{"id":213922,"date":"2022-05-30T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2022-05-30T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=213922"},"modified":"2022-05-27T06:03:36","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T05:03:36","slug":"how-virtual-crime-scenes-became-a-propaganda-tool-in-nicaragua-ukraine-and-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/05\/how-virtual-crime-scenes-became-a-propaganda-tool-in-nicaragua-ukraine-and-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u201cVirtual Crime Scenes\u201d Became a Propaganda Tool in Nicaragua, Ukraine and Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

26 May 2022 – <\/em>This article shows how media uses computer modeling and \u201cvirtual crime scenes\u201d to assign blame for some extremely important international events. In these examples from Nicaragua, Ukraine and Syria, many people died in complex circumstances. The deaths at the \u201cMother\u2019s March\u201d in Managua, Nicaragua precipitated an attempted coup.\u00a0 The Maidan Massacre in Kyiv led to an actual coup. The claims of a chemical attack in Douma led to the US, France and the UK bombing Syria.<\/p>\n

The three incidents are in different continents but share some key characteristics: each is to some degree emblematic of the conflict of which it is part, cited as an important indicator of who is right and who is wrong. All three violent incidents are controversial, with both \u201csides\u201d claiming to be right. Creating \u201cvirtual crime scenes\u201d is a tool which enables establishment media such as the New York Times, <\/em>the BBC or (in Spain) El Pais<\/em>, to convey interpretations of the events which conveniently coincide with the way they are seen by the US government and its allies.<\/p>\n

All three events have been described and analyzed elsewhere. Here we describe them briefly and then discuss how the \u201cvirtual crime scenes\u201d were developed, what their conclusions were and why they are at best questionable and at worst completely mistaken.<\/p>\n

Managua, Nicaragua, 30 May 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n

In April 2018, demonstrations sprang up against Daniel Ortega\u2019s government and they quickly turned violent: demonstrators attacked police and vice versa. A \u201cnational dialogue\u201d began in early May but, despite this, the violence became worse. Large numbers took part in demonstrations which were mainly peaceful, but with violent outbreaks at the fringes or after most participants had gone home. Large pro- and anti-government marches were planned for Managua on May 30, Mother\u2019s Day.\u00a0 Authorities set the routes to keep them apart. Despite police efforts, at the end of the opposition march, violent groups headed towards the rival demonstration. In the resultant clashes two pro-government marchers and seven anti-government protesters were killed, while 20 police were injured and there were two deaths among bystanders.<\/p>\n

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Protesters at a Managua roadblock, 30 May 2018. SITU Research<\/p><\/div>\n

Two years after this day of violence, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), through its Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI, for its initials in Spanish) published a reconstruction of a \u201cvirtual crime scene,\u201d focused on the deaths of three protesters. It was produced for the GIEI by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF)<\/a> \u00a0and SITU Research<\/a> of New York. The \u201cforensic\u201d examination was aimed at finding the likely culprits in the killings, which took place at a roadblock put in place by the protesters, close to Managua\u2019s national baseball stadium. A website<\/a> shows the evidence collected, including two specialist firearms reports, although access to the full video event reconstruction has recently been blocked and only clips are shown. The video acknowledges the lack of conclusive evidence but argues that \u201ccircumstantial evidence\u201d overwhelmingly suggests that armed police officers or Sandinista supporters indiscriminately killed the three protesters and others shot dead in related incidents.<\/p>\n

A detailed critique of the reconstruction was published by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs<\/a> (COHA).This showed fundamental errors and gaps in the SITU\/EAAF work. The most important were:<\/p>\n