Dilemmas of Reconciliation

Description

How can bitter enemies who have inflicted unspeakable acts of cruelty on each other live together in peace?

At a time in history when most organized violence consists of civil wars and when nations resort to genocidal policies, when horrendous numbers of civilians have been murdered, raped, or expelled from their homes, this book explores the possibility of forgiveness.

The contributors to this book draw upon the insights of history, political science, philosophy, and psychology to examine the trauma left in the wake of such actions, using, as examples, numerous case studies from the Holocaust, Russia, Cambodia, Guatemala, South Africa, and even Canada. They consider the fundamental psychological and philosophical issues that have to be confronted, offer insights about measures that can be taken to facilitate healing, and summarize what has been learned from previous struggles.

Dilemmas of Reconciliation is a pioneering effort that explores the extraordinary challenges that must be faced in the aftermath of genocide or barbarous civil wars. How these challenges of reconciliation are faced and resolved will affect not only the victims’ ability to go on with their lives but will impact regional stability and, ultimately, world peace.

Sujets

• International relations
• Political science
• Ethics
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780889206465
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Dilemmas of Reconciliation Cases and Concepts

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Dilemmas of Reconciliation

Cases and Concepts

edited by Carol A.L. Prager and Trudy Govier

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Dilemmas of reconciliation : cases and concepts / Carol A.L. Prager, Trudy Govier, editors.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0889204152

1. Reconciliation. 2. International relations—Moral and ethical aspects. 3. Political ethics. I. Prager, Carol A.L. (Anne Leuchs), 1939– II. Govier, Trudy, 1944–

JA79.D44 2003

© 2003 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5 www.wlupress.wlu.ca

172’.4

C20039018466

Cover design by Leslie Macredie; text design by C. BonasTaylor. Cover etchingWhat Is This Hubbub?(c.18101813) by Francisco Goya y Lucientes. Photograph: © National Gallery of Canada. Permission courtesy of National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 1933.

Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher’s attention will be corrected in future printings.

Printed in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 18008935777.

Contents

Introduction Carol A.L. Prager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Overview Michael R. Marrus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Perspectives and Approaches 1. Reckoning with Past Wrongs: A Normative Framework David A. Crocker39. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. What Is Acknowledgement and Why Is It Important? Trudy Govier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 3. Reconciliation for Realists Susan Dwyer91. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Crime as Interpersonal Conflict: Reconciliation between Victim and Offender Marc Forget111. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Mass Rape and the Concept of International Crime Larry May137. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. What Can Others Do? Foreign Governments and the Politics of Peacebuilding Tom Keating169. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. Aspects of Understanding and Judging Mass Human Rights Abuses Carol A.L. Prager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

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vi

CONTENTS

Case Studies 8. We Are All Treaty People: History, Reconciliation, and the “Settler Problem” Roger Epp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9. Toward a Response to Criticisms of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission Wilhelm Verwoerd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10. Reimagining Guatemala: Reconciliation and the Indigenous Accords Jim Handy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11. Coming to Terms with the Terror and History of Pol Pot’s Cambodia (197579) David Chandler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12. National Reconciliation in Russia? Janet Keeping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion 13. What We Have Learned Justice Richard J. Goldstone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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343 355

1 Introduction

Carol A.L. Prager

The twentieth century’s tens of millions of mass human rights abuses (increasingly associated at century’s end with international interventions to stop them and to rebuild political communities afterward) have led to an intense focus on reconciliation. (The horrifying civilian toll resulting from the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001, although not comparable in all respects to the issues under consider ation here, reminds us that in the twentyfirst century the more things change, the more they remain the same.) Practical politics and life under score the necessity to move on, but how is this possible, or even conceivable, when unspeakable cruelty has been inflicted by hundreds of thousands of ordinary human beings on millions of others, sometimes, as in ethnic cleansing, with the explicit intent to make future reconciliation impossible? This is a central question that contributors to this volume address. 2 The study of reconciliation per se is quite recent. The voluminous 3 Holocaust literature has been more concerned with how a horror of such evil and magnitude could have occurred in our time than with how reconciliation could be achieved, although the most thoroughgo ing reconciliation measures have been taken by the German govern ment, as the eminent Holocaust historian Michael R. Marrus docu ments in this volume. Following upon the Second World War’s Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, contributor Justice Richard J. Gold stone played a key role in establishing the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where he served as chief prosecutor,

Notes to introduction are on pp. 2426.

1

2

CAROL A . L . PRAGER

and, subsequently the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda. Meanwhile it became clear that war crime trials, critically important as they were, could complicate reconciliation and were unable to address the societal cleavages left in the wake of massive human rights abuses. It became obvious, moreover, that war crime tri als could not (and, perhaps, should not) try all war crimes. Again, Richard Goldstone, through the Goldstone Commission, played a large part in establishing the South African Truth and Reconciliation Com mission. Other reconciliation commissions and tribunals (such as the Guatemalan and Cambodian ones Jim Handy and David Chandler refer to) appeared or were planned. As the perplexities involved in achieving reconciliation became apparent, scholars increasingly turned their attention to themes of restorative justice, acknowledgement, for 4 giveness, restitution, and reparations. Most recently, the World Con ference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance raised the issue of reparations for the slavery prac tised by European powers during the seventeenth century, a practice declared by the conference to be a crime against humanity. This collection begins with an overview by Michael R. Marrus. He asks whether and in what sense people might be capable of forgiving the past. Marrus describes efforts to deal with the Holocaust under four head ings: political, legal, material, and cultural. Politically, there has been explicit acknowledgement by the German state of its collective responsi bility for gross wrongdoing. That acknowledgement, Marrus says, is essen tial for any reconciliation among Germans, Jews, and the other Holocaust victims. There have been trials of prominent perpetrators in one interna tional tribunal and in four different national ones, and they have been sig nificant, although it would be a mistake, argues Marrus, to regard any such trials as lessons in history. No legal proceeding is designed to offer a full and accurate history of events; rather its purpose is to determine the guilt or innocence of particular individuals, under specific procedural rules. As of June 1999, Germany had paid the equivalent of some $60 bil lion in reparations. Since then the German government has addressed the issue of slave labour, but that of confiscated works of art has yet to be dealt with. Within Jewish communities, efforts to pursue material compensa tion are controversial, with some individuals claiming that it risks trivial izing Holocaust wrongs. Culturally, Marrus notes the body of literature, drama, and scholarship about Holocaust wrongs, and the monuments,

INTRODUCTION  3

that have been established to acknowledge them. Issues arise here too: there is, for example, the danger of a kind of “Victim Olympics.”

Perspectives and Approaches

Philosopher and policy analyst David Crocker contributes to an under standing of what reconciliation can mean by describing eight goals of a normative framework for reckoning with past wrongs. Crocker argues that for societies seeking something like reconciliation in the wake of serious wrongdoing, the most significant goals are (1) investigating the truth about the relevant past events; (2) providing a public platform for victims to tell their stories about what happened to them; (3) establishing some measure of accountability and appropriate sanctions for the most signifi cant perpetrators of wrongdoing; (4) complying, and showing compliance with, the rule of law; (5) appropriately compensating the victims of wrongdoing; (6) contributing to institutional reform and longterm devel opment; (7) reconciliation of previously opposed groups and individuals; and (8) deepening and strengthening the quality of public deliberation. Philosopher Trudy Govier, focusing on a crucially important element of reconciliation, notes numerous references to acknowledgement in recent discussions of reconciliation and transitional justice. She cites the Final Report of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the 1996 Canadian government report on Aboriginal Peoples. These and other sources claim that acknowledgement of past wrongs is fundamen tally important for reconciliation, but they do not explain what acknowl edgement is or why it might play a central role. Govier’s essay begins to answer these questions. First, she explores acknowledgement by contrast ing it with various forms of denial, selfdeception, and ignoring. She dis cusses both individual and collective cases, concentrating particularly on the 1996 Canadian report on Aboriginal Peoples. Then she addresses the importance of acknowledgement from the point of view of victims. Using the idea that identities are significantly social, Govier proposes a theory as to why acknowledgement is so fundamentally important to victims. Philosopher Susan Dwyer focuses on how reconciliation should be understood in political contexts. Some commentators have expressed con siderable skepticism about reconciliation as a political goal, fearing that talk about the need for reconciliation implies a condoning of serious injus tice. Dwyer comments on the quest for national reconciliation in South