Dealing with the Past

from Ireland's 'organizer and host', Rob Fairmichael

Tuzla, Bosnia and Hercegovina, 26-30 November 2002

Quaker Peace and Social Witness (QPSW) organised a seminar in Tuzla on the subject of truth and reconciliation and dealing with the past. 23 representatives of NGOs from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro participated in the event.

The participants were people who had worked with or were known to QPSW in the past and who had carried out invaluable work in the areas of peace-building and non-violence.

Published in CCTS Newsletter, Autumn 2002

Roberta Bacic, a Chilean working for War Resisters' International, provides more information about truth commissions as a way of dealing with the past.

How can those who tortured and those who were tortured co-exist in the same land?

How to heal a country that has been traumatised by repression and the fear to speak out is still omnipresent everywhere?

Truth commissions have been set up in countries that have endured violent conditions and where human rights have been systematically violated. In these countries the new political regime, where there has been war, or transitional governments, where there has been a dictatorship, do not have a judicial system capable of dealing with the consequences of the past. The existing systems cannot be relied upon to prosecute those responsible for previous human rights violations, because usually violence has been perpetrated by the state and its institutions, including the Justice Department.

Roberta Bacic

Truth commissions have been set up in countries that have endured violent conditions and where human rights have been systematically violated. In these countries the new political regime, where there has been war, or transitional governments, where there has been a dictatorship, do not have a judicial system capable of dealing with the consequences of the past.

An art/photo exhibit in New York, with photos by WRI programme worker Roberta Bacic. Below is a talk given by her at the opening of the exhibition.

Intimate glimpses into a nation's historyRoberta Bacic

Time and distance from the events of September 11th 1973 in Chile, allow me now to share with you this story with special affection. The essentials not only come to the surface but also become clear, and the superfluous fades away, carried by time and the flow of the rivers so that what is preserved is that which makes us people with a history and a memory.

Project activities in 2002LecturesThe Case for the Abolition of War
Cambridge University Amnesty International Meeting
26 February 2002
Tony Kempster and Roberta BacicThe Truth Commission of Chile
To MA students, Centre for the Study of Forgiveness and Reconciliation
School of International Studies and Law, Coventry University
22 May 2002Truth and Reconciliation
Quaker Peace and Social Witness: Workers' Preparation
Sully Oak, Birmingham
2l August 2002

Chile: people, demonstrations, special memories and memorials of the missing ones.
(Photos from the personal archive of Roberta Bacic, acquired over the last 12 years)

People

(All from the 9th and 10th regions.)

1. Jovita Ruiz Huichacán, a peasant woman from the south. She is the sister of the detained disappeared / Luis Aros Huichacán. Pictured in front of her humble home.

2. Jovita Ruiz, her children and grandson in front of their rural home in Entre Lagos.

Roberta Bacic

The Villa Grimaldi, now a park for Peace, was the CNI's (secret police) torture centre in Chile. I will share with you what I felt during my first visit to the Villa Grimaldi since it was handed over to civil society.

Much or nothing could be said. The issue does not allow neutrality or impartiality.

Marwan Darweish

On 28 September 2001 the Palestinians commemorated the first anniversary of the second Intifada with more people killed and injured adding to the already hundreds of deaths and the thousands injured during this year.

The characteristic of this Intifada in contrast with previous Palestinian confrontations with the Israeli occupation is the extraordinarily high number of civilian casualties within both the Palestinian and Israeli societies. This was due to an excessive use of violence during the first year of this Intifada.

Andrew Rigby

When Osama Bin Laden threatens that there will be no security for the USA until "we live it and see it in Palestine" he is striking a chord that resonates throughout the Arab (and Muslim) world.

Entrevista/Bernhard Giesen HECTOR PAVON. De la Redacción de Clarín.

Bernhard Giesen es un sociólogo alemán con una mirada entrenada en avistar las consecuencias de la barbarie. Vino a Buenos Aires para participar del Segundo Encuentro Internacional sobre la Construcción de la Memoria Colectiva, organizado por la Comisión Provincial por la Memoria. Giesen es autor de 'Los intelectuales' y la 'Nación, Triunfo y trauma' (ambos sin traducir al español), es profesor de las Universidades de Constanza (Alemania) y Yale.