Truth Commission Research Articles

An incomprehensible rhetoric

In his pioneering essays on the role of rhetoric in political discourse in South Africa, and in particular within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Philippe-Joseph Salazar has emphasised the ‘postmodernist’ overtones of these debates. But he has clearly distinguished an Aristotelian line in the use of rhetoric in politics, according to which it ought to promote truth in order to convince, and a Protagorean line, according to which truth is relative and useless. Some commentators on these issues, such as Barbara Cassin, have – without a blink – espoused the postmodernist and Protagorean line. I take their view to be incomprehensible and incoherent. Rhetoric should not be used as a tool to bury truth, but to praise it. So, I prefer to see Salazar more as an Aristotelian than as a Protagorean.

Political memories and feminist resistance

Abstract This paper presents the criteria, methodology, and main results of a recently published research that surveyed and analyzed testimonies made by women who fought against the military dictatorships in Brazil and Argentina, in a time frame that begins with the enactment of the Amnesty Law (1979) and ends with the release of the final report by the National Truth Commission (2014).◊

Exploring Truth Commission Recommendations in a Comparative Perspective: Beyond Words

Exploring Truth Commission Recommendations in a Comparative Perspective: Beyond Words

Lydia’s silence: Representation of trauma from an ex-centric position in Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit

South Africa, a place long caught in the crosshairs of hegemonic violence and racism, provides a fitting case study for the imbalance and marginalization of the traumatized individuals who lived through the fascist apartheid regime. Achmat Dangor’s celebrated novel Bitter Fruit (2001) is a tragic story of the coloured family of Silas Ali set during 1998; when Nelson Mandela’s presidency was gaining momentum in South Africa. It was a period when the violent and discriminatory apartheid regime was coming to an end and a fledgling democracy was still testing its wings in South Africa. The narrative of Bitter Fruit is centred around the silenced memory of Lydia’s rape, Silas’s wife, by a white security policeman called Francois du Boise. The novel begins with Lydia’s suppressed traumatic past erupting into the post-apartheid present when Silas accidentally encounters his wife’s rapist at a mall in Johannesburg thereby bringing back the traumatic memories of the past. Nineteen-year-old Mikey Ali, who is a child conceived in shame and terror, is the figurative ‘bitter fruit’ in the novel born of miscegenation and apartheid abuse. Lydia’s trauma haunts the family in complex ways ultimately leading to the disintegration of familial bonds. These personal experiences of trauma take place against the backdrop of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a famous but controversial reparative model of justice. The proposed research article aims to understand trauma from the ex-centric position of a coloured woman who refuses to allow her personal experiences of trauma to be undermined and defined as merely wartime ‘collateral damage’. Lydia resists the reductionist approach that the members of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) had adopted while dealing with cases related to violence and human rights abuses. In the beginning, dialogue and discourses on trauma centred mainly around extremely unusual events but now trauma theories have infiltrated co

Implementing transitional justice in post-transition Central African Republic: What viable options?

The Central African Republic currently is in search of the most suitable approach to adopt in order to address serious crimes and human rights violations committed in the country in recent years. This article is a contribution to the ongoing debate relating to transitional justice options in post-transition CAR. It suggests a three-pronged policy; focusing on the perpetrators, the victims and on society generally. The proposed policy in respect of perpetrators refers to the International Criminal Court, the Special Criminal Court and the national judiciary. Amnesty could be granted to suspected perpetrators willing to cooperate fully with transitional justice institutions. Such individuals equally could be subjected to diverse forms of lustration in exchange for forgiveness. As far as victims are concerned reparation programmes should be adopted and the necessary skills provided in order to enable them, their relatives and communities to earn a living. Lastly, society-focused transitional justice initiatives could involve the effective operationalisation of the Truth, Justice, Reparation and Reconciliation Commission, the establishment of a permanent national peace and dialogue commission and the involvement of community-based mechanisms and religious leadership. Yet, in order to increase the likelihood of success for the proposed transitional justice policy, the overall capacity of the CAR state ought to be significantly improved. Furthermore, external polities will have to refrain from interfering in the country's internal affairs and, at the same time, the international community should increase its support of the CAR.

Uma farsa: Post-Dictatorial Strategies of Forgetting and Remembering in Bernardo Kucinski’s K. Relato de uma busca

The novel K. Relato de uma busca, whose publication coincided with the Brazilian National Truth Commission, has proven remarkably more effective in producing a public and institutional reckoning with the crimes of the military regime than any of the institutional mechanisms implemented by the government or any other testimonial novel previously written about the abuses of the military regime. Its appeal, in part, has to do with Kucinski’s usage of various discourses—fiction, testimonial, epistolary—that successfully challenge the authoritative, and non-dialogic discourse of the military regime. This essay argues that in this novel, politics and fiction are inverted: instead of having a law that fictionalizes the memory of the violence perpetrated by the dictatorship, we have a work of fiction that, by memorializing the struggle of a father in search of his disappeared daughter, brings the crimes committed by the military back into the political discourse.

Transitional justice from the margins: Collective reparations and Tunisia's Truth and Dignity Commission

The Tunisian revolution of 2011 moved from socio-economic to political concerns, and from the margins and periphery of the South and West of the country to the centre, Tunis, driven by the slogan of “jobs, dignity and freedom”. The goal of this article is to understand the potential of using the spatially informed concept of marginalisation to reimagine transitional justice, using the “victim zone” as a case study. The Truth and Dignity Commission's founding legislation tasked it with identifying victim zones that had “suffered systematic marginalisation or exclusion” and proposing reparation for structural violations suffered. Empirical data collected from two disadvantaged regions of Tunisia are used to provide a bottom-up, victim-centred, look at structural and economic violence. The IVD has largely failed to-date to deliver on its promise in relation to collective reparations, but a combination of theory and empirical data provides a springboard for a discussion of how the margins could unsettle current transitional justice practice, both normatively and practically. The article concludes by outlining an unfinished business agenda for Tunisia and implications for future transitional justice. Specifically, it argues for a transitional justice from the margins that focuses on space as well as time, collectives as well as individuals, a normative plurality rather than a single universalised global framework, decentralised agency rather than centralised institutional primacy, and a new social contract (forms of participation and recognition) rather than the continuity of elite bargains.

Transitional Justice measures implemented in Argentina: their psychosocial impact

Terrorism carried out by State forces is the most reprehensible action to be taken because the power and resources of a country are used to generate terror. Such power and resources are aimed at reaching certain political goals instead of serving the citizens. Transitional Justice has raised complex debates related to democratisation, human rights and the reconstruction of the State and its institutions after periods of severe social conflict. After the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983), different transitional justice mechanisms were implemented to cope with the consequences of the State’s collective violence: Truth Commission, criminal trials, institutional reforms, as well as reparatory gestures. A descriptivecorrelational study of group difference was developed, with a non-experimental cross-sectional design. It was aimed at analysing the psychosocial impact of transitional justice measures taken in Argentina. The study was conducted on a non-probabilistic sample composed of 576 participants. Findings support the effectiveness of combined Transitional Justice measures, the weakness of recognition of criminal acts and apologies, and significant differences in terms of violence affectation.
 Received: 20 September 2021Accepted: 25 November 2021

Collective violence and the culture of peace: researching the social psychology of memory and social reconciliation

This monograph aims to disseminate the results of various research studies carried out in the field of social and community psychology. The studies focus on efforts to build a culture of peace in post-conflict contexts and societies that have suffered collective and socio-political violence, with multiple and persistent human rights violations. Six studies on the psychosocial effects of transitional justice rituals from Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Basque country, Chile, and Ecuador compose this issue. This issue presents a series of results regarding the effects of reparation rituals and Truth Commissions, combining different methods and analysis strategies, including general population surveys, newspaper and social media content analysis, community intervention assessments and qualitative documentary analysis. Finally, two review books were included. First, a Peace Psychology Book that explores the implications and difficulties faced by societies that have experienced large-scale collective violence. Second, the problem of human rights violations and how to confront them, socio-political conflicts and the building of a culture of democracy and peace in Latin America are transversal axes of the chapters of this second book.

Colombian Transitional Justice: The media discourse of the Peace Agreement and perceptions regarding its institutions

Colombia had the longest internal armed conflict in Latin America, and its government reached a peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas in 2016. This article explores the transitional justice social representations during the signing of the peace agreement (study 1) and their implementation, during 2019-2020 (study 2). The first study analyzes the news related to the institutions created from the peace agreement during 2016. The second study explores different psychosocial variables associated with its two most controversial institutions, the Truth Commission (TC) and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) during 2019-2020, after the beginning of its work. The findings revealed that news articles from two principal Colombian newspapers illustrate two anchoring categories of transitional justice with an emphasis on victims, while the political position of the newspaper suggests possible disagreements on what peace entails. Surveys showed that political position and victimization are crucial for the approval and support of the TC and the JEP, as well as correlated with the level of media consumption regarding these institutions.
 Received: 17 September 2021Accepted: 15 November 2021

Social representations of Brazilian Truth Commission on news comments

The study investigated the social representations of the Brazilian Truth Commission from the news comments about its final report released in December 2014. Method: Comments (N = 322) were collected in the three major newspapers websites in Brazil: “Folha de São Paulo”, “O Globo” and “O Estado de São Paulo” during the 48 hours following the report’s publication. They were submitted to a lexical analysis on the software Radicalized discourses justifying the violations and narratives denying the existence of a dictatorship were observed. Discussion: Results were in line with social media theories about online behavior, but they do not corroborate previous research on the social representations of the military regime and Truth Commissions in South America.
 Received: 15 September 2021Accepted: 22 November 2021

Prospects for the Implementation of Transitional Justice in Ukraine

The study examines the features of transitional justice. The author gives definitions and goals of this concept. As it was noted by the scientists Ovcharenko and Shcherbaniuk, transitional justice includes judicial and extrajudicial mechanisms, such as prosecution, compensation, truth commissions, institutional transformations, and a combination of the above. For the first time, the content, main elements, and mechanisms of transitional justice are described in detail, which is considered in the context of the simultaneous transformation of Ukrainian society from an authoritarian past to a democratic present and from military conflict to post-conflict. Referring to Arkadiy Bushchenko (2017) transitional justice, as a model of society's transition from authoritarian to democratic, and from armed conflict to post-conflict, is currently the most modern approach to solving the problems that Ukraine has been dealing with since the end of 2013. Therefore, given this understanding, there is a prospect of developing a national legal model for the implementation of the basic principles of transitional justice. With the ultimate goal of the process of reconciliation in society, the concept of transitional justice involves the simultaneous operation of the state in four areas: effective criminal prosecutions, reparations, institutional reforms, and official statement of historical truth.

Self-Determination in Indigenous Online Education

There is a pressing need, as outlined in the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, to promote success for Indigenous learners in higher education. One pathway towards greater participation and success may be to empower Indigenous learners to engage with open source digital tools and platforms that promote digital self-determination. This review of the literature will explore the concept of digital self-determination through examples of Indigenous communities claiming control over the infrastructure that serves their homes.

The Struggle of Memory against Forgetting: Afterlife and Memorialization of Imagery Surrounding South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Given that truth commissions are heavily intertwined with the social politics of societal memory and the historical perception of events, the imagery surrounding these hearings therefore plays a role worth examining throughout this memorialization process. This essay investigates how imagery from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings has experienced an afterlife in the subsequent decades, and how this afterlife may differ from the images’ original values and purpose. This body of work examines the extended life of these images beyond that of straightforward media representation of the event—looking at how these archival elements have been reappropriated and incorporated into fine-art bodies of work by artists and documentarians working in photography, such as Sue Williamson, Jo Ratcliffe, Berni Searle, Penny Siopis, and others, in order to respond to the TRC by participating in and driving conversations surrounding the commission’s ambiguities, contradictions, and inadequacies. Through a semiotic analysis of the imagery itself, and analysis of the contextual placement and dissemination of the imagery in both its original and subsequent usages, this research therefore seeks to holistically understand the role of visual media in South Africa’s era of transitional justice and reckoning.

A case study of the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre: A Survivor-centred toolkit for reconciliation

This case study analyzes the programming initiatives of the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC) with the aim to produce an actionable toolkit of six distinct principles for institutions in addressing residential school history and working with Survivors. These six principles—applying Survivor-led, community-first methods; engaging in co-creative and participatory work; re-contextualizing photography through oral history; reclaiming Indigenous objects, spaces, and time; continually re-examining prior reconciliation efforts; and supporting the autonomy of witnessing—all contribute to the ongoing Canadian response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's Calls to Action in confronting systemic racism towards Indigenous peoples, educating the public about residential schools, and advancing the progress of reconciliation efforts. The SRSC’s programming, including the Remember the Children project and the Reclaiming Shingwauk Hall exhibition, along with the centre’s further statements and initiatives, all highlight best practices in the preservation and programming for former residential school sites. By following the methods realized throughout this case study, other institutions can mindfully and meaningfully co-create Survivor-led spaces and programming that will further reconciliation’s aims—listening, learning, supporting, healing, and restoring.

LUTA POR RECONHECIMENTO, COMISSÃO NACIONAL DA VERDADE E MEMÓRIA COLETIVA

The main objective of our research is to analyze the correlation between the struggle for recognition, the National Truth Commission – CNV (2012 - 2014) and collective memory. To achieve our goal, we propose to analyze memory from collective and social struggles evoking collective memory within an intersubjective relationship that involves disputes, negotiations, manipulations and forgetting. It is important to emphasize that the theoretical framework of our work is supported by the debate around the struggles for recognition. Therefore, we will verify, from Axel Honneth, the moral grammar of the struggles around this reciprocal recognition and how this dynamic happens in current social practices and, ipso facto, we intend to articulate the discussion of the communication paradigm with collective memory.

Historical Policy of the Roh Moo-hyun’s Government in South Korea: Seeking Reconciliation with the Past

Historical policy was one of the main directions of the domestic policy of the Roh Moo-hyuns government (2003-2008). The ideological justification of revising the 20th century history of Korea was the idea of building a new Korean society based on the principles of democracy and the rule of civil rights and freedoms. Through the implementation of a new historical policy the Roh Moo-hyuns government tried to prove that the creation of such a society was impossible without revealing the truth about the historical past, in which the state repeatedly neglected civil rights and committed crimes. Increased attention to issues of restoration of the historical justice is typical for the current government of Moon Jae-in, the political successor of Roh Moo-hyun. Based on the analysis of the governmental documents, legislation this paper reveals the main disagreements between political parties of the Republic of Korea around the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, identifies the key results of its activities.

Considering Indigenous Environmental Issues in Canadian Curricula: A Critical Discourse Analysis

This article presents insights from a curricular review of Canada’s ten provinces and three territories with a focus on critical Indigenous environmental issues. This inquiry was conducted amidst nationally prominent events and socio-ecological movements such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Idle No More and numerous oil and gas pipeline protests. We share findings revealed through this review informed by Eisner’s (2002) three curricula—the explicit, implicit and null—and a qualitative critical discourse analysis methodology.

Changes in health indicator gaps between First Nations and other residents of Manitoba.

Background:The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has called for better reporting of health disparities between First Nations people and other Canadians to close gaps in health outcomes. We sought to evaluate changes in these disparities using indicators of health and health care use over the last 2 decades.Methods:We used linked, whole-population, administrative claims data from the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy for fiscal years 1994/95 to 1998/99 and 2012/13 to 2016/17. We measured indicators of health and health care use among registered First Nations and all other Manitobans, and compared differences between these groups over the 2 time periods.Results:Over time, the relative gap between First Nations and all other Manitobans widened by 51% (95% confidence interval [CI] 42% to 60%) for premature mortality rate. For potential years of life lost, the gap widened by 54% (95% CI 51% to 57%) among women and by 32% (95% CI 30% to 35%) among men. The absolute gap in life expectancy widened by 3.14 years (95% CI 2.92 to 3.36) among men and 3.61 years (95% CI 3.38 to 3.84) among women. Relative gaps widened by 20% (95% CI 12% to 27%) for ambulatory specialist visits, by 14% (95% CI 12% to 16%) for hospital separations and by 50% (95% CI 39% to 62%) for days spent in hospital, but narrowed by 33% (95% CI −36% to −30%) for ambulatory primary care visits, by 22% (95% CI −27% to −16%) for mammography and by 27% (95% CI −40% to −23%) for injury hospitalizations.Interpretation:Disparities between First Nations and all other Manitobans in many key indicators of health and health care use have grown larger over time. New approaches are needed to address these disparities and promote better health with and for First Nations.

Prologue to truth: Argentina’s National Commission on the Disappeared and the authority of international law

AbstractArgentina’s 1980s transition to democracy is globally admired for pioneering a state-led process addressing the 1976–1983 dictatorship’s state-violence. The role of international law in the transition is well documented, especially through human rights and crimes against humanity. Yet, the extent to which Argentina’s transition was intertwined with international law and subject to its jurisdictional force deserves greater attention. This article analyses how the Argentinian truth commission (TC) accounts for the dictatorship’s state-violence, and how international law is implicated in the making of this account. It argues that the TC’s account draws on the authority of international law to establish the unlawfulness of the dictatorship’s state-violence. In turn, the TC subjects the meaning and interpretation of the dictatorship’s state-violence to a Eurocentric/Anglo-American lawfulness embedded in, and mobilized by, international law in the late-Cold War. To examine this, the article re-reads the Prologue to the TC’s Report as a literary text that does international legal work, harnessing the authority of international law in a way that has enabled the TC to deploy an authoritative, internationally acceptable, account of the unlawfulness of the dictatorship’s state-violence. This reading is based on original archival research, on scholarship in the fields of ‘law and literature’ and the history and theory of international law.