JWN readers probably saw the Dec 5
announcement
from “Iraqi and American officials” that the Iraqi Governing Council
would be establishing a tribunal to try cases of Crimes Against Humanity
“within the coming few days.”
IGC member Mahmoud Othman was quoted by the Associated Press as saying
that the new tribunal would hear hundreds of cases involving members of the
former regime. “There will be more trials than only the 55 deck of cards,”
he said, referring to the U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis. “Anybody against
whom a complaint is filed with evidence against them could be tried.”
The numbers of trials could end up being mind-boggling. The AP report
notes that just one group in Baghdad, the Iraqi Human Rights Society, took
in 7,000 complaints before the paperwork overwhelmed its staff.
My own strong belief, based on the studies I’ve made of the different ways
that different societies and the international community have sought to deal
with the many troubling legacies of atrocious violence, is (1) that the issue
of who makes the decisions in any such process as this is very important;
and (2) that mercy, restraint, and reconciliation are by far the approaches
most likely to lead to the longterm good of the society that has been traumatized.
I actually have a new, long article on the post-atrocity process in Rwanda
that is in the very latest (Dec-Jan) issue of
Boston Review.
My own paper copies of the mag have already arrived, but I’m a little
irritated that they don’t have this issue up on their website yet. It
should happen soon. If you read this new piece, which is based on some
observation I did last spring at the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda, plus the much earlier,
more theoretical piece
on post-genocide justice issues that I published in BR 18 months
ago, you will more or less see a compilation of my views.
My bottom line on the ICTR is that it is truly amazing that after spending
a vast amount of money– some $800 million by now, and counting–the court
has still reached judgment on only 15 individuals. (The most recent
judgments were on the three individuals tried in the “Media” case. A
friend in the court sent me a copy of it: 361 pages, not counting footnotes…
Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza ended up getting 35 years, and Hassan Ngeze and ferdinand
Nahimana got life sentences… Those, for conviction on charges of
Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity [Persecution, and Extermination]…
)
Most of the money spent by the ICTR has gone into the bank accounts of international
lawyers and other non-Rwandan employees and contractors.
Meanwhile, at the domestic level, Rwanda did also start out in the immediate
post-genocide period with a strong commitment– which seems eerily similar
to that expressed by IGC member Mahmoud Othman above–to organizing trials
for all those alleged perpetrators of earlier atrocities against whom a complaint
is filed. (Though Othman did at least say, “a complaint with evidence.”)
What happened in Rwanda? In that country of some 7 million souls,
within three years or so after the genocide more than 130,000 accused
perpetrators were crammed into filthy, overfilled lock-ups and the local
court system had no way whatsoever to get through examining all their cases.
Plus, keeping so many people incarcerated and out of productive employment
was a huge economic burden on society.
Plus, the fact of that mass detention (of Hutus) and the fact that the post-genocide
government has been dominated by Tutsis meant that the ‘lock-em-up’ policy
perpetuated rather than mitigating inter-group tensions.
Any of this sound familiar with respect to Iraq?
Another important thing to remember is that in Iraq, as in South Africa
in the days of apartheid, much of the foulest “grunt work” of repression
was actually done by people who were themselves members of the disadvantaged/politically
marginalized groups. I don’t know the numbers, but I’m prepared to
swear it’s the the case that a non-significant number of the actual torturers
in in the days of Baath Party power were themselves Iraqi Shi-ites or Kurds.
(Most Iraqi Sunnis could, after all, find much less harrowing work
to do.)
Did you know that once South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
had finished taking in all the applications it received from people who had
been committed politically-motivated acts of violence during the apartheid
era– more than 70 percent of those applications came from Black or Colored
South Africans, not from Whites?
The TRC’s offer of amnesty to individuals who’d committed acts of politic
violence in the apartheid era has generally been seen by people in the rights
movement around the world as a big ‘concession” to the White South Africans,
since it was assumed that most of the amnesties went to the dastardly individuals
who ran the apartheid regime’s torture chambers, assassination units, etc.–
and that nearly all those individuals were Whites.
Not so. Many of the people in the assassination units were Blacks–
many of them, also, former members of the ANC or PAC who had been “turned”
against their former comrades by the apartheid regime and formed into
the “askari” units who did much of the really unpleasant grunt work in the
assassinations, etc.
So the TRC’s amnesty program gave amnesty to those poor, truly morally troubled
individuals, and in many cases allowed them to start rebuilding links with
their home communities that had been ruptured through the years of their work
for the BOSS’s askari units. What a gift for the Black communities.
Also, many, many Blacks had, during the apartheid era, been convicted in
the South African courts for violent acts that were clearly motivated by their
commitment to the struggle for democracy and Black empowerment. The
TRC’s amnesty likewise allowed those individuals to “Get out of Jail Free”,
and also to have their criminal records quite expunged of any mention of those
violents acts– a provision which obviously helped them rejoin the world
of productive employment.
So yes, the TRC’s amnesties were a much better approach than the Rwandan
government’s original commitment to blanket prosecution. It’s notable,
too, that at the end of the 1990s, Rwanda started moving rapidly away
from its prosecutions-based approach, and since then has been trying to
move cases into restoration-based community hearings systems as fast as possible…
In Mozambique, meanwhile, at the end of that country’s devastating, atrocity-laden,
17-year civil war in 1992, the two warring sides agreed to a blanket amnesty
for civil-war-era misdeeds . Backed up as it was by strong community
traditions of individual and inter-group healing, and by a UN which was committed
to supporting the demobilization of all former combatants and their (re-)integration
into productive civilian society– that approach worked amazingly well at
ending the hatreds that until 1992 had fueled the civil war.
People I talked to in Mozambique when I was there this spring underlined
their view that on that day, october 10, 1992, when the leaders of Frelimo
and Renamo shook hands and sealed their peace agreement in Rome, the country
entered a completely new era.
“That was the era of violence,” one former combatant told me. “During
that era, many people did unspeakable things. All of us did. Because
that was how it was. But once we entered the era of peace, we all knew
that the normal rules of human interaction came back… So now, the
main priority is to prevent any slipping back into that era of violence…
Why should we seek criminal trials or other things that rehash the past and
revive all the hurtful feelings of that era? No, what’s past is past.”
Actually, to be quite truthful, that quote above is “as remembered by me.”
But I should add, too, that it was not only one former combatant who
spoke to me in that way. I interviewed maybe 15 or more former fighters
while I was there– as well as people who’d lived close by scenes of some
of the civil war atrocities, etc. And all of them spoke to me
in this way. When I told them I had recently been in Tanzania at the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and tried to explain what was
going on there, these Mozambicans looked at me in sheer disbelief. “Why
do that?” they asked. “What’s the point?” Of course, on the occasions
I went on to mention the amount of money the ICTR was costing, their disbelief
grew even greater…