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The Dark Side of Numbers: The Role of Population Data Systems in Human Rights Abuses
Social Research, Summer, 2001 by William Seltzer, Margo Anderson
In addition to these potential cases, a number of other examples may be cited where circumstances suggest that some further research would be prudent, if only to eliminate the possibility definitively. These include: the roundup of people of Japanese ancestry in several Latin American countries in the period after Pearl Harbor, the forced migration of minority populations and other actions aimed at those seen as hostile in China in recent decades, and the treatment of Laps in Finland, persons of Finnish ancestry in Sweden and Norway, Aborigines in Australia, and suspected Irish "terrorists" in the United Kingdom, Arab "terrorists" in Israel, and Israeli "terrorists" in a number of Islamic countries.
Although human rights abuses have occurred in each of these additional instances, the evidence that any population data system may have been involved is purely circumstantial at this point. It is quite likely that, after investigation, population data systems and statistical personnel will be found to have had little or no involvement in the human rights violations mentioned. Nevertheless, given the range of examples cited in table 1 where links have been established, possible involvement cannot be dismissed without a knowledgeable and independent inquiry. (Excluded from table 1 and these listings of possible cases are human rights violations that seem to be linked with other types of data systems. For example, in Sri Lanka in 1983, anti-Tamil rioters were apparently guided to the homes and businesses of their victims by lists generated from official voting and tax records (de Alwis, 1983; Sanmugathasan, 1984: 66-67).
Until recently, research into human rights abuses has not involved population professionals with experience in data methods. Indications of the involvement of population data systems in human rights abuses tended to be mentioned, usually just in passing, as part of a larger history of a specific human rights abuse, such as from witnesses to or commentators on the forced migration of Native Americans in the nineteenth century (Foreman, 1953 [1934]); the forced migration and internment of Japanese Americans in the western United States during World War II (Daniels, 1982; Okamura, 1981; Weglyn, 1996 [1976]); the Holocaust (Czerniakow, 1979 [1968]; De Jong, 1965); and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda (des Forges, 1999). These scholars and modern human rights workers seem largely unaware of the potential usefulness of research findings that establish how population data systems were used to assist in planning or executing major human rights abuses. Future research in this area would greatly benefit from the active collaboration between those with training and experience in historical research and those equally knowledgeable about population data systems.
The lack of attention by demographers and statisticians to the issue may also have another source. It is difficult for professionals to examine situations where the work they do, often motivated by a mixture of social idealism and a belief in the purity of science, has become entangled in several of the major human rights abuses of the last 200 years. While there is increasing interest in the professional literature on the protection of confidentiality (see, for example, Duncan, Jabine, and de Wolf, 1993), there is also a need to examine critically the major misuses of population data systems in order to aid in assessing the strength of protections against confidentiality violations.
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