrocution in the skin is seen in the form of a crater with raised areolar edges and a surrounding pale area. This typical picture ofskin is mostly minimal or altogether absent in many cases of electrocution. The issue gets complicated in the absence of any eye witnesses or circumstantial evidences. Under such a scenario, it is advisable to do a histopathological examination of the suspected skin wounds. Since cardiac arrest is the most common mechanism of death following electrocution, heart histopathology may also yield vital evidence. We report three cases of electrocution. In one case, there were eye witnesses to the electrocution incident. In the second case the body was recovered from a swimming pool with no direct eye witness. In the third case the victim suddenly collapsed while welding. All the three cases were received dead in our hospital with inconclusive skin findings during autopsy examination.The histopathological examination of heart along with the skin wounds provides the vital evidence in favor of electrocution. Through these case reports we stress the importance of histopathologically examining the skin and heart in alleged cases of electrocution with inconclusive autopsy findings.

A Reverse Dynamical Investigation of the Catastrophic Wood-Snow Avalanche of 18 January 2017 at Rigopiano, Gran Sasso National Park, Italy

On 18 January 2017 a catastrophic avalanche destroyed the Rigopiano Gran Sasso Resort & Wellness (Rigopiano Hotel) in the Gran Sasso National Park in Italy, with 40 people trapped and a death toll of 29. This article describes the location of the disaster and the general meteorological scenario, with field investigations to provide insight on the avalanche dynamics and its interaction with the hotel buildings. The data gathered in situ suggest that the avalanche was a fluidized dry snow avalanche, which entrained a sligthtly warmer snow cover along the path and reached extremely long runout distances with braking effect from mountain forests. The avalanche that reached the Rigopiano area was a “wood-snow” avalanche—a mixture of snow and uprooted and crushed trees, rocks, and other debris. There were no direct eyewitnesses at the event, and a quick post-event survey used a numerical model to analyze the dynamics of the event to estimate the pressure, velocity, and direction of the natural flow and the causes for the destruction of the hotel. Considering the magnitude and the damage caused by the event, the avalanche was at a high to very high intensity scale.

Трабзон и Самсун в период национальной борьбы в Турции за освобождение и независимость в путевых дневниках М. В. Фрунзе и Е. Е. Лансере (1921–1922 гг.)

The article strives to restore historical impression of the Turkish cities Trabzon and Samson located on the Anatolian littoral of the Black Sea and episodes of their daily life during the period of National Struggle for liberation and independence under the leadership of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha on the base of Mikhail Frunze’s travel diary “A Trip to Angora” («Поездка в Ангору») and Silver Age artist Eugene Lansere’s travel diary “Summer in Angora” («Лето в Ангоре»). Frunze visited Trabzon and Samsun in November-December, 1921 during his journey to Ankara and once again in January, 1922 en route back to Russia from Ankara. Lansere also visited Trabzon and Samsun in June, 1922 during his journey to Ankara and repeatedly passed Trabzon in October of the same year, going home to Russia from Turkey. Both Frunze and Lansere became direct eye-witnesses of these cities’ everyday lives during the days of National Struggle in Turkey. Moreover, in their travel diaries they narrated valuable data regarding everyday life, roadsteads, economics, and their meetings with Turkish officials in those cities. Travel diaries of Mikhail Frunze and Eugene Lansere supplement each other in a very precise way, restoring impressions of Trabzon and Samsun. We provide here Eugene Lansere's sketches of the Persian camel caravan in Trabzon, his sketch of passengers and cargo transportation from steamships to the shore in Samsun, while a drawing of wooden barge can serve an additional visual source to Frunze’s records on Trabzon and Samsun.

Automatic identification of eyewitness messages on twitter during disasters

Social media platforms such as Twitter provide convenient ways to share and consume important information during disasters and emergencies. Information from bystanders and eyewitnesses can be useful for law enforcement agencies and humanitarian organizations to get firsthand and credible information about an ongoing situation to gain situational awareness among other potential uses. However, the identification of eyewitness reports on Twitter is a challenging task. This work investigates different types of sources on tweets related to eyewitnesses and classifies them into three types (i) direct eyewitnesses, (ii) indirect eyewitnesses, and (iii) vulnerable eyewitnesses. Moreover, we investigate various characteristics associated with each kind of eyewitness type. We observe that words related to perceptual senses (feeling, seeing, hearing) tend to be present in direct eyewitness messages, whereas emotions, thoughts, and prayers are more common in indirect witnesses. We use these characteristics and labeled data to train several machine learning classifiers. Our results performed on several real-world Twitter datasets reveal that textual features (bag-of-words) when combined with domain-expert features achieve better classification performance. Our approach contributes a successful example for combining crowdsourced and machine learning analysis, and increases our understanding and capability of identifying valuable eyewitness reports during disasters.

Taking the stand: defendant statements in court cases of alleged sexual abuse against infants, toddlers and preschoolers

ABSTRACTInvestigating and adjudicating allegations of child sexual abuse are challenging tasks. In the present study, we examined defendant statements concerning charges of sexual abuse against young children in Swedish district court cases (87 defendants, 140 child complainants, tried between January 2010 to December 2015). A main objective was to test predictive factors for admissions of guilt using inferential statistical analyses. Furthermore, using qualitative thematical analysis, we sought to identify common patterns in the defendants’ explanations to the allegation. Approximately one-third of the defendants (31%) pleaded guilty during trial. Admissions of guilt were more likely if the defendant was young, if the child was young at the onset of abuse, if the child and perpetrator had an extrafamilial relationship, and if the defendant possessed child pornography. A conflict with the person who made the report (e.g. a custody dispute), a testimony from the child, a direct eyewitness, or an informal disclosure recipient were significantly more common in cases of denials. In the qualitative analysis, a range of alternative explanations behind the abuse allegations were identified. Legal professionals and investigators may benefit from considering these alternative hypotheses during their investigative and judicial work.

Виникнення усташсько-домобранського руху та його програмні документи

article is devoted to the emergence of the Ustash-Domobran movement and analysis of its main program documents. author is at the same time considered it as a national Croatian movement and as the main military force of opponents of the Yugoslav regime led by Ante Pavelic. article deals specifically with the period of its activity in emigration. A comparative description of different versions of the date of the formation of the Ustashes was made: from the evidence of the direct eyewitnesses of the mentioned events (memories of Ante Pavelic) to modern concepts (Tomislav Jonich). author analyzes the program documents (the The Charter, The Ustash-domobran principles and many Prescriptions) in accordance with the rules of the national Croatian movement indicated in them. Thus, features of ideology, political views, attitude to the entire Croatian people and other nations, the state structure of the future Croatia, as well as the main features of military discipline in the Ustash army, the appearance of the members of the movement and their behavior relative to each other and enemies were revealed. In addition, the main idea is to prove the Croats’ right to own large areas in the Balkans. Looking through the documents, one can come to the conclusion that the Ustash movement from the very beginning was striving for the formation of an independent Croatian state. article covers the first stage of the struggle of the Ustashes on the way to its goal.

Rebuttal to: "NGO Justice: African Rights as Pseudo-Prosecutor of the Rwandan Genocide," by Luc Reydams

Rebuttal to:"NGO Justice: African Rights as Pseudo-Prosecutor of the Rwandan Genocide," by Luc Reydams Raymond Debelle (bio), Harald Hinkel (bio), Dominic Johnson (bio), Major (Retired) Philip Lancaster (bio), Linda Melvern (bio), Hans Romkema (bio), and Simone Schlindwein (bio) We, the above scholars, journalists, and human rights practitioners, are writing to complain in the strongest terms about the publication of "NGO Justice: African Rights as Pseudo-Prosecutor of the Rwandan Genocide,"1 and to express our concern at its unreasonable, ill-founded, and intemperate attack on the work of a small NGO in London, African Rights. The article's author, Luc Reydams, in calling into question the credibility of African Rights' ground-breaking work into the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, seeks to destroy the world-wide reputation of African Rights' richly-sourced book, Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance.2 Death, Despair and Defiance contains a comprehensive account of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi and was published at the end of September [End Page 447] 1994. It gave a voice to hundreds of survivors through detailed, graphic, and upsetting interviews. Its unbearable witness testimony on page after page reveals systematic slaughter and sadistic brutality. There is more in this book; for those trying to make sense of what occurred, it provides an invaluable account of the preparations and it names the principal killers. It also outlines strategies used by extremists to ensure mass participation in the slaughter. In the years after its publication the information the book contained was substantiated by others—time and again. Today the information in Death, Despair and Defiance is confirmed in reports and by commissions, in enquiries and newspaper reporting. It is confirmed in interviews with UN peacekeepers and the staff of international aid agencies, including direct eye-witnesses from the International Committee of the Red Cross, UNICEF, and the Commission on Human Rights. The information in the book is confirmed in reports from Human Rights Watch (HRW), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), diplomats, and journalists. In his article, "NGO Justice," Reydams casts serious doubt on the veracity of Death, Despair and Defiance and smears its authors. We consider such an approach to be unworthy of publication. 1 Luc Reydams alleges that African Rights (AR) helped to create a myth which he describes as the "genocide-as-conspiracy" narrative. In casting doubt on whether or not the genocide was planned, the author seems to think the killing was somehow spontaneous. He seems unaware of how the crime of genocide requires careful planning and worse, he fails to mention that there are numerous sources of indisputable accuracy which all agree substantial planning to eliminate the Tutsi minority took place. The idea that the planning of the genocide is a "myth" is familiar to us as it is an idea used by the perpetrators to deny their guilt. They argued in their trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda that the huge civilian death toll was the fault of "the people of Rwanda"3 who rose up spontaneously to kill their neighbors. The idea that planning is a myth was a foundation stone of the defense case in the trials at the tribunal. 2 In attempting to belittle the work of AR and destroy the reputation of the two authors, Reydams seeks to prove they are biased. He alleges the authors somehow benefitted from "support" from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and its military leader, the current Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Reydams claims the authors could only gather so much material because of unprecedented and exceptional access to the zones controlled by the RPF during the genocide. 3 Reydams accuses the authors of presenting their information in a manner that served to bolster the RPF; he sowsdoubts about the truthfulness of the account of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi provided by African Rights. [End Page 448] 4 Reydams takes African Rights to task for poor administration, although he insinuates it received a lot of money from donors. He questions the status of African Rights as an international NGO. He calls their neutrality into question. He accuses the authors of distorting facts. Here below we present details of our concerns. Our concerns are...

Testing a potential alternative to traditional identification procedures: Reaction time-based concealed information test does not work for lineups with cooperative witnesses

Direct eyewitness identification is widely used, but prone to error. We tested the validity of indirect eyewitness identification decisions using the reaction time-based concealed information test (CIT) for assessing cooperative eyewitnesses’ face memory as an alternative to traditional lineup procedures. In a series of five experiments, a total of 401 mock eyewitnesses watched one of 11 different stimulus events that depicted a breach of law. Eyewitness identifications in the CIT were derived from longer reaction times as compared to well-matched foil faces not encountered before. Across the five experiments, the weighted mean effect size d was 0.14 (95% CI 0.08–0.19). The reaction time-based CIT seems unsuited for testing cooperative eyewitnesses’ memory for faces. The careful matching of the faces required for a fair lineup or the lack of intent to deceive may have hampered the diagnosticity of the reaction time-based CIT.

Children's exposure to intimate partner violence: A systematic review of measurement strategies

Abstract We conducted systematic review and content analysis of measurement strategies related to child exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV). We searched nine electronic databases and supplementary sources for studies published between January 1984 and March 2016. Eligible studies were those that described a measurement strategy that was administered to children between, but not limited to, age 0 and 17, or administered to individuals who could report on youth of this age range. Measures were examined against a taxonomy of IPV exposure (direct involvement, direct eyewitness, and indirect exposure) and the four subtypes of IPV (sexual violence, physical violence, stalking, and psychological aggression). Twenty-eight measures met criteria for inclusion in the review; 18 measures were original, and 10 were modifications of the Conflict Tactics Scales. The majority of measures were published after 2008, demonstrating the considerable progress made in developing and substantially modifying measures over the last decade. Nonetheless, findings suggest important discrepancies in measurement strategies used in research efforts. Relatively few measures assess children's direct involvement in IPV, exposure to coercive control, and sexual violence. No measures found in our review examined children's exposure to stalking. The implications of these findings for research are discussed.

AN OVERVIEW OF HISTORICAL SOURCES OF MONGOL HISTORY

The credibility of research in history depends on the credibility of sources referred to in the process and the way they are interpreted. Accordingly, it is imperative, firstly, to select the right sources, and secondly, to thoroughly analyze and question them. The situation, in many instances, gets aggravated when researchers find contradicting information from various sources. Such a situation necessitates paying due attention to the contexts in which these works were written, the potential influences that the authors may have faced, and the way in which such works were transmitted. This paper is an attempt make a contribution in this direction in relation to a few key primary and secondary sources of Mongol history that can extremely vital in reconstructing their times, their mindset, their empire and the horrific invasions they are known for. We have presented a brief overview of 15 important classical historical sources that shed light on the Mongol history and their conquests. Though most of the major events appear to be mentioned in these works, however, while reviewing these works, difference can be noticed in terms of author’s opinions and support (or lack thereof) for those events and underlying decisions from various players appearing in the picture. We also see a tint of political influence in these works. Some of the works are known to have mistakes in terms of certain specific information about the events and persons involved. Historical sources selected for this study were either written as the relevant events were unfolding, or written within a few centuries after the events took place. In these sources, we also notice that some of the authors were the direct eyewitnesses of the incidents whereas others relied on second or third-hand information. Accordingly, it becomes important for researchers to understand these factors in order to correctly reference from these works and contribute to the body of knowledge on the subject in a meaningful and healthy way.

The first list of Malayalam words at the end of 15th century by a Portuguese seaman

Abstract MS-804 from the Municipal Library of Porto, Portugal, is a unique copy of the journal of the first voyage to India under Vasco da Gama’s (ca. 1460–1524) command. It describes the voyage subsequent to the departure from the Tagus River, Portugal, on 8 July 1497 until the return up the shallows of the Grande River de Buba, Guinea, on 25 April 1499. The author of the original of this account is probably Álvaro Velho (fl. 1497/1507), born in Barreiro, but the arguments are still weak, being only achieved by deduction. The copyist is also probably John Theotonius, CRSA. The great merit of this document is the fact that the author was a direct eyewitness of all events. In the last appendix, at folio 45, it has a list of 122 useful daily words and expressions in Portuguese and their translation into Malayalam, a provincial Dravidian language spoken in Kerala State, India. It is a relevant testimony of a variety of Malayalam at the end of the 15th century, despite certain transcription mistakes and the scribe’s censorship of some vulgarisms. In this new semi-diplomatic edition, I applied rigorous transcription criteria and corrected earlier editions, adding English translations and Malayalam equivalences.

Olukorrast Põhja-Lätis 1919. aasta alguses: Valga lätlaste avaliku elu tegelase Oto Hasmanise tunnistused [Abstract: Situation in the North of Latvia in early 1919: testimony by Latvian public figure from Valga Oto Hasmanis

The paper along with the published memoirs by Oto Hasmanis, a Latvian public figure who was active in Valga and its environs, written in 1928 and stored in the Fund of the Commission of War History in the State History Archives of Latvia, provide an insight into the developments and events in Valka and in the northern part of Vidzeme in general in early 1919 when this territory was liberated by the Estonian army and its Finnish unit. At that particular moment the northern part of Vidzeme was an arena of clash and interaction of the interests of several states, political and ethnic groups. Estonian authorities laid a serious claim on Valga and its environs, considering this territory as a part of their state. The local ethnic Latvian residents disagreed with it, in the situation that was similarly complicated all over Latvia expressing an unambiguous support for the Provisory Government of Latvia and for the announced mobilisation into the North-Latvian Brigade that stood under operative subordination to the Estonian Army. Among other aspects, O. Hasmanis describes the launching of the mobilisation campaign. The published document is an important piece of evidence both for local history, for the history of the period of the Independence War in Latvia in general as well as for the history of Estonia and even Finland in the respective period. The author among other things describes the overall situation in the newly liberated territories, the patriotism and activities of Latvian people, their relations with Estonian authorities and the very beginning of the formation of the Latvian armed forces in the respective district. What makes the memoirs a particularly valuable piece of evidence is the fact that O. Hasmanis was a direct eyewitness and participant of the described events and processes that were important for the history of the Independence War of Latvia.

Lost in commemoration: the Armenian genocide in memory and identity

ABSTRACTIt is a commonplace in Genocide Studies to say that ‘Turkey denies the Armenian genocide’. The Turkish state's official policy towards the Armenian genocide was and is indeed characterized by misrepresentation, mystification and manipulation. But when one gauges what place the Armenian genocide occupies in the social memory of Turkish society, even after nearly a century, a different picture emerges. Even though most direct eyewitnesses to the crime have passed away, oral history interviews yield important insights. Elderly Turks and Kurds in Eastern Turkey often hold vivid memories from family members or fellow villagers who witnessed or participated in the genocide. This article is based on interviews conducted with (grand)children of eyewitnesses to the Armenian genocide. The research suggests there is a clash between official state memory and popular social memory: the Turkish government is denying a genocide that its own population remembers.

Education Reform in New Orleans: Voices from the Recovery School District

In the post-Katrina education landscape in New Orleans, teachers in charter schools and district-run schools in the Recovery School District are uniquely situated to provide a direct eyewitness account of the successes and failures of the city's new direction in public education. This narrative presents the opinions of teachers in a critical assessment of recent reforms. This piece is a condensed overview of a qualitative study that took place during the 2010–11 academic year.