February 19, 2021
Spotlight on France
What the Charlie Hebdo trial could have learned from transitional justice
In 2015 terror attacks against Charlie Hebdo and in a Jewish supermarket paralyzed Paris. All three attackers were killed in standoffs with the police on 9 January 2015. Five years later, during an emotional three-month trial, victims were given a venue to share their testimonies as civil parties. The trial resulted in guilty verdicts against all 14 accused.
In this episode, we examine whether it makes sense to look at these trials through the lens of transitional justice and how doing so allows for lesson learning and for organizing the upcoming Bataclan and Nice trials in a more appropriate way.
Our interviewees in this episode, Kerstin Bree Carlson and Sharon Weill argue that one of the most remarkable things about this trial was that it worked like two processes running in parallel, barely connected, in what they argue was “a platform for the victims, but a weak criminal case”. During the “truth commission” element of the trial, victims recounted the horrors of the attacks. The criminal responsibility element of the trial, on the contrary, seemed to be much less linked to these events, with those on trial being markedly far removed from the facts recounted by the victims. This offers a warning for future terror trials, but also suggests that there may be things to learn from the domain of transitional justice where both criminal justice, truth-telling, and accountability also have to be navigated in complex settings.
How can experiences from the domain of transitional justice help consolidated democracies to better deal with terror attacks and other societal challenges they are facing? And what does it mean for the domain of transitional justice to include these aparadigmatic cases?
Photo on left: © Elya/Wikimedia
January 21, 2021
Spotlight on Guatemala
Dismantling peace and reparations
In July 2020, President Alejandro Giammattei issued a series of decrees closing down several institutions created to comply with the Peace Accords signed by the Guatemalan State in 1996. One of these decrees: a) closes the Peace Secretariat (SEPAZ), an institution tasked with managing the National Program of Reparations (PNR) for the victims of the armed conflict, and b) orders the transfer of the PNR to the Ministry of Social Development. Neither victims nor civil society organizations were included in the decision-making process that went behind these decrees. Several legal actions have been filed by victims and civil society to abrogate them.
In this episode, Tine Destrooper and Gretel Mejía talk to Rocío Herrera, a Guatemalan human rights lawyer working at the Human Rights Law Firm, a Guatemalan NGO that provides legal support in one of these actions. She addresses the implications of the decrees on victims’ access to an adequate, effective, and integral reparation, and on the realities of working with victim communities in pandemic times.
Rocío highlights the resilience of Guatemalan people and talks about other intersecting topics, such as the role of strategic litigation to overcome setbacks to transitional justice, and how actors, such as academic centres, can contribute to these interventions. One example are amicus curiae briefs, which explain human rights standards and obligations to the court.
Rocío Herrera is a human rights lawyer at the Guatemalan Human Rights Law Firm, where she works in transitional justice and strategic litigation.
Gretel Mejía is a PhD Research Fellow with Justice Visions. Her research is focused on victims’ experiences of participation in truth and justice processes in Guatemala.
Photo on left: © Gretel Mejía
December 17, 2020
Spotlight on Chile
From social protest to reforming rights: understanding Chile’s ongoing transition
On the 25th of October 2020, an overwhelming majority of Chilean citizens (78%) voted in favor of redrafting the constitution, following a year of protests. Many believe the constitution of 1980 is withholding Chile from fully leaving behind its past of military dictatorship. Some even call it ‘the constitution of Pinochet’. The referendum was organized in an attempt to meet the demands of protesters that took the streets in October 2019.
When Chile initiated its transition to democracy 30 years ago following 17 years of military dictatorship, the case soon became known as a ‘paradigmatic’ case of transitional justice. It is often cited as a successful transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, because of its classical application of transitional justice mechanisms. However, the slogan ‘It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years’, which was often expressed by protesters reflects how the legacy of the dictatorship continues to affect the present. This context begs the question of whether this transition is actually as ‘finished’ as generally assumed, or rather ongoing.
In this episode, we talk to Loreto López, a social anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Program for the Social Psychology of Memory of the Universidad de Chile. We talk about what the process of constitutional reform will look like, and what this change of the constitution means within the broader transitional justice framework. Loreto argues that we should not only focus on the victims of human rights violations and start asking questions about the broader Chilean society. The reform of the constitution is just “going to be a start, the beginning”. What else is needed to adopt a broader culture of human rights in the Chilean context, and what could be the role of public memory in that complex process?
Loreto López is a social anthropologist at the Program for the Social Psychology of Memory of the Universidad de Chile. Her expertise is collective memory and Chile’s recent past of military dictatorship.
Marit de Haan is a PhD researcher at Justice Visions. She studies the perceptions and needs of justice of victims of the Chilean military dictatorship, focusing on victim participation and restorative justice
Photo on the left: © Alex Otero DRCL / Shutterstock.com
December 3, 2020
Spotlight on Syria
Justice for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Syria
Since the start of the uprising in 2011, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) has been perpetrated by various parties to the Syrian conflict, mainly the Assad regime, rebel groups and the Islamic State. Perpetrators resorted to this kind of violence to instill fear, weaken political opposition, punish and deter civilians and further sectarianism. As the UN Commission of Inquiry emphasizes in its report ‘I lost my dignity’, the suffering induced by these practices impacts Syrians from all backgrounds. Women and girls, however, have been disproportionally affected and victimised, irrespective of perpetrator or geographical area. And justice for survivors of SGBV is an uphill battle.
In this episode, we talk to Mona Zeineddin, of the Syrian NGO Women Now for Development, about the prosecution of SGBV. Mona is part of the campaign ‘A Syrian Road to Justice’ that Women Now For Development launched together with four other feminist organizations, to support the first criminal complaint on SGBV that was filed in Germany. The complaint pertains to sexual and gender-based crimes committed in Syrian government-run detention centres. As their recent report ‘Surviving freedom’ demonstrates, the suffering of victims often continues upon release as they are exposed to discrimination and stigmatization. ‘There’s a lot of hesitance from witnesses or survivors to talk about these sorts of crimes’, elucidates Mona.
The relentless efforts of activists, NGOs, and international bodies have put SGBV higher on the agenda, raising awareness about the obstacles to justice and the need to address the physical, psychological and socio-economic harm that survivors have endured and continue to endure. Mona emphasizes that these joint efforts will eventually lead to transformation. ‘This is a structural issue and it’s not binary in the sense that men are not affected also by the patriarchy, by toxic masculinity, by militarism. It affects both genders, albeit differently, of course.’
Illustration: Sara Khayat
November 11, 2020
Spotlight on Cambodia
What does the death of defendants in high-profile transitional justice cases mean for victims?
On 2 September 2020, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, a former senior figure of the Khmer Rouge convicted of war crimes against humanity in Cambodia, died. He was serving a life sentence after being found guilty of war crimes by the UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in 2010. He was in charge of the S-21 Security Centre in Phnom Penh, where at least 12,000 people were tortured and killed, and only a handful survived.
In this episode, we talk to Samphoas Huy, a former Outreach Coordinator with the Victims Unit of the ECCC. She talks about what the passing of Duch means for Cambodia, especially in a situation where there are only a small number of defendants before the ECCC. She also explains what it means for the future of transitional justice in Cambodia if the remaining cases before the ECCC would not go to trial.
