Dealing with the Past

Transitional justice is concerned with the legal and social processes established to deal with the legacy of violence in post-authoritarian and post-conflict contexts. The interview — in different guises, contexts and settings — is at the heart of most transitional justice processes. Prosecutorial mechanisms, truth recovery commissions, assessments for reparations, applications for amnesty — all of these and more are fueled by the art of one human being interviewing another and then presenting or “re-presenting” the material recorded, to make it “fit” with the broader transitional goals of a particular institution. Most transitional justice institutions are, in the final analysis, “creatures of law.” They are typically established by statute, their work is molded and shaped by lawyers, and their outcomes are benchmarked against what is or is not acceptable under domestic and international law. In such a context, it is little wonder that some transitional scholars have expressed conc...

Niniejsza praca składa się z czterech rozdziałów. W rozdziale pierwszym przedstawiono podstawowe pojęcia tematyki rozliczeń z przeszłością oraz wskazano miejsce lustracji w katalogu narzędzi sprawiedliwości okresu tranzycji. W rozdziale drugim omówiono modele rozrachunku z dziedzictwem autorytarnego reżimu, a także zreferowano parametry i zasady opisujące procedury weryfikacyjne stosowane przez nowo powstałe demokracje. Modele te, parametry i zasady, posłużyły w rozdziale trzecim do opisania polskich rozwiązań w zakresie lustracji. Rozdział czwarty stanowi podsumowanie, przedstawiające wnioski z dokonanego opisu. [Lustracja w Polsce w świetle modeli sprawiedliwości okresu tranzycji, Helsińska Fundacja Praw Człowieka, Warszawa 2014]

Independent Kosovo faces uneasy task of dealing with its recent violent past, which is frequently interpreted as either traumatic and/or heroic. The latest war in Kosovo (1999) resulted in numerous victims and displaced population. These previous severities, even nowadays are causing ongoing hostility of mutual oppression and disrespect among communities living in Kosovo. In addition to healing the traumas of the recent war, Kosovo also struggles with an absence of an effective institutional attempt for implementing a comprehensive dealing with the past process in Kosovo. The article shows that consequences of how the past is embraced, adjusted, or silenced, affects - even determines the inter-ethnic relations and social acceptance trends among communities living in Kosovo. This study employs qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, which consist of a combination of different sources on this topic, as well as expert interviews conducted with activists working in the field.

South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is an internationally-regarded-if contested-touchstone for transitional justice, but it functioned above all as exemplary theatre, bringing together thousands of disparate voices. Like the theatrical space generally, it provided a forum for differing narratives about the past to be aired in post-Apartheid South Africa. In Ireland, on the other hand, there has not been – nor are we likely to see – any truth commission. It is this essay’s contention that drama is the nearest the society will get to exploring the past, with the theatre a safe space in which storytelling and debates are taking place beyond the impasse of the political culture. This article approaches this through four plays: Athol Fugard’s The Train Driver and Owen McCafferty’s Quietly (both 2012) and David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue and Mongiwekhaya’s I See You (both 2016). All reflect complications of dialogue(s) taking place on the past, and themes of reconciliation, in their respective territories.

This publication is co-edited by Martina Fischer and Ljubinka Petrovic-Ziemer and presents results of the research project “Dealing with the Past and Peacebuilding in the
Western Balkans. Studying the interplay of international and local initiatives for Transitional Justice and
Reconciliation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia”.
The project was funded by the German Foundation Peace Research in the period March 2010–April 2012. The project was conducted by Martina Fischer and Ljubinka Petrović-Ziemer with contributions by Srđan Dvornik (Zagreb), Katarina Milićević (Belgrade), and Ismet Sejfija (Sarajevo/Tuzla). The study investigates initiatives for reconciliation and “dealing with the past” which were undertaken by international organisations, legal institutions and local civil society actors in response to the wars in
the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The coherence of objectives and strategies and their implications
for peacebuilding, forms of cooperation and learning experiences, and the political resonance of the
various approaches were a particular focus of interest. The research concentrated on Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Serbia and Croatia, which are linked by their history of ethnopolitical conflict and are signatory states to
the Dayton Peace Agreement (1995), under which they committed to cooperate in order to overcome the
effects of war. The inter-country case study was carried out with input from local partners from civil society
organisations and academic institutions. In all, 150 interviews were conducted in 28 municipalities.

There has been an increasing scholarly interest in the role of history
commissions and historians in the processes of truth-seeking, reconciliation, and mitigation of conflicts between groups divided by the past. Since the early 1990s, several official commissions and a working group of historians have been created in Ukraine to mediate memory-based conflict between supporters and opponents of the recognition at the national level of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The article studies the efforts of the working group of historians on the OUN-UPA activity drawing on the academic literature on truth and historical reconciliation commissions.

Commissioned by UNICEF Albania for the purpose of identifying best practices in transformative, intercultural and peacebuilding pedagogies across the Western Balkans 6, including how peacebuilding is mainstreamed and enrooted across the curricula and teaching processes, in order to subsequently develop and test a methodology for secondary school teachers and youth trainers that would support their efforts to effectively promote the development of competences for intercultural dialogue, peacebuilding, constructive remembrance and reconciliation among adolescents and youth. Four data collection methods were combined for this mapping: 1. Review of existing research and literature: A review of research and practice in the fields of education for intercultural dialogue, peacebuilding and reconciliation in the Western Balkans helped defined key concepts and provide insights into existing knowledge and standards. 2. Key informant interviews: 31 key informants contributed to this mapping. 40 key informants from across the WB6 were solicited for interviews. Of these, 20 accepted and Skype interviews of 45 min to 2 hours were held with each. An interview guide was created for this purpose (see Appendix 2). Follow-up questions were addressed by email. Further consultations were conducted in person and by email with another 11 key informants (see full list Appendix 1). 3. Document analysis: Based on the interviews, additional programme documents, project documents, methodological materials and research reports that were not publicly available online were gathered and analysed for the mapping. 4. Internet searches: To complete the mapping, internet searches of government institutions, international agencies and local organisations that work with youth policies and programmes across the WB6 were conducted with the aim of identifying additional policies, priorities, methodologies, materials and reports in the field of social cohesion, intercultural dialogue, peacebuilding and reconciliation. In total, approximately 120 documents were reviewed. Of these, 75 documents have been compiled in an annotated bibliography of reference materials, educational guidelines, curriculum and training manuals, toolkits, project documents, research reports and other resources (see Appendix 5). The data gathered has been summarized and analysed qualitatively with a focus on mapping key actors and initiatives in the region and enabling knowledge-exchange and collaboration. Available online: http://mptf.undp.org/document/download/23371

Transitional justice is concerned with the legal and social processes established to deal with the legacy of violence in post-conflict and post-authoritarian contexts. These processes are essentially “creatures of law” – they are established by statute, their work is molded and shaped by lawyers, and their outcomes are benchmarked against what is or is not acceptable in domestic and international law. Concerns have mounted in recent years about the dominance of legalism within the field and the instrumentalization of those most directly affected by past violence. A commonly prescribed – but as yet largely empirically untested – corrective is that transitional justice theory and practice must become more open to interdisciplinary insights and perspectives. The interview – in different guises, contexts and settings – is at the heart of most transitional justice processes.  As a historian now working in a School of Law I reflect in this article on the theoretical and practical intersections between law, history, and the interview. Drawing on more than 200 interviews concerning the Northern Ireland conflict and six other international case studies I concentrate in particular on interview-based initiatives that purport to be “victim-centered”. Having identified three interrelated risks - the manipulation of victim voice by vested interests, the affording of authority to particular voices, and the reification or “freezing” of identity - and having related these to the constraints of legal mechanisms and a wider failure to manage victims’ expectations, I argue that a greater familiarity with oral history theory and praxis can usefully illuminate the tensions between legal and historical approaches to engaging voice, and ultimately offer guidance to the shared challenge of victim-centered transitional justice.

Abstract
Drawing on the ‘from below’ perspective which has emerged in transitional justice scholarship and practice over the past two decades, this article critically examines the dealing with the past debate in Northern Ireland. The paper begins by offering an outline of  the from below perspective in the context of  post-conflict or post-authoritarian societies which are struggling to come to terms with past violence and human rights abuses. Having provided some of  the legal and political background to the most recent efforts to deal with the past in Northern Ireland, it then critically examines the relevant past-related provisions of  the Stormont House Agreement, namely the institutions which are designed to facilitate ‘justice’, truth recovery and the establishment of  an Oral History Archive. Drawing from the political science and social movement literature on lobbying and the ways in which interests groups may seek to influence policy, the paper then explores the efforts of  the authors and others to contribute to the broader public debate, including through drafting and circulating a ‘Model Bill’ on dealing with the past (reproduced elsewhere in this issue) as a counterweight to the legislation which is required from the British government to implement the Stormont House  Agreement.  The  authors  argue  that  the  combination of technical  capacity, grass-roots credibility and  ‘international-savvy’ local solutions offers a framework for praxis from below in other contexts where activists are struggling to extend ownership of transitional justice beyond political elites.

In the commemorative year 2014, a German governmental organisation presented an exhibition to the public. Most of the exhibits were documentary photographs. For political scientists who are interested in politics of history in general and visual representation of history in particular a search for an appropriate theoretical and methodological approach started. While the interdisciplinary discourse is characterized by an unproductive polarity between realists (especially in Social Sciences and History) and constructivists (especially in Cultural Studies) not only since the iconic and pictorial turn respectively, the article sounds out a perspective in-between. Contrary to the mainstream, who treats Roland Barthes as a realist, the starting point here is a post-constructivist reading of his photo-theoretical works. It allows neither to transfigure photographs as permeable media nor to misconceive their power of evidence as a mere coding. In addition, the semiologue provides some very helpful instruments to deconstruct visually organised myths within the framework of a historical exhibition.

Paper Trail has linked Britain’s Military Reaction Force (MRF) to multiple murders and attempted murders of civilians in Belfast in 1972.

Secret British military documents prove that the MRF was indeed guilty of a catalogue of murders and attempted murders of unarmed civilians - including teenagers - in Belfast between May and September 1972.

The archival evidence accounts for every single one of those listed by the Legacy Investigation Branch (LIB) of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) when it launched Operation Everson, its inquiry into the
Military Reaction Force, in December 2015.

Paper Trail, though, is investigating many more.

The Srebrenica crime gained several dimensions in the last 25 years: the legal qualification of genocide, The Hague judgments and life sentences, established facts, a memorial, survivors’ testimonies. Still, except on July 11, every day in this small town is ‘the day after’: post-genocidal, empty and contested. The continuation of life in trauma and negation of an enormous crime thus prolong the agony of victims, survivors and their families. Transgenerational transfer of divided memory normalises the climate of impunity, atomised truths which habituate between two opposite memory politics and fragile personal, alternative narratives. The shaping of collective memory thus occurs between the denial and
facts about the Srebrenica genocide, preventing all attempts of the criminal law and symbolic reparations to come down to the Srebrenica soil. The absence of legislation which would prohibit the negation and denial of committed crimes, as well as the glorification of the crime and war criminals, makes it impossible to stop such practice. In overcoming the past, in the case of Srebrenica, it is necessary to understand that empathy and readiness to call genocide by its name will not come simply and naturally, and that the ethnically divided society of Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have a political, collective, or systematic commitment to peace building outside the exclusive ethnical narratives about the past.

В статье представлен обзор регионального компонента исто-рического парка «россия-моя история» в ростове-на-Дону. в отличие от федерального компонента, региональный компонент ростовского парка представляет неидеологизированную историю местных событий, вписанных в общероссийский контекст. Эта история по существу отлича-ется от этатистского нарратива федерального компонента. Хотя в регио-нальном компоненте наблюдается определенный нарративный шаблон, позволяющий «мирно» вписать местную историю в национальную канву, способ разговора о прошлом в региональном компоненте скорее можно назвать антиэтатистским.

This paper discusses the way in which a post-conflict European Union (EU) member immediately after accession both shapes and adapts to EU memory politics as a part of its Europeanization process. I will analyze how the country responds to the top-down pressures of Europeanization in the domestic politics of memory by making proactive attempts at exporting its own politics of memory (discourses, policies, and practices) to the EU level. Drawing evidence from Croatian EU accession, I will consider how Croatian members of the European Parliament “upload” domestic memory politics to the EU level, particularly to the European Parliament. Based on the analysis of elite interviews, discourses, parliamentary duties, agenda-setting, and decision-making of Croatian MEPs from 2013 to 2016, I argue that the parliament serves both as a locus for confirmation of European identity through promotion of
countries’ EU memory credentials and as a new forum for affirmation of national identity. The preservation of the “Homeland War” narrative (1991–1995) and of the “sacredness” of Vukovar as a European lieu de mémoire clearly influences the decision-making of Croatian MEPs, motivating inter-group support for policy building and remembrance practices that bridge domestic political differences.

Transitional justice in the post-communist countries of  Eastern Europe concentrates on the problem of the lustration of former secret service officers and their clandestine collaborators and on the question of access to files created by the communist political police. The aim of the article is to present the Polish experience in this field in view of the theoretical framework available in transitional justice literature. Thus, the text begins with definitions of some basic notions connected with dealing with the past. The article also proposes three basic models of transitional justice. The third part offers an account of Polish lustration and public disclosure measures and assigns those instruments to the models of transitional justice. The final section presents some concluding remarks on the evolution of Polish lustration.                                                                                                            [Adam Mickiewicz University Law Review, vol. 3, 2014]

Mnogobrojna poslijeratna društva imaju problema s kulturom sjećanja što je uzrok mnogih sukoba u sadašnjosti i što utječe na svakodnevni život u područjima gdje su se sukobi dogodili. Cilj većine poslijeratnih društava (ili bi trebao biti) je pomirenje i miroljubiva koegzistencija. Cilj ovog rada je ukratko opisati uticaj kulture sjećanja u Socijalističkoj Federativnoj Republici Jugoslaviji (SFRJ) kroz kinematografju i kulta
heroja na sukob u Bosni i Hercegovini (BiH) u ranim devedesetima. Drugim riječima, rad će ukratko predstaviti posljedice suzbijanja emocija i izostanka pokretanja procesa pomirenja u sistemu koji je postojao u Jugoslaviji i povezati ih s eskalacijom sukoba nakon slabljenja jugoslavenskog sistema. Na samom kraju, rad će se baviti trenutnim stanjem u poslijeratnoj BiH kao rezultatom prethodno opisanih događaja.

The Dayton Accords ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995. The 10th anniversary gives reason to investigate the post-war period, today's realities and future perspectives. Bosnian authors and international experts express their views on recent developments. Insiders and outsiders, working in the conflict and on its transformation, have been invited to tackle the questions: Which conflict lines mark the present society? Did peacebuilding activities address the underlying causes? What are obstacles for conflict transformation? What are the potentials and limits of international support? What does "civil society" mean in Bosnia and how is it related to statebuilding and democratisation? How can people constructively deal with the past in order to design the future in the region of former Yugoslavia? The book gives an overview on an important research focus of the Berghof Research Center, highlighting the work of its most important cooperation partners.

The paper summarizes results of an evaluation of activities by the Centre for Nonviolent Action (Sarajevo). CNA has established a variety of training formats for nonviolent conflict transformation and cross-border networks of peace activists in the Western Balkans.

This article analyses the 'struggle for memory' in Chile after the Pinochet dictatorship. Drawing on theories seeking to combine the concept of 'collective memory' with methods of oral history, the main focus will be on the 'emblematic memories'. After the end of the dictatorship, the two most influential narratives of the past came from the democratic government of the Concertación and from the military, in alliance with the oppositional parties of the right-wing. The article traces back how previously antagonistic versions of the past, held by the government and the military respectively, have evolved into a hybrid leading narrative that still maintains the two adversary versions in a disconnected manner. This hybrid memory leaves the struggle for a moral consensus a task for current memory politics.

Devenue une injonction de toute société en transition vers
la démocratie ou vers la paix, la justice transitionnelle est
aujourd’hui au tournant de sa jeune trajectoire. Sa mobilisation
systématique par des acteurs internationaux et la construction
progressive d’un droit de la justice transitionnelle contribuent à
son application hors des bornes transitionnelles généralement
admises. Ce développement exponentiel de la justice transitionnelle
connaît un écho singulier dans la Communauté Autonome
Basque. Sur ce territoire, la poursuite de violences à motivation
politique malgré le processus de démocratisation implique
la naissance d’un panorama de violences et de victimes
particulièrement complexe. Les conceptions de la « transition »
s’y opposent radicalement dans un débat pérenne autour de
l’interprétation des violences commises lors des dernières
décennies. La Communauté Autonome Basque constitue dès
lors un terrain riche en enseignements. La justice transitionnelle
y est paradoxalement à la fois discursivement louée, mais
aussi méthodiquement dissimulée. Cette ambivalence révèle la
profonde controverse académique, politique et juridique dans
laquelle elle s’intègre, révélant tant ses forces que ses limites.
Elle y rencontre aussi des résistances symptomatiques de tout
processus de transition.

The ICTY judgement relating to the attack on Dubrovnik by the JNA and Montenegrin forces in the autumn of 1991 made no significant impact on the way local media and political leaders presented this historical event. The main media outlets firmly stuck to their pre-existing narratives, which were shaped by the political and general ideological orientation of the newspaper, and its attitude towards the Montenegrin government as well as partly also towards the Yugoslav and Serb governments in Belgrade. However, there is a trace of a more indirect impact of the ICTY on the way, the Dubrovnik operation was dealt with in the media and the public. Though there is no way to prove causality, the sequence of events may suggest that the ICTY Prosecution’s investigation acted as an ‘invisible hand’ that gave impetus to Montenegrin president Milo Đukanović to issue apology to the citizens of Dubrovnik in June 2000.

The development of transitional justice measures can be fully understood only when one takes into account the values, rationales and justifications that lie at the roots of various ways of dealing with past wrongs. Seeing transitional justice as an ontologically complex structure, the article aims to relate the legal instruments that concentrate on past abusers to the axiological layer of settling accounts with the past. In order to do so, three basic models of transitional justice – a retribution model, a historical clarification model and a thick line model – all based on the measures implemented during democratic change, are presented. Then, with the use of a classic division between consequentialist and deontological argumentation, the article describes transitional justice justifications. Next, the values emblematic for each of the models are identified. Finally, the article proposes a structure of transitional justice moral reasoning that may guide transitional decision-making process on the axiological level. [Oñati Socio-legal Series [online], 6 (3), 584-606. Available also from: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2832294]

ABSTRACT: These detailed explanatory notes relate to the 'Model Implementation Bill' for the Stormont House Agreement prepared by a drafting committee led by Professor Kieran McEvoy and comprised of representatives from Queen’s University Belfast, Ulster University and the Committee on the Administration of Justice. These notes were prepared in order to assist the reader of the Model Bill and to help inform debate on it (referred to as ‘the Act’ in the text of the Model Bill). The Model Bill would, if enacted, give legislative effect to particular elements of the Stormont House Agreement (SHA), which was published on 23 December 2014 following negotiations between the British and Irish governments and the political parties in the Northern Ireland Executive. In addition to the provisions relating to ‘The Past’, the Stormont House Agreement contains provisions on: finance and welfare; flags, identity, culture and tradition; parades; institutional reform; outstanding commitments; and review and monitoring. These provisions are not contained in this Model Bill and will not, as we understand it, be included in the UK government’s planned legislation which will focus exclusively on the past-related elements of the Agreement. The drafting committee was keen that the government’s draft Bill should not be the only starting point for public debate. We wished to ensure that civil society in Northern Ireland had a full opportunity to contribute to the legislative process; to ensure full compliance with the UK’s international obligations, particularly Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); and to follow closely the principles in paragraph 21 of the SHA: '. . . an approach to dealing with the past . . . which respects the following principles: promoting reconciliation; upholding the rule of law; acknowledging and addressing the suffering of victims and survivors; facilitating the pursuit of justice and information recovery; is human rights compliant; and is balanced, proportionate, transparent, fair and reasonable.'

English Abstract: The development of transitional justice measures can be fully understood only when one takes into account the values, rationales and justifications that lie at the roots of various ways of dealing with past wrongs. Seeing transitional justice as an ontologically complex structure, the article aims to relate the legal instruments that concentrate on past abusers to the axiological layer of settling accounts with the past. In order to do so, three basic models of transitional justice – a retribution model, a historical clarification model and a thick line model – all based on the measures implemented during democratic change, are presented. Then, with the use of a classic division between consequentialist and deontological argumentation, the article describes transitional justice justifications. Next, the values emblematic for each of the models are identified. Finally, the article proposes a structure of transitional justice moral reasoning that may guide transition...

Event and zoom link: https://www.facebook.com/events/335314931293942?ref=newsfeed

The aim of this event is to facilitate critical approach to the topic about the children refugees from the Greek Civil War in the politics of memory in Macedonian society and to encourage attention towards educational aspects of oral testimonies in the discourse of dealing with the past. Also, we aim at examining the potentials of the topic in the class room and out side - in the vas spaces of public history., as well as in the affected communities of memory.
The oral history documentary is an independent project lead by Ivana Hadjievska. The research was initiated in 2019, on the occasion of 70 years from the end of the Greek Civil War. The author starts from the premise that the narratives about the Macedonian child refugees from the Greek Civil War form important part in national memory politics and those politics of remembrance must be approached critically. The research process was designed to explore the theoretical and educational potentials of oral testimonies by the children refugees, thus the documentary simultaneously represents source of oral history, as well as educational resource. 

The following panel discussion will open space for enquiring the educational potentials of oral testimonies in Macedonian historical narratives which makes this event especially recommended for history teachers, peace building trainers, educators, students in the field of arts and humanities and authors of ethnographic and documentary films. Everyone interested is cordially invited to participate. 
*English subtitles available.

Interview with peace activists from the Western Balkans (Centre for Nonviolent Action Sarajevo/Belgrade) on experiences in dealing with the past and the prospects for reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, published in Martina Fischer (ed.), "Peacebuilding and Civil Society in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ten Years after Dayton", 2nd Edition, 2007, Berlin: Lit-Verlag, pp. 417-437.