Past Atrocities Research Articles

Trivializing atrocities: examining the phenomenon of genocide denial in Bangladesh and the triumphalism of perpetrators

This work tried to demonstrate the persistence denial regarding the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide, outshined by other past atrocities. The study examines both Pakistani government views and developing denial narratives within Bangladesh, exploring justifications used to downplay the genocide, including politicization of tribunals and falsified casualty counts. The research argues that triumphalism is not a distinct phase of denial, but rather an intrinsic element of it. Furthermore, the study emphasizes the disturbing lack of recognition for the Bangladesh Genocide in academic circles, particularly in comparison to the focus on Western genocides. The study concludes by proposing for a more balanced approach to genocide scholarship, assuring proper recognition of all such disasters.

Colombia as the ‘Laboratory’ for Transitional Justice: Consolidation and Innovation of Global Formulas

ABSTRACT∞ This article examines the standardization of transitional justice, using Colombia—regarded by international observers as a contemporary laboratory—as a case. It investigates the extent to which transitional justice, as a global blueprint for addressing past atrocities, is being embraced in Colombia and how Colombian experiences contribute to both innovation and advancement of transitional justice internationally. Colombia offers a unique perspective on how transitional justice experts and institutions engage in and construct national, regional and international networks experimentally, under the guidance of international lab certifiers and informal standardizers. Drawing on a study focused on the justice pillar of transitional justice, the article argues that the significant level of local agency, coupled with international recognition and involvement, has contributed to strengthening, rather than weakening, the international transitional justice standard through innovation and localization.

The role of Criminal Justice in dealing with past atrocities in the Spanish and Argentine transitions: common grounds, but different pathways

ABSTRACT The comparative study of relevant Argentine and Spanish legislation and jurisprudence offers a perfect picture of the debate surrounding the role and limits of Criminal Law in transitional contexts. An analysis of these two experiences, and of the different choices they have taken, allows to point out three controversial aspects: firstly, the clash between legislative choices (often implying amnesties or similar measures) and judicial decisions that may somehow attempt to ‘correct’ the former. Secondly, the concerns raised by this creative judicial activity, in terms of its compatibility with the principles of legality and non-retroactivity and the prohibition of arbitrariness. Thirdly, the extent of the duty to prosecute and punish gross human rights violations vis-à-vis the limits of Criminal Justice. The article suggests reminding that, in extraordinary (transitional) contexts, Criminal Justice can and should be combined with other complementary mechanisms aimed at granting truth, justice, reparation and the building of a shared memory.

‘How do we name the air that we breathe?’ – The haunting presence of white supremacy and settler colonialism at UC Berkeley

ABSTRACT Social-justice-oriented student activists at UC Berkeley are concerned with structural inequalities and their connection to past unacknowledged atrocities associated with the campus. Through different activist endeavours, students seek to raise awareness of UC Berkeley’s settler colonial past and legacy of white supremacy. They unearth, reactivate, and relocate past atrocities in the present. The students call forth and are called upon by the past to dismantle structures of inequality on campus and beyond and encourage each other to be attentive to these structures. Building on five months of in-person fieldwork among student activists and online fieldwork from 2020 to 2022, I explore how rumours and narratives of the past, in resonance with broader translocal calls for justice, becomes a way for activist students to deal with the unaddressed settler colonial past of the university. . Inspired by a theoretical framework of hauntology, I show how (past) injustices haunt the campus and demand a reckoning with the past and present. I argue that activist students understand current inequalities as directly connected to past atrocities and that this understanding of history positions the students as implicated. Being implicated entails discomfort but also opens possibilities for action.

The inability to mourn and nationalism in Japan after 1945

ABSTRACT Failure to deal with the issue of collective and social loss increases the risk of extreme nationalism. When taken too far, a repetition of manic defence can arise that manifests itself in the form of war. In this paper, the notion of the “inability to mourn” by the German Psychoanalysts A. and M. Mitshcerlich (1967) is discussed in relation to the problem of Japan’s post World War II nationalism, and its silence on social matters. The process of confronting past atrocities committed by the state is then discussed from the perspective of structural theory.

“I needed him to tell the world”: People’s evaluation of political apologies for human rights violations in El Salvador, the Republic of Korea, and the United Kingdom

Across the world, an increasing number of states or state representatives have offered apologies for human rights violations, particularly since the 1990s. There is debate, however, on how valuable such gestures are and what impact they have. To address this, we examined what the perspectives of victim community members and the general public are in this regard, in different parts of the world. We focused on the apologies for the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, the Jeju 4.3 events in the Republic of Korea, and Bloody Sunday in the United Kingdom, whereby we conducted 127 in-depth interviews with members of victim communities and the general public in these countries. Using thematic analysis, we found across these three countries that participants from the victim group and the general public saw the apology as a meaningful event because it acknowledges the suffering of the victims and breaks the silence about past atrocities. This suggests that apologies may answer to a broadly shared need for recognition. Nevertheless, the apologies were also regarded as limited in terms of their overall role in reconciliation processes and the further changes that they generate. The article concludes by discussing this ambivalence, present in both the apology literature as among our participants’ responses across the world.

Law, Memory, and Silence: The Case of Anti-Communism Laws in Indonesia

This article investigates the role of Indonesia’s Anti-Communism laws in shaping and shifting collective memory of past atrocities into an imperative history. These laws are to be understood as a set of rules enacted by the state to proscribe the existence of communism by criminalizing speech of any kind that disseminates the idea of Marxism, Leninism, and Communism. Based on our analysis of several judicial decisions and empirical evidence related to the creation of collective memory, we contend that the problem of the anti-communism laws is twofold. First, these laws show a conflict between law and history because they enable judicial practices to transform the judges into the arbiters of history. Second, these laws—in addition to other institutions, mechanisms and ultimately embedded ideas/norms—have been enabling a process of social silencing that infringes freedom of expression as they have moved away from punishing acts to punishing speech, writing and certain ways of being.

Truth commissions in the established democracies of the Global North: Theoretical and practical perspectives

AbstractIn the wake of South Africa's truth‐telling experiment as part of its transition from apartheid to democracy, truth commissions have become one of the most utilized mechanisms for addressing past atrocities. While most truth commissions are established in countries undergoing “transition” to democratic governance or peace, increasingly, established democracies such as Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Finland have also undertaken such processes to address historical (and often, racial) injustices. The U.S. Department of State has denied the relevance of truth commissions to the United States for addressing its own history of racial injustice, however, the U.S. itself has been home to at least 13 official truth commissions (operating primarily at the state‐, county‐, and city‐level) and numerous unofficial truth‐telling processes emanating from civil society. In this article, I review literature on truth commissions with a focus on history and theorized importance, recent application to the more established democracies of the “Global North” and overall significance and limitations in terms of fostering racial justice and social transformation in what are primarily settler colonial states. I conclude by evaluating the state of this research area and by suggesting directions for future research.

Can Memory and Truth Be Tailored by Law? Memory Law and the Right to the Truth in Rwanda

The concept of memory laws has been gaining attention for the past few years. It is commonly defined as legal provisions governing history, including repressive measures against the denial of past crimes. Memory laws also include stateapprovedinterpretations of crucial historical events, the law establishing state holidays and commemoration of victims of past atrocities. The laws have a big part in transition and reconciliation, however, they may also lead to a distortion of historical truth. The main purpose of the paper is to analyse the coexistence between memory laws and the right to the truth in the context of human rights violations and international crimes. For that reason, firstly, the legal nature of the truth and memory under international law is evaluated. Secondly, the Rwandan legal provisions on genocide are analysed and comments are made on the elements of the Rwandan traditions concerning the past. That example serves to show the danger of the politicization of memory laws. Finally, the paper is an attempt to answer the question whether the conjunction of the right to the truth and memory laws is necessary.

Installing Democracy

Transitional justice is a framework for dealing with past atrocities that are on such a large scale and so horrific that the usual institutions and justice system are unable to adequately address them. Countries in Latin America that transitioned from dictatorship to democracy in the 1980s pursued transitional justice when deciding how to meet the demands of victims and what to do with perpetrators. The interdisciplinary field of transitional justice studies is robust within the social sciences and law. Yet artistic production engages in dialogues with the official and unofficial stories of the dictatorships and their legacies and also contributes to understanding transitions to democracy. This essay examines how visual art in Uruguay engages with transitional justice and memory of the dictatorship (1973–85), taking as a case study the installation Artista de mierda (Artist of Shit, 2019) by Fernando Barrios (b. 1968). Nearly four decades after Uruguay began its democratic transition, the struggle over which narratives would dominate the collective memory of state terror and what society should do about the open wounds of the dictatorship continues to be negotiated. Beyond merely reflecting common discourses about the dictatorship and democracy, Artista de mierda engages with the memory of state violence and reveals how Uruguay’s incomplete transition to democracy and its embrace of neoliberalism exacerbate inequality and create conditions for certain political figures and artists to rise to prominence within their respective fields.

The Role of International Criminal Court in Prosecuting Crimes against Humanity

Crimes against humanity are grave offenses that shock the conscience of humanity, and demand a strong international response. The International Criminal Court (ICC), established in 2002, plays an important role in prosecuting individuals responsible for such heinous crimes, including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. This research explores the role of the ICC in prosecuting crimes against humanity in Indonesia, a country with a complex history of human rights violations. Through a qualitative research design, including case studies, legal analysis, and content analysis, it assesses the effectiveness of the ICC's interventions, analyzes the international legal framework guiding its actions, explores the challenges faced, and evaluates Indonesia's cooperation with the court. The findings show a mixed record of effectiveness, with challenges in evidence collection, witness protection, and limited cooperation hampering some cases. Despite these obstacles, the ICC's involvement has shed light on past atrocities and provided an opportunity for victims to seek justice. The study concludes with recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the ICC in addressing crimes against humanity in Indonesia and underscores the importance of continued efforts to promote accountability and justice on a global scale.

Commemorating local victims of past atrocities and far-right support over time

Does public remembrance of past atrocities lead to decreased support for far-right parties today? Initiatives commemorating past atrocities aim to make visible the victims and crimes committed against them. This runs counter to revisionist actors who attempt to downplay or deny atrocities and victims. Memorials for victims might complicate such attempts and reduce support for revisionist actors. Yet, little empirical evidence exists on whether that happens. In this study, we examine whether exposure to local memorials that commemorate victims of atrocities reduces support for a revisionist far-right party. Our empirical case is the Stolpersteine ("stumbling stones") memorial in Berlin, Germany. It commemorates victims and survivors of Nazi persecution in front of their last freely chosen place of residence. We employ time-series cross-sectional analyses and a discontinuity design using a panel dataset that matches the location and date of placement of new Stolpersteine with the election results from seven elections (2013 to 2021) at the level of polling station areas. We find that, on average, the presence of Stolpersteine is associated with a 0.96%-point decrease in the far-right vote share in the following election. Our study suggests that local memorials that make past atrocities visible have implications for political behavior in the present.

Performances of Memory

The public space of post-socialist Europe has been marked by contested collective memories in the aftermath of violent invasions and national wars following the collapse of state socialism. This becomes even more evident in the Balkans. What forms of collective resistance can be activated in the aftermath of past atrocities? More crucially, what is the role of actions within communities that have witnessed and survived past atrocities? Examining the relationship between live art and the activist potentials of memory politics, this article explores two contemporary participatory art performances that were created in the aftermath of the Bosnian War (1992–5): Što te nema (Why are you not here?) (2006–20) by artist Aida Šehović and Our Family Garden (2021) by artist and activist Smirna Kulenović. By analysing the distinct ways in which Šehović and Kulenović employ participatory practices of remembering and collective care in their performances, the article also engages with activist interventions such as that by Women in Black (Žene u Crnom), who employ in their protests practices of public mourning. The article argues that such participatory performances that enable collective remembering in the public space function both as acts of affective resistance in the aftermath of violence as practices of care in securing a possible present.

Argumentative strategies to evade state apologies: The Turkish example

Countries are often reluctant to publicly recognize and express regret for past wrongdoings despite urgent pressures or calls to do so, and in the past decades there have been numerous examples of states that have issued statements that evade an admission of wrongdoing or apology. Evading an apology requires politicians in authority to make argumentative maneuvers to steer the discourse to their own advantage. But what do such maneuvers look like? This paper sets out to address this question by drawing on a Turkish example and by analyzing President Erdoğan’s message of condolences addressed to the Armenian community in 2014, when he was the Prime Minister of Turkey. We utilized the pragma-dialectical notion of ‘strategic maneuvering’ in uncovering how he exploited the topical potential, addressed the audience expectations, and chose from available presentational means to defend the standpoint that ‘Turkey should not be blamed for the events of 1915’. Our analysis suggests that even when political authorities evade an apology, they may still try to observe dialectically reasonable and rhetorically effective argumentation. The message we analyzed shows how this can be done by pairing evasive language about past atrocities with expressions of empathy with the victims and by highlighting the importance of dialogue, mutual tolerance, and compromise in establishing a common future.

Political and Ideological Legacy of Ethiopia’s Contested Nation-Building: A Focus on Contemporary Oromo Politics

Ethiopia’s nation-building is rife with accusations and claims of past atrocities and injustices from the time of Emperor Menelik’s southward expansion to recent political discourse since 2018. This article attempts to capture these complexities embedded in the making of the modern Ethiopian state, critiquing both modernization and colonial theses used to explain this process, with an emphasis on Oromo politics, the legacy of political and ideological contradictions in these endeavours. Its analysis, how production and reproduction of Ethiopia’s past has led to deep-seated divisions and complicated sense of common citizenship as a precondition for establishing stable democracy.

The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme and claims for recognition of atrocities: The nominations of Documents of Nanjing Massacre and Voices of the ‘Comfort Women’

This article explores the use of the UNESCO Memory of the World programme in claims for recognition of atrocities, focusing on two recent nominations: Documents of Nanjing Massacre and Voices of the ‘Comfort Women’. We argue that amid domestic and international contestation of memories and historical accounts, cultural programmes, such as the Memory of the World, have become increasingly politicised and used to push for international recognition of past atrocities. The article reflects on the character of the Memory of the World programme and the core reasons for nominations to such programmes. It also considers the possible consequences of registration as it transposes the heritage of memory from the local to the global stage (and back) and in the process subjects both memory and heritage to various forms of authorised transformation and reification. We bring attention to how official recognition by the Memory of the World affects ongoing collective memory formation, and express concerns about the appropriation of individual and local memories, as they are granted universal value.

Data Sovereignty & Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (FIGG): A Path Forward For Humanitarian & Mass Graves Investigations

This paper addresses several issues concerning the ethical governance of forensic investigative genetic genealogy (FIGG) in humanitarian investigations that seek to identify decedents in mass graves, disaster victims, and to reconstruct past atrocities. FIGG is better suited to human remains investigations than existing forensic DNA methods, such as partial matching in CODIS databases, and for this reason its use has increased. However, survivor communities may not benefit from the use of FIGG to reconstruct past events and promote the goals of healing and reconciliation unless we first address several pressing issues with the ethical governance of FIGG in humanitarian investigations. These include a lack of trust on the part of survivor communities, concerns over privacy, autonomy, informed consent, and the future uses of genetic data that generate an unwillingness to provide DNA for forensic investigations. This paper looks at the movement of Indigenous data sovereignty, which posits that control over data should be put in the hands of those who are most affected by its use, and its potential to be used as a blueprint for the ethical governance of FIGG in all humanitarian investigations. This is illustrated through recent examples of data sovereignty being applied by FIGG investigators: the private, non-profit DNA Justice database, and the mass graves investigations at the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Ireland.

Co nfronting past atrocities: A critical analysis of the defunct Ethiopian Reconciliation Commission

This article examines the rationale for the establishment of the defunct Ethiopian Reconciliation Commission (the Commission) and the challenges it faced in its efforts to help end impunity, restore the ruptured social fabric, and ensure democratic transition. To this end, the article relies on analysis of relevant literature, comparative case studies, and interviews with experts. Ethiopia is a deeply divided society, one characterised by ethnic division, cycles of violence, a pervasive culture of impunity for heinous crimes, competing historical narratives, and polarised political discourse. The Commission was bestowed with ambitious mandates and functions. Among its formidable challenges were a legitimacy deficit; the prevalence of competing narratives; vaguely defined mandates; and the complexity of the reconciliation process. Ultimately, the Commission failed to deliver on any of its promises.

“On duty in pursuit of the natives”: accounting and truth-telling about Australia's frontier wars

PurposeThis paper considers how archival accounting records may support truth-telling about past atrocities during Australia's frontier wars.Design/methodology/approachThe study examines two colonial accounting records – military muster payrolls and the ledger statements of a local tax fund – used during the British's punitive expeditions against the Aboriginal peoples of Sydney in 1816.FindingsThe accounting records reveal new information about the full scale of the campaign, the degree to which the violence was formally endorsed and acts of Aboriginal resistance. However, much of the human toll of the campaign remains obscured by the highly structured, monetary lens of financial records authored and archived by the British colonial regime.Social implicationsAustralia's First Nations have called for greater truth-telling about the frontier wars to enable meaningful reconciliation and political recognition of Indigenous sovereignty. This study highlights the potential role of accounting records as a resource for contemporary truth-telling processes.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the literature about the dark history of accounting by explicating genre features in the content, form and context of archival accounting records, which can both render past atrocities more visible as well as perpetrate invisibilities, ambiguities and silences.

The Popular Appeal of Human Rights Activism: Reimagining Transitional Justice as a Political Struggle

AbstractHow do human rights activists imagine transitional justice amid sociopolitical conflicts that surface after peace agreements? Since its inception in the 2016 peace accords, Colombia's renewed endeavor to come to terms with its violent past has been overshadowed by massive protests and political polarization. In this article, I argue that populism, defined as a grid of intelligibility to make sense of frustrated demands and engage in politics, can help us understand the protest discourses of human rights defenders on transitional justice as they emerge from experiences with political marginalization and broken state promises. Based on interviews during six months of fieldwork in different conflict-affected regions, I contend that human rights defenders imagine transitional justice in terms of a larger political struggle that exceeds justice for past atrocities and can be described through three tropes that both resound with and challenge populism debates: truth as the frontier of political confrontation with right-wing elites, the “rights-defending victim” as a form of popular subjectivity and political underdog, and liberal overhaul of corrupted democratic institutions. Conceptually, my reconstruction of activist discourses serves a two-fold purpose: it bridges debates on transitional justice and contentious politics, and constructively challenges the ostensible incompatibility of human rights and populism.