Casualties of war
Friday February 15, 2002 The Guardian
The internet is a marvellous invention. It has allowed Professor Marc Herold ( Letters, February 13) to comb through websites from around the world for information on civilian casualties in Afghanistan without ever leaving his desk in New Hampshire. But even his sudden celebrity cannot change the stubborn fact that hearsay evidence is only as good as those reporting it. Sometimes it reflects solid fact, but frequently it repeats wild rumour.
I encountered the difference between hearsay and first-hand evidence when I left my own desk to travel to Serbia to help investigate the civilian deaths caused by Nato's bombing campaign. As Professor Herold notes, the Yugoslav government and its defenders had claimed a civilian loss of life roughly three times the 500 deaths found by Human Rights Watch. The US government had low-balled the incidents of civilian death. Today, because of Human Rights Watch's detailed, on-the-ground investigation, our findings are accepted as definitive from Belgrade to Washington, though evidently still not by Professor Herold.
Human Rights Watch will insist on the same rigour as we conduct a field investigation of civilian deaths in Afghanis-tan. In the meantime, we will treat Marc Herold's internet summaries with appropriate scepticism, as should others. Kenneth Roth Executive director, Human Rights Watch New York rothk at hrw.org