Podcasts

The new miniseries of the Justice Visions podcast focuses on the current debates and discussions surrounding memory and memorialization. In this second episode of these miniseries, we shed a light on memorialization efforts through embroidery practices in Shatila camp in Beirut. Since the increasing repression by the Assad regime and the war in Syria, there has been a large influx of refugees into Shatila, originally a Palestinian refugee camp.

Our colleague Sofie Verclyte recently defended her PhD project ‘Migrating heritage’, and developed a co-creative project with women in Shatila. In that project, she explored the role of embroidery practices in the context of conflict and displacement. Tine De Strooper and Brigitte Herremans spoke to Sofie about the practice of embroidery, and how it has been used in the Syrian context, as a way to remember, and an important element in the broader struggle for justice.

While embroidery might not seem directly reconcilable with a struggle for justice, it has a long history of narrating lived experiences. There are many instances where practitioners use their skill to remember and transmit lived experiences of harm. As Sofie highlights: “this is also the case in Shatila, where embroidery, rooted in the region’s rich textile tradition, plays a central role in the lives of makers, typically women.” Traditionally, these women often passed down their craft through intergenerational mentorship, often as a form of storytelling. As such, embroidery is a way to transmit knowledge, to express lived experiences, and therefore a way to transmit memories and to prevent forgetting.

As Boushra, one of the artists with whom Sofie worked states: “For me, embroidery is a revival of memory. It prevents me from forgetting the experiences I went through, such as war, displacement and being a refugee. Often experiences are harsh, whether due to war, displacement, or life circumstances.” Boushra emphasizes that she sees embroidery as a form of communication, a language for sharing experiences. This perspective highlights the significance of nonverbal practices in capturing and conveying experiences of harm.

In a context where formal memorialization initiatives are absent because of the ongoing injustices and the context of the entrenched non-transition, informal memorialization efforts can be seen as a way to express, share, and resist memories of injustice. These private practices preserve unarchived and previously unrecorded memories, but also, and often simultaneously, they make it possible to imagine a more just future.

Copyright picture: Aaron Lapeirre

Sofie Verclyte is a researcher at the HOGENT School of Arts and Justice Visions. She obtained an interdisciplinary PhD in Law and Arts: Visual arts with her research Migrating Heritage. Her work, situated at the crossroads of design and legal anthropology, explores artistic and skilled practices in the context of conflict and displacement. Specifically, she examines the unique role of embroidery practices as a means of storytelling in the domain on (in)justice, and how artistic practices can be a way to engage about these topics. Prior to her research, she worked with refugee minors in an Orientation and Observation Centre of Fedasil and obtained a master’s degree in fashion design and a postgraduate master conflict and development studies.

The latest miniseries of the Justice Visions podcast focuses on the current debates and discussions surrounding memorialization as the fifth pillar of transitional justice. The miniseries foreground innovative grassroots memorialization efforts from a wide array of contexts dealing with impunity, revisionism and lack of political will. This episode focuses on the vibrant memorialization landscape in Guatemala and El Salvador where victims-survivors and civil society organizations are actively constructing memory and dignifying the victims after mass atrocity.

In this episode, Prof. Tine Destrooper brings into conversation Gretel Mejía Bonifazi and Prof. Amanda Grzyb, about working together with victims-survivors to undertake memorialization efforts in Guatemala and El Salvador respectively. Amanda discusses the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador project, which applies a participative methodology involving documentation, research and commemoration initiatives that “reject an extractive model of research and focus instead on public facing projects… and that aim to recognize how community-based research and co-creation can count as research”.

In the same vein, Gretel talks about the new research project that focuses on memorialization from below in the Ixil region. Gretel and Tine will work with Ixil survivors and grassroots actors who are currently mobilizing to create a Museum of Memory. The museum aims to both commemorate the victims of the genocide and to recover the cultural heritage of the Maya Ixil. In line with a participative and collaborative approach, the project looks at working with “victims-survivors according to their needs and worldviews, and to contribute to their ongoing memorialization efforts”.

According to local actors and partners, engaging in bottom-up memory collaborations holds great importance. For Felipe Tobar, a Salvadoran survivor and local founder of the Surviving Memory project, the significance of the project lies in “facilitating and strengthening the organization of all the survivors and relatives” who are now more involved in the different initiatives. It has allowed the communities to have access to “health programs and psychosocial attention for the first time, which has helped them to heal the wounds” and work for the non-repetition of human rights violations.

Guests: 

Prof. Amanda F. Grzyb, is Professor of Information and Media Studies at Western University, where her primary teaching and research interests include state violence, genocide studies, social movements, and memory studies. Her edited books, articles, book chapters, public reports, and research-creation projects focus on Central America, Nazi-occupied Europe, Rwanda, and Sudan. Dr. Grzyb currently serves as the project director for Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador (a SSHRC and CFI-funded community-based research partnership committed to documenting the history of the Salvadoran Civil War and preventing future violence.

Felipe Tobar is a survivor of the Sumpul Massacre and the El Alto Massacre. During the war, 18 members of his family were murdered. Throughout the war, he was displaced with his family, fleeing in the mountains and suffering the inclement weather, hunger, diseases and the persecution of the repressive forces of the government until the signing of the Peace Agreements in 1992. Don Felipe is the President of the Board of Directors of Asociación Sumpul, an organization of massacre survivors in Chalatenango, and former mayor of San José Las Flores, Chalatenango, El Salvador. Felipe is one of the founders of the Surviving Memory project and a key collaborator on many sub-projects, such as the memorial at Las Aradas, the massacres map, workshops, testimonies, amongst other projects.

Voiceover: Luis de León Agosto

Cover photo: Las Aradas Memorial construction site, El Salvador (c) Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador

Between 1956 and 2011, Tunisia endured decades of authoritarian rule under Presidents Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The Tunisian Revolution in 2011 led to the ousting of Ben Ali and catalysed the start of the institutional transitional justice process. Yet, mobilisation against authoritarian rule and the curtailment of basic freedoms also predated the establishment of this formal process.

In this episode, our guests Houcine Bouchiba, Hamza Ben Nasr and Leila Bejaoui discuss how the participation and activism of victims, supported by victims’ organisations and civil society, profoundly shaped the transitional justice process in Tunisia. Survivors and activists have played a pivotal role in pushing for accountability, supporting truth-seeking, and advocating for reform – despite facing numerous obstacles and waning public and political will.

Houcine, Hamza and Leila speak to the realizations and setbacks of the Truth and Dignity Commission (IVD) and the Specialized Criminal Chambers, whilst illustrating the importance of foregrounding gendered harms and socio-economic demands (for employment, and livelihoods) in the Tunisian context.

At the same time, the events of July 2021 have caused widespread concern about the country’s transitional justice trajectory. This also prompted our guests to reflect on how the current reality affects victims’ experiences and trajectories, and how it pushes victims’ organisations and civil society to reorganize in order to revitalize justice efforts and resist autocratization.

This episode was realized in collaboration with Avocats Sans Frontières (Lawyers Without Borders), Tunis branch.

Information about the speakers:

Houcine Bouchiba is a human rights activist, transitional justice expert and former president of the Al-Karama victims’ association. After the Tunisian revolution, he accompanied the transitional justice process from the very start and also acted as Secretary-General of the Tunisian Coalition for Transitional Justice.

Hamza Ben Nasr is Transitional Justice Coordinator at the Tunis office of the international NGO Lawyers Without Borders. He is also a coordinator of the Tunisian Coalition for Transitional Justice, a network of civil society organisations working to promote and defend the principles of transitional justice in the country.

Leila Bejaoui is a psychotherapist, member of the Al-Karama victims’ association and a feminist activist in various other civil society organisations.

The new season of the Justice Visions podcast focuses on issues surrounding victim participation, mobilization and resistance. It focuses on debates that will also be addressed during the upcoming Justice Visions conference, taking place 13-15 March 2024, in Ghent (Belgium) and online. In this episode, we talk about the methodological challenges of doing research on victims’ lived experiences of participation in and resistance against formal transitional justice processes.

Our studio guest is assistant professor Sanne Weber. Her research focuses on gender-just reparations in rural communities in Colombia’s Caribbean region, where survivors were engaged in the process of land restitution and collective reparations. In the episode we focus on participation in formal avenues, because, as Sanne argues, these continue to be of paramount importance for victims: “What is really important about the more formal processes is the recognition by the state, because eventually it’s the state’s responsibility to redress the harm and transform the situation. Even though informal or non-formal spaces are very important and can have very important goal of rebuilding social fabric and recreating trust.”

Yet, while her initial plan was to employ participatory research methods, she soon found that her potential research participants had limited interest in this approach, due to a “participation fatigue” which can be traced back to how the formal transitional justice process was organized. Colombia Victims’ law is often hailed for promoting innovative forms of victim participation, yet significant challenges have characterized its implementation. As Sanne argues, “Participation in this process had required a great investment of time and effort, but they weren’t seeing the results of their participation.”

This raises important questions for researchers in terms of how to navigate this scepticism regarding participatory methods, the power dynamics surrounding it, and the concrete strategies for foregrounding the voices of people who experienced violence. As Sanne underscores in the podcast, this is a trial and error process: “It is really a way of trying to overcome obstacles by sharing the power between participants and researchers. This has a long history in Latin America – this approach of combining research with activism and valuing grassroots knowledge.”

This episode on research methods lays the foundation for a next episode which focuses on the actual experience of survivors who participated in formal processes.

The new episode of Justice Visions addresses the escalating violence in Palestine and Israel following the Hamas attacks on October 7^th and Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. In a context where international crimes are occurring in an environment where impunity prevails, the episode zooms in on debates about justice and accountability, highlighting questions that have not been covered extensively elsewhere.

The episode features four eminent international lawyers, each offering unique perspectives on issues related to accountability. Ben Saul is the special UN rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism. Sari Bashi is the program director at Human Rights Watch and founded the Israeli NGO Gisha, focusing on freedom of movement for civilians in Gaza. Nada Kiswanson is the MENA specialist for Impunity Watch who represented Palestinian victims at the ICC. Shawan Jabarin is the director of Al-Haq, one of the leading Palestinian human rights organizations.

The current conflict is unprecedented because of the number of civilian casualties and the type of weapons used during Israel’s military campaign. Shawan stresses that the possibility of a genocide is unfolding. “Some of the families were erased completely and were even dissolved from the civil registration file, because the whole family was killed.” He stresses that Israel attacks residential areas infrastructure intentionally, “taking revenge against civilians for political reasons”. Nada concurs that Israel appears to inflict maximum amount of destruction and suffering, underscoring “the allegedly disproportionate and indiscriminate bombing of innocent Palestinians in their homes, the dehumanization of Palestinians by Israeli political and military leaders calling, for example, for the erasure of Gaza, referring to Palestinians as human animals, as well as attacks against refugee camps and medical facilities.”

These crimes, however do not take place in a vacuum. We must examine them against the background of a prolonged occupation, and a situation of apartheid. As Sari highlights, “Human Rights Watch has followed the lead of Palestinian human rights organizations and intellectuals in concluding that the Israeli government is carrying out the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians. A significant element of those crimes is the quest for Jewish demographic supremacy in the land between the river and the sea. This includes, for example, not letting refugees return. 70% of Gaza’s population are refugees. These are people who have, for 75 years, not been allowed to return to the areas in Israel which their parents and grandparents fled or were expelled from.”

The prevailing impunity in Palestine and Israel is shocking. Ben Saul stresses that both sides have a poor record in holding their forces accountable, highlighting the need to conduct international investigations. In practical terms, the International Criminal Court (ICC) stands out as the independent mechanism with a mandate to prosecute international crimes available for Palestinians. But even if the ICC has been investigating the situation for some years, Ben Saul sees “a pretty stark difference between the speed with which the ICC prosecutor mobilized resources as soon as the latest round of the Ukraine war broke out” and the slow pace that characterizes procedures in Palestine.

As Israel has refused to cooperate with the Court, and many states attempted to limit the Court’s reach, the Court is de facto blocked. As Nada stresses, what is needed is “political will to support the ICC fully without compromise, and also to complement the court by enabling domestic courts’ exercise of universal jurisdiction over grave crimes committed in Palestine. Simply, accountability has to be considered an integral part of any transition towards peace.”

More information about the speakers
Sari Bashi, Program Director at Human Rights Watch, leads the organization’s research. Prior to joining HRW, Sari co-founded and ran Gisha, the leading Israeli human rights group promoting the right to freedom of movement for Palestinians in Gaza. She has taught international humanitarian law at Yale Law School and Tel Aviv University and supervised research at Democracy for the Arab World Now. She is the author of Maqluba: Upside Down Love (Hebrew) and of the Umm Forat blog about raising her children in the occupied West Bank.

Sari Bashi

Nada Kiswanson is a lawyer specializing in international criminal and human rights law who has worked extensively on Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Over the past decade, she worked with Palestinian civil society at various institutions, such as the UN, EU and ICC and also represented hundreds of Palestinian victims in judicial proceedings before the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber. She is currently a MENA specialist with Impunity Watch. Nada co-edited and contributed to the volume Prolonged Occupation and International Law: Israel and Palestine, released by BRILL earlier this year. Her latest opinion piece is The Wheels of Justice Must Also Turn for Palestinians.

Nada Kiswanson

Shawan Jabarin is a Palestinian human rights defender, General Director of the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq. From 2005 to 2009, Shawan was a member of the Board of Directors of Defense for Children International – Palestine, the national section of the Geneva-based Defense for Children International. He is also a member of Human Rights Watch Middle East Advisory Board. He was Amnesty International’s first Palestinian Prisoner of Conscience, and he has worked for years promoting human rights in the face of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Shawan Jabarin

Professor Ben Saul is Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism. He has taught at Harvard, Oxford, The Hague and Xiamen Academies of International Law, in Italy, India, Nepal, and Cambodia. He has published 20 books and hundreds of scholarly articles. Moreover, he has advised UN bodies, governments, militaries, security agencies, and NGOs; practiced in international tribunals; undertaken missions in over 35 countries; and appears frequently in the international media.

Professor Ben Saul