Opening Statements at The Hague and Arusha

Abstract

The first opening statements at the ICTY and the ICTR, Rogers explains, were vital ingredients in the trial process and proved fundamental to the reinvigorated efforts to prosecute mass atrocities after the end of the Cold War. This chapter argues that the second generation of international prosecutors no longer needed to overtly vilify discredited utopian movements as neoliberalism was firmly entrenched in many places throughout the world. Nevertheless, their prosecutorial conduct produced a political rhetoric implicitly endorsing the neoliberal dispensation and thereby constituted a form of politics. The chapter also argues that when these prosecutors denounce defendants and call for them to be cast out beyond humanity’s ranks, they do so in support of those seeking to control the modernist project.