War crimes trials--in Iraq and elsewhere
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...
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