Jean Hatzfeld*: “Let the victims voice their pain” I don’t have much trust in the effectiveness of international tribunals. When trials and hearings are held far from the scene of the crime, it doesn’t help reconciliation in the least. In the Rwandan town of Nyamata, where I spent six months, people would hear on the radio that “so and so has been sentenced to 25 years in prison” in Arusha, Tanzania, where the international tribunal for Rwanda sits. But what help is that? The survivors of the genocide are neither there to hear the trial nor to point accusations. What is said over there, before a foreign judge, leaves them indifferent. Obviously, it would be unthinkable for justice not to be done. But after civil war or genocide, the first job of justice–precisely because it has come too late–is not so much to punish as to tell the truth, to unravel the complex nature of responsibilities, and to acknowledge the victims’ suffering. Let everything be known, said and recognized! Let the victims voice their pain! Only then can the process of mourning begin, that crucial stage on the path to reconciliation. And it can only happen before the eyes and ears of those who suffered or “participated.” In Sarajevo, as in the hills of Rwanda, you hear that “the guilty must be tried here, by us.” All the more so as many cannot accept that we Westerners, who stood by as the war and genocide went on, are now judging its authors. The words of Marie-Louise, featured in my book, come back to me: “foreigners usually show a routine pity towards people who endured uncomparable hardship, as if the pity was more important than the suffering itself.” Time cuts two ways. A lot has to be left to survivors. They need it to find a new footing in life. Conversely, however, time is running short for the Hutu community, which is living in terror. About 125,000 accused people are waiting in Rwandan jails. What’s being done about them? And what about those who’ve returned home to find themselves at the mercy of denunciation and vigilante justice? The page must be turned on an era of suspicion, justice must be done so that each charged person can at last make their way back into society without fear. Are the Rwandans capable of judging their own? Not for the moment, but we can help by training their judges and prosecutors. To ask “who will try them and how?” and to ensure there are some Hutu among the judges is a step towards dialogue. Let’s allow the time it takes for the people involved to resolve this themselves, rather than turning to symbolic international tribunals set up by the West as a warning against more wars and genocides, but which don’t help reconciliation at all, except the reconciliation of Westerners with their own conscience. For now, in the hills, the genocide remains hidden, secret, wrapped in guilt and shame. This silence is killing Rwanda. Should there be forgiveness to become reconciled? I don’t think so. For one, you can’t forgive someone who’s tried to exterminate you from your land. Second, reconciliation does not require forgiveness, but a sense that justice is being done. Deep down inside, the survivors know that life must get back on course. Because, as Francine told me, “the teachers have to return to their school blackboards.” * Author of Dans le nu de la vie (Seuil, 2000), a series of poignant accounts by survivors of the Rwandan genocide. Orchestrated by the “Hutu power,” this genocide claimed hundreds of thousands of lives among Tutsi as well as Hutu moderates, from April to July 1994.   More than just the truth Jean Hatzfeld: “Let the victims voice their pain” Revenge in the making Jakob Finci, president of the National Coordinating Committee for the Establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Bosnia Herzegovina. The war’s toll (1992-95) Population 1992: 4.4 million 2000: 4 million Death toll: 200,000 Internment camps: 15 Refugees and displaced persons: 1995: 2.2 million 2000: 782,200 Source : UNHCR, Le Monde Children in Bosnia are growing up learning that their neighbours are enemies. Civic groups say that a truth commission is the only way to defuse brewing ethnic hatred When truth commissions were set up in Latin American countries such as Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador, they were justified because the systems of abuse there had been designed to hide the facts. Torture and related abuses were committed largely in secret; crimes like “disappearances” were intended to erase any trace of the victim or the crime. Hence the compelling need to uncover and acknowledge the truth. In Bosnia, such a commission is not needed because of a hidden truth, but because of multiple “truths,” each with a distinct ethnic vein. Nationalists from the three ethnic communities involved in the recent war propagate a history that portrays their group as the one and only victim of mass abuses, depicting the other two as evil perpetrators and monsters. Three separate war crimes commissions, dominated respectively by Bosnian, Croat and Serb perspectives, have focused on the victimization of their own group. Owing in no small part to the legacy of communism, people in Bosnia Herzegovina have long been accustomed to a “top-down” approach, by which they passively let leadership determine their fate. Shedding this mentality has been a slow process, but citizens are sending out a clear signal that they are ready to confront the past with an eye to shaping a better future. On no other issue is this more obvious than the current effort to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In January 2000, an extraordinary conference in Sarajevo on the proposed TRC brought together a diverse group of 80 civil society leaders from both the Moslem-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic. Representatives from human rights groups, victims’ associations, religious orders, political parties, academia, youth groups and others explained why they thought the TRC was vital to reaching durable peace. Independent media re-broadcast the entire eight-hour discussion. This broad-based grassroots citizens’ coalition has now established a National Coordinating Committee for Establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This is an important step in the processes of both democratization and reconciliation in Bosnia. To date, over 100 NGOs, political, religious and civic leaders have signed a petition calling for such a Commission. One of its main goals is to enable historians to write one history of the country. For now, we have three different histories, each teaching our children that our neighbours are our enemies. Continuing like this, we cannot expect anything more than a new war in 20 or 30 years. Finally, some have suggested that the TRC should not be established until the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague finishes its work. This would only postpone for at least another five years a process that many believe is essential to reconciliation. Five years for the three competing nationalistic versions of history to become further embedded in the collective psyche of each group. A boy who was ten years old when the recent conflict began has already reached the age of military service. With every year that children are raised on accounts of recent history that demonize other ethnic groups and refuse to acknowledge their suffering, it becomes more likely that this young generation will grow up to fight. It is a common belief that if NATO peacekeeping troops withdrew tomorrow, the country would likely descend anew into bloodshed and division. To make the departure of these troops possible, it is imperative that Bosnia take the TRC route. To prevent a new cycle of violence and abuse, our society urgently needs to confront the legacy of evil committed by neighbour against neighbour, to identify the shortcomings in its political, legal and social institutions which render such abuses possible, and to begin the extraordinarily difficult and slow work of re-stitching the social fabric. Delaying such a process by several years would be both tactically mistaken and morally wrong.