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Newsgroups

Newsgroups are bulletin-board-like fora, where people from all over the world meet to discuss issues, have fun, etc. There are newsgroups for almost any topic, and several for human rights issues. Be aware, though, that not everyone has access to newsgroups (this is specially true in third world countries), and that for some reason newsgroup discussions tend to degenerate into flame wars much faster than mailing list discussions. In order to access newsgroups you need a newsreader. Most browsers, such as Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, and Opera, are now equipped with one.

DejaNews offers a vey useful website which allows you to search a huge archive of messages posted to newsgroups at http://www.dejanews.com/

-soc.rights.human

Unmoderated, and the main human rights newsgroup.

-misc.activism.progressive

Moderated, it's mostly used to post news releases, actions and other human rights information

-alt.activism and alt.activism.death-penalty

Even more flame-war oriented, but covering more issues than just human rights.

-soc.culture.xxx where xxx is the name of a country or geographical region

There are newsgroups for many countries, where people either from those countries or interested on those cultures congregate. They can be very useful for obtaining news and information about the country in question.

-esp.soc.derechos-humanos

Spanish language newsgroups where Derechos posts many of its news releases