A nice profile on a young Australian helping activists on the frontlines around the world:
IN THE bustle of a Melbourne cafe strip, Dmitri Vitaliev's eyes glaze as he remembers a very different crowd. In 2004, the then 24-year-old travelled to the East Congo to hide an internet connection in a church...
In Tunisia — where he and fellow workers were intimidated by gangs of police-sponsored thugs — he looked at an activist's computer and found secret software that was disconnecting the computer from the internet.He fixed the problem. "I only had an hour and then they said I should leave — there were 20 cops outside and two people were beaten that evening from my training.
"As Westerners, we are usually not the ones who cop it in the end, it's usually our colleagues. I haven't been physically threatened or attacked. But two people from my past trainings have been killed … because of the type of work they do.
"It's hard, but my conclusion is to be more effective, to use my time with them to understand exactly what they need. It's a formidable opponent these people are facing."
Amazing. Read the whole story to see how this young man happened into his job.
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