by Christopher Cox

Thursday, January 3, 2002

Web sites and subway posters are used to sell everything from rock stars to night school. So why not the plight of international political prisoners?

Carl Williams, a volunteer with Amnesty International USA Group 133, said the Somerville-based chapter had already done the usual activities to drum up interest in its causes, from demonstrations at foreign consulates to postcard campaigns to consumer boycotts.

``We were thinking, `What can we do next?' '' said the 31-year-old Mission Hill resident.

So on Dec. 10 - not coincidentally International Human Rights Day - Group 133 launched several awareness campaigns that use new tools to reach a wider audience.

Two Web sites focus on imprisoned activists in Tibet and China. One, www.drapchi14.org, highlights the case of 14 Buddhist nuns who have been jailed since 1992 for taking part in brief, non-violent demonstrations for Tibetan independence.

The second site, www.freeXu.org, is dedicated to the cause of Xu Wenli, convicted in 1998 of organizing the Chinese Democratic Party with the goal of ``subverting state power.'' Xu, who also spent 1982-93 in prison for pro-democracy activities, is currently serving a 13-year sentence.

The electronic activism emanating from Davis Square is a new wrinkle on the practice by AI chapters of adopting specific cases.

``When you talk about 6 million Jews that died in the Holocaust . . . it's kind of impossible to imagine,'' said Williams. ``But when somebody tells you the story of Anne Frank, this one person, in a way it's more impacting.''

Aside from a slew of sites devoted to the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Philadelphia radio reporter convicted of killing a police officer in 1981, there are few prisoner-focused Web sites, according to Williams.

An unusual feature of the drapchi14.org (pronounced ``drop chee'') site is its MP3 files. The link allows visitors to hear songs surreptitiously recorded by the nuns inside a Lhasa prison, where inmates are often beaten and shocked with electric cattle prods, according to AI.

The secret 1992 recording session, which featured odes to the Dalai Lama, personal messages and songs about prison conditions, earned the nuns additional lengthy sentences for ``spreading counter-revolutionary propaganda.''

``They knew what the risk was . . . and they didn't care,'' said Williams. ``They thought it was important for people outside to hear what is going on.''

Drapchi14.org also includes the addresses of Chinese officials and PDF documents for further activism.

``We wanted a site that would move people as well as motivate them,'' said Eric Leland, one of the primary site designers.

FreeXu.org contains 14 letters that can be downloaded and sent to various Chinese authorities and American politicians.

A complementary, but decidedly more low-tech, campaign involves 60 red-and-yellow posters displayed on Orange Line subway cars.

``We wanted them on trains going through Chinatown,'' Williams said.

The offbeat ads, written in English and Chinese, contain a portrait of Xu Wenli and the catch phrase ``got democracy?''

Group 133 previously has used posters to promote upcoming events and an anti-death penalty campaign, but the ``Free Xu'' ads are the first to focus on a prisoner case, said Williams, who designed the initiative.

The posters were printed at cost; Group 133 got a half-price deal on display for a month.

In addition to outreach and awareness for AI activities, the new campaigns may also give the prisoners of conscience some insurance.

``If you want to use the marketing term `branding' . . . to get a person's name out there makes it much more difficult to torture or kill that person,'' said Williams.

The online campaigns have already attracted the interest of a Danish human-rights group, which wants to replicate the freexu.org model for another Chinese political prisoner.

``The more sites that pop up, the more chance someone in China can go out and have a possibility of reading them,'' said Williams.

``These (prisoners) are people who you probably want out making the world a better place, whether it's in China or Tibet.''