Reconciling Truth

Four years after its creation, notes Bill Curry of the Globe and Mail, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is still struggling – and failing – to get on its feet.  Following the fiasco surrounding its lead commissioners last year, it still hasn’t filled many prominent leadership positions and won’t until spring at the earliest.

It is not unusual, of course, for truth commissions to stumble out of the blocks.  Even inter-commissioner tension seems painfully common.  But, those problems seem more understandable in countries where truth commissions are the norm – failed states recovering from massive conflicts.  Canada is a stable, first world country, where every advantage should have been available to make this work, including more than adequate funding.

And, as Mike Cachagee, head of the National Residential Schools Survivors Society, explains, the delays are quite harmful: “The older [victims waiting to testify] were the ones who went through the worst schools, and they’re all dying. So who’s going to hear their stories while we fight over the colour of the walls and the colour of carpets?  It’s disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”

What explains the commission’s failure thus far?  Tom McMahon, the executive director, has been critical of the requirement that the commission follow federal hiring rules, which involve a significant and unavoidable lag time.  In the meantime, one year of the commission’s five year mandate has passed and somewhere between $2 and $7 million have been spent.  While there is undoubtedly some validity to McMahon’s complaint, it also seems clear that some of the tire-spinning is a product of the historical nature of the commission – it’s the first of its kind, as Commissioner Sinclair explains, devoted to examining how children were treated by their government – and the failure of the commissioners to identify the best strategies for moving ahead.  And, of course, the inter-personal bickering doesn’t help.

Interesting news stories on transitional justice from around the web…

From the Gulf Daily News:‘Truth’ Commission Launched – Bahrain joins the growing list of countries with a truth commission, focused primarily in this case on victims of abuse in prisons.  However, this commission is not run specifically by the government, which has thus far rejected calls for such a body for nearly a decade.  As the secretary-general of the National Democratic Action Society, Ebrahim Sharif Al Sayed, explained, “It won’t be a substitute for a government/non-governmental organisation commission but at least we will be able to document the alleged atrocities of the last 30 years or more before some of the victims die. So whenever the government acknowledges their testimonies and sets up a truth and reconciliation commission, even if it’s in 20 years, they will have all the information.”

From ReliefWeb: Transitional Justice in Burundi – While examination of the Rwandan genocide largely focuses on that small African country (and with good reason), its neighbors also were affected, in some cases almost as dramatically.  Burundi, which like Rwanda is primarily populated by Hutus and Tutsis, has faced its own long road of national reconciliation, rebuilding, and stabilization.  ReliefWeb, via the UN’s OHCHR, reports some excellent news on this front: the country has been sufficiently stabilized to move forward with its three transitional justice mechanisms, along side of its mandated provincial consultations.

Also from ReliefWeb: Address by Ms. Navanethem Pillay – The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights marked a UN meeting on the approach to transitional justice with an erudite overview of what transitional justice is – and what it isn’t.  It is not intended for every situation, but rather for “exceptional challenges, such as dealing with massive human rights abuses committed in the course of armed conflict or by repressive regimes, in circumstances of scarce resources, urgently competing demands and frequent institutional breakdown.”  Pillay then proceeds to outline the UN’s guiding principles on transitional justice and developmental objectives moving forward.

In Poland: The famous entrance sign to the infamous Auschwitz Extermination Camp was stolen and subsequently recovered.  Early reports suggest it was driven more by dirty politics in Sweden than anti-Semitism or Holocaust denial.  Nonetheless, it has reopened the painful debate surrounding the real or imagined connection between Polish Catholicism and anti-Semitism, a subject we frequently encountered during the Legacy Project: Poland.

In mid-December, word came out that Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, would be proposing the creation of a truth commission to investigate torture and human rights abuses during the military dictatorship from 1964-85.  While many other participants in Operation Condor have made some effort to address their countries’ recent tumultuous history, Brazil has thus far largely failed in this regard, due in large part to an amnesty law shoved through congress in 1979.

Lula’s minister of human rights, Paulo Vannuchi, explained that the impetus for the commission is directly connected to the high level of crime in Brazil today: “We believe there is a relationship between torture today and the impunity of all the torture that went before, including during the dictatorship.”

A week later, at the opening of Brazil’s Third National Program on Human Rights, Janaína Telles, the coordinator of the Dossier on Dead and Disappeared Political Prisoners in Brazil, explained that they currently have 396 cases documented, and anticipate that others have not yet been reported.

As is frequently the case, especially in the region, there is strong resistance from the Brazilian military.  As Glenda Mezarobba, an expert on the subject, explained, “During the debate surrounding the creation of the truth commission, we noticed a lot of resistance from the military. Even though that (resistance) was not public, we noticed by the Defense Minister’s behavior that this is still a very delicate issue for them.”  President Lula’s repeated calls for reconciliation instead of punishment may be intended specifically for military ears for, as the case of Argentina lays bear, the ultimate success of any truth commission will depend on witnesses from inside the armed forces stepping forward.

First off, I would like to apologize for the long gap in updates.  Between a long trip out of the country and then a new job, time has been at a premium over the last few months.  My hope is that, now that things are settling down, I will be able to return to updating this blog regularly.

Please note that we have moved the blog to fully integrate it into The Legacy Project site.  The new url is: http://thelegacyproject.com/blog

Over the course of the next week, I’ll do a series of updates on the world of transitional justice in the month of December.  To find news on what happened in the preceding months, as always the best single source is the ICTJ’s monthly connections newsletter.  October and November are available online.

First published in 2002, The Key to My Neighbor’s House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda by Elizabeth Neuffer is an excellent primer on the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides, the reemergence of international justice, and a stark warning of the international community’s capacity to effectively intercede in a crisis.  Neuffer frames her account through the lens of a handful of locals caught in the crossfire, weaving together those narratives over the course of the work.  While it might seem like an awkward pairing, having to jump back and forth between former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, it works quite naturally, given the larger emphasis.

The title comes from the testimony of one of the work’s central figures, Hamdo Kahrimanovic, a former history teacher in Bosnia.  Judge McDonald of the Yugoslav Tribunal asked him how an ethnic conflict such as what took place in the Balkans could have occurred, given the long history the people shared of living together in peace.  Kahrimanovic replied, “It is difficult to answer, this question.  I am also at a loss.  I had the key to my next-door neighbor’s [house] who was a Serb and he had my key.  That is how we looked after each other.  We visited each other for holidays.  My best man at my wedding was a Serb.  We were friends and he was the same one who threatened us.  It is inexplicable what happened to those people.  It was some kind of madness.”

Here are five nuggets I took from The Key to My Neighbor’s House: read more…

In June-July 2008, the Legacy Project visited South Africa, including stops in Pretoria, Soweto, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Kimberley.  We are now reviewing and transcribing the many, many hours of footage we shot there.  As we move through the process, we will highlight occasional excerpts here.

From an interview with Bertin Mogishu Baharane, representative of the DRC refugees in the Youngsfield Refugee Camp:

Question: What can you tell us about the life here in this refugee camp and what it’s like for the people here – both for people from the DRC and for people from other countries as well.

Bertin: What I can say about the conditions in the camp.  OK, firstly I can thank the government because we are here and I can walk at night without fear that somebody is going to kill me with a knife or going to shoot me.  Here it is different from the township where we are living.  At least that security is there.  But, life in general, as a human being have to live, really is very, very bad.  From the dormitory, I mean the tent, to the toilets, the bathroom, foods – it is a disaster.  I’m very sorry to say that.  I’m regretful.  Yet, there’s other services which I can’t say that.  I can say this is a disaster.

OK.  Let’s talk about food.  We eat rice.  Since when we are here, we eat the same food.  We never even change.  Even once.  Almost two months we eat the same food.  We eat on the ground.  There’s no table, there’s no chair.  Some beds, sometimes, we jump each other’s food.  OK, we’ve got ten showers.  Those ten showers, we are sharing them, we are more than 1000 people here.  We are sharing them with women, children, men, everybody, you see?  And as far as dignity is concerned, really, we know more from women than we should know, because women receive some privacy.  And now we know many things from them – you know, we’re African.  We’ve got our way.  We’re educated.  You can’t know what your mother do and what you know… things like that is our privacy.  But that we know, because of the way they are mixing us.  I can’t believe that until now that the government of South Africa can provide ten showers for 1000 people only because they are refugees.  I believe that, even myself, I’m ten years in the country and I pay tax.  I pay tax.  Where goes my tax money?  Why I have to share a shower with my mother, my granny, my grandpa?  They are in there.  That is very, very shameful.  And you know, we are here, Muslim and Christian.  Muslim women, especially those from the corner of Africa – Ethiopia, Somalia, and others – they respect men.  They can’t share bathroom with men, you know?  And they have to do that, because you have to wash.

OK, that is the bathroom.  Let’s talk about inactivity in the camp.  There is inactivity in the camp.  OK, I try to keep myself busy.  I write stories… I read.  But not everybody can do that.  Inactivity leads to many dangers.  Inactivity can lead to drug abuse, prostitution, rape, all those things.  You can see people there who are just sitting.  Young men, sitting.  They are waiting for what – for their fate, I don’t know.  If somebody really cared after us, would think about this inactivity… Some children, like Danny, who is next to you, go to school, but they can’t go to school anymore because he is here.  Some women are here – life after the camp – they will do something this free time.  Maybe sewing, maybe cutting, maybe you know?  Maybe something like that.  But we want to double that.  Who cares?

I mean, there is, even the way we are looked after – the security in the camp, also.  The security in the camp includes some kind of intimidation.  We are in the military base, but sometimes we see police come here.  Police are very frustrated, because police – I can tell you police, they’re very bad people here in South Africa.  If they catch you and they know that you are a foreigner, they will now treat you very, very differently.  And when we see police here, we are very frustrated.  I remember in Maitland in 2005, we’re driving to Cape Town, but one light was broken.  And they stopped us there.  They stopped us next to the Maitland police station.  They ask, where are you driving in this?  So we say, we are going to Cape Town for an emergency.  “Hey, get out of the car, you foreigners!”  We get out of the car.  I asked the one policemen, not because we are foreigners – is it because we are foreigners that you are taking us out of the car or because there is no light?  And you other people are shutting up – you are talking.  They tell other people to go.  I stayed there.  They put me in a very small room, they took off their belts, their gun they put down.  There was five of them.  One captain was a white guy, there was three coloureds, and the one black guy.  And they start to beat me.  And they beat me and they beat me, until one eye was closed.  And this side was like paralyzed.  And they ask me, where are you staying, where are you staying?  I said no – I lied to them that I was not staying in Maitland, where I didn’t want them to know where I was staying.  But I knew that I’ve got people next to Maitland, which is Woodstock.  I told them no, let go, I’m staying to Woodstock.  They dropped me, just on the road like this – hey, go out!  I went out and my eyes were swollen, just like that.  I opened a case against that captain.  After two weeks, they said the case was – they didn’t accept my case.  And what can I do?  I can’t fill out things that – I didn’t know anybody who can help me.  I say ok, let me leave; it ended just like that.  So, the security in the camps is very, very intimidating.  Soldiers who are patrolling with guns.  Women are traumatized.  We are – some people – to see a gun… It is very traumatizing for a refugee who saw those things in his country and ran away here.  And to see someone… especially to see a black man with this stuff, you know, is very, very traumatizing.  I mean, it is good, the security, but somewhere or someone is traumatized.  We need at least people, if they can thing about it, to be very, very good things.

One of the lesser known Truth and Reconciliation Commissions active currently is South Korea’s, devoted to an examination of atrocities committed during the Korean War, from 1950-53.  While the war certainly has – like many civil conflicts – a legacy of great savagery, the truth seems even darker.

A recent feature in the New York Times focuses on the village of Kwangamri, where events bear a striking resemblance to El Salvador’s El Mozote.  In this village in February 1951, rural civilians were pulled unwillingly into the conflict.  The government identified them as communist sympathizers, since some – including a number of them at gunpoint – had provided assistance to the guerrillas.  What followed next was the stuff of rumor until the TRC.

Originally, the “military’s combat report for that day recorded ‘1,005 enemy personnel’ killed versus 3 soldiers.”  However, as one of two survivors from that day, Moon Man-seop, explains, the Korean forces gatered together the residents indiscriminately, ordered them into a freshly-dug trench, and then opened fire.  While one might question stories that can only be passed down from two elderly sources, forensic evidence has emerged with exhumations of that mass grave, where 108 people have been exhumed so far “a quarter of them women and children. Many were found with their hands tied behind their backs or necks, as Mr. Moon described in testimony before the truth commission. One was a child clutching marbles.”

South Korea’s truth commission has faced severe limitations, including a lack of living witnesses, the fog of memory, a tradition of silence surrounding these issues, and an inability to compel testimony.  The biggest challenge at present is a looming deadline, as its term expires in April.  Realistically, it can only scratch the surface of what took place during the war.  But, that doesn’t mean it will have been a failure – by beginning the lengthy process of uncovering and exhuming mass graves and bringing these matters into the open, it should enable the documentation and discovery of the truth in the years ahead.

Coverage of the just-completed TRC in Liberia and just-started TJRC in Kenya focuses largely on the same central issue – how can each commission promote the cause of justice, especially when its specific powers in those areas are largely limited to listing names and issuing recommendations.

The Liberian truth commission, as has been frequently discussed here and elsewhere, recommended prosecution for a number of notorious figures from its civil war, along with political bans for others.  At a recent forum for members of the Liberia Diaspora in Atlanta, commissioner Massa Washington reiterated that the Liberian executive branch alone has responsibility for implementing those recommendations.  This is problematized, of course, by the fact that the executive, President Sirleaf, is among those facing a political ban because of the TRC’s report.

Meanwhile, in Kenya, the discussion over the TJRC’s prosecutorial powers continues to move in circles.  Hopefully, the definitive statement came down from commissioner Ron Slye today, when he asserted that “We do have very clearly the power to recommend prosecution if we discover that there’s evidence of individuals who have committed both violation of international criminal law and Kenyan law.”

Clearly, the key word here is “recommend,” as is also the case in Liberia.  Truth commissions rarely come equipped with prosecutorial powers, which by and large is a good thing.  However, that also has the potential to limit their efficacy in promoting the cause of justice.  Without a government supporting the Truth Commission (or, at least sufficient government support to outsource responsibility where applicable to the ICC), recommendations for difficult prosecutions may never come to fruition.  While Liberia and Kenya are at very different places in their process of putting the pieces back together again, they are still both grappling with the same core dilemma.

Canada’s immigration board has granted refugee status to a white South African, Brandon Huntley, who reportedly provided “‘clear and convincing proof’ that the South African state was unable or unwilling to protect him.”  Predictably, the ANC is outraged, declaring that “Canada’s reasoning for granting Huntley a refugee status can only serve to perpetuate racism.”

While refugee hearings take place in private in Canada, Huntley’s case was reportedly based upon him being attacked on seven different occasions by black South Africans, targeted specifically as a “settler” and “white dog,” and, perhaps more importantly, the failure of the South African government to protect him.  However, one has to question the merits of the latter claim, given Huntley’s own admission to The Star that he “never reported the crimes to police, nor had he approached the government about the attacks.”

One has to wonder what kind of precedent has been set here.  If Huntley deserves refugee status in Canada, wouldn’t that logically extend to other white South Africans, even if they have not been the subject of attacks?  The basis of Huntley’s case seems to be that a) white South Africans are the targets of violence in South Africa, and b) the government will not provide necessary protection to their civil and human rights.  All of that is predicated, of course, on what we think Huntley presented to the immigration board.  Nonetheless, it seems like a questionable and potentially inflammatory decision.

Update: A quote attributed to Canada’s immigration tribunal’s chair, William Davis, boggles the mind: “I find that the claimant would stand out like a ’sore thumb’ due to his colour in any part of the country.”  Refugee status in Canada – yep, it’s that easy.

70 years ago today, Germany began its invasion of Poland, and essentially started World War II in Europe.  Today, Poland continues to struggle with the legacy of those 70 years.

And, while the German actions during the war remain a source of tension, the decades of Soviet occupation inspire more vocal, angry reactions.  At a ceremony in Westerplatte, Poland, near Gdansk, much of the focus dealt with those difficult years.  As CNN’s Paula Newton reports, “Many here will tell you they still have not come to terms with their fate after the war. Seven decades after the start of World War II, the conflict still defines Polish identity and history.”

Poland’s president, Lech Kaczynski, was more blunt.  He called the Soviet Union’s actions during the war a “stab in the back.”  A conciliatory Prime Minister Putin of Russia acknowledged that “All attempts to appease the Nazis between 1934 and 1939 through various agreements and pacts were morally unacceptable and politically senseless, harmful and dangerous.”  However, few concessions were made regarding Soviet occupation following the war.