The Importance of the Memorialization Process in Transitional Justice
Patrick Burgess
President and co-founder Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR.)
Transitional justice refers to all of the initiatives that a society takes to try to deal with a legacy of mass violations, including prosecuting those responsible for the crimes; investigating, revealing and sharing the truth about what happened; reparations, or taking effective and appropriate steps to repair the lives of victims, and reforming society and institutions so that the violations do not recur.
As we all know memories fade with time, and societies that have experienced mass atrocities use a range of methods and initiatives to remember them. We need to ensure that we do not forget what took place and keep the lessons learned in our field of vision so that when the root causes and indicators become apparent again steps can be taken to try to avoid a recurrence of violations. We also need assistance to acknowledge and respect for the victims. In the context of transitional justice, we use the term memorialization to refer to initiatives that are designed to reminds us of the mass violations that have occurred, the background, root causes and contributing factors, helping us to continue to honour the suffering of victims and draw inspiration from their courage.
Memorialization can take many forms. They may include:
- Statues of inspirational heroes, victims, groups or symbolic representations of events, periods or issues in a public place;
- Artwork, sculpture, music, and other forms of creative expression that stimulate memory;
- Museums and exhibits that combine various objects, written materials, film, photographs, audio visual inputs, explanations and commentaries including direct accounts of victims;
- Use of particular places, such as graves, buildings geographical sites etc to focus memory particular issues or experiences;
- Events and activities such as a day of remembrance, or a day dedicated to victims;
- Other forms of memorials that may have meaning to a small group, communities, nations or internationally.
Memorials are part of the holistic transitional justice framework and contribute to all of the four pillars of the framework in different ways. Those who work on the ground in contexts where mass crimes have been committed know that the major challenge to achieving prosecutions is building the national political will to prosecute. Although there is a lot of focus on the mechanisms such as legal base and courts we know that unless there is the political will and public support no prosecutions will be possible. Memorials can keep the experience of what has taken place alive, contributing to the advocacy that can make prosecutions possible.
Memorials also contribute in a major way to the truth-seeking pillar as investigating and establishing the truth is relatively meaningless unless it is shared and acted upon. Memorials are very often a vehicle of sharing the truth, reminding us of what happened and stimulating us to look more deeply into those events. Some forms of memorials, such as museums, can link to a great deal of material related to the truth and communicate it to many thousands of people.
Memorials are also a form of reparations as they can help us to remember the suffering of victims, to acknowledge what happened to them and draw inspiration from the courage and commitment of survivors. The memorials also contribute to the fourth pillar of the TJ framework, guarantees of non-repetition, by reminding us of the cost when an authoritarian government is allowed to take power, the rule of law attacked, corruption allowed to increase etc. This can continue to inspire the society to take effective steps to avoid recurrence.
Some memorials are created from a zero base, creating something new. Others make use of existing places, building or objects. For example, gravestones, or sites of mass burials can be transformed by highlighting the significance of the person who died, or the manner in which a group was treated or the resting place of a hero. Introducing the viewer to the individual victims and learning a little about them at a grave site can help stimulate an imaginary picture, personalizing the experience and bringing a human meaning to historical narratives which otherwise may be dry and less interesting.
One example of an interactive experience at a burial site is the grave of Victor Jara, a famous Chilean singer-songwriter, theatre director, poet and teacher who was murdered by agents of the government of the dictator Augusto Pinochet. Jara was arrested, tortured and then shot with his body thrown out onto the streets of a poor neighbourhood. Visitors to the memorial at his gravesite are encouraged to remember Jara life and death, contemplate the experiences of the dictatorship and to write short messages, poems or songs or leave flowers or other objects at the grave. The opportunity for visitors to reflect and take some participatory action rather than just look or read in a passive manner makes the experience more complex, memorable and lasting.
Not all memorials are large imposing statues or buildings constructed by governments. Local communities have expressed the need to remember heroes and victims for thousands of years. In many places around the world communities create ‘home grown’ memorials such as small carvings, crosses, piles of stones or simple structures to commemorate events or people who may have been attacked or killed at those spots whilst struggling in the fight for freedom and justice. Those small-scale memorials are often constructed in the dirt streets of villages, in the crossroads of mountain passes where massacres took place and at local burial grounds, churches and buildings.
Sometimes the meaning of places or buildings have great significance for local people but may not even be recognizable to others who are not aware of the history. For example, the torture centre at the Rumah Gedung in Aceh, which looks like an ordinary building but is well known to all locals due to its dark past as a torture centre of the Indonesian military, can provide a strong message that the violations of the past should never be repeated again. Although local people living nearby had heard the horrific stories of the use the Rumah Gedung it was not until the current Aceh Truth and Reconciliation Commission focused programs on the historical use of the building that the broader population became aware of the truth concerning its history. It may be that one of the recommendations of the TRC will be for the Rumah Gedung to be preserved as a memorial site, combining the truth-seeking function with ongoing memory.
The places, objects and activities will not achieve their goals of promoting memory, reflection and analysis unless they are accompanied by discussions, reading, reflection, performances etc that lead the population to remember what has happened, honour the victims, reflect on the root causes and renew commitments of “never again,” or in Spanish “nunca mas,” which was the title of the final report of the worlds’ first truth and reconciliation commission, in Argentina.
Memorialization can also be achieved not through places or objects but activities. For example, a national day of remembrance may be declared, or there might be cultural or sporting events to commemorate a cause or particular events. Examples include the Australian “National Sorry Day” celebrated on May 26 every year commemorates the historic injustices suffered by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were forcibly removed from their families in pursuance of years of government policy. The suffering of thousands of victims was investigated by a National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Children from their Families that produced a landmark report: “Bringing Them Home:” in 1997.1 This is another example of effective memorialization through the Sorry Day program that was made possible by official truth-seeking mechanism.
One of the key goals of transitional justice is the establishment of an accurate historical truth about what has taken place. Very often the truth is distorted or repressed by those who bear responsibility for the violations or have different perspectives on what has taken place. Contested narratives often are represented in memorials and as time passes and the truth emerges and is shared the question of what to do with those memorials arises.
For example, in 2020 following the killing of George Floyd and the rapid mobilization of the Black Lives Matter movement in a range of US cities many statues of prominent figures who had been slave-owners or advocates of racist policies and practices were torn down. Many people demonstrated a highly emotional opposition to the continued honouring of individuals who had supported such abhorrent policies and practices, even though they have for generations been respected and, in some cases, hailed as heroes. Others found those actions to be contradictory to their sense of history and the contribution of the persons who were represented in the memorials.
Another example of a memorial that portrays a contested version of history is in Hanoi, Vietnam, the site of one of a small number of museums in the world dedicated to women. The museum provides many photographs, film exhibit and other items representing the experience of victims and witnesses to the arrival of US warships and commencement of the bombing of their villages, which were recorded on film. The version of the truth put forward by those victims are vastly different from the accounts in many history books in the United States. In the museum in Hanoi I heard one woman’s account of alien craft arriving and sending balls of fire onto the coastal villages that were filled with civilians. The inhabitants could not understand what was happening. At that time all of the men in the villages had left to participate in the war effort. Photographs and film show the women loading large shells in artillery guns and learning how to fire them from the beaches to protect themselves. The contested history in US war museums provides a version of history through the eyes of US government officials and servicemen, some of whom fought bravely and suffered great losses and even their lives. The different memorials provide vastly differing accounts of the same historical episodes.
In some situations, presenting a memorial based on a particular historical narrative can cause significant suffering for victims. The inhabitants of Sri Lanka are predominantly Buddhist Singhalese who make up around 75% of the population with the Hindu Tamils living in the northern and eastern areas making up approximately 11%. At the end of a decades long war between government military forces and separatist ‘Tamil Tigers’ a military offensive was conducted by the government forces against the ‘Tigers’ on a strip of land where they were trapped. Up to an estimated 40,000 civilians were killed during this final military campaign, giving rise to calls by many countries, the UN and the EU that there must be a full investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the war crimes committed against those innocent civilians.
After the conflict had ended the Sri Lankan government constructed statues of a number of ‘military heroes’ that had been centrally involved in the final attacks, in prominent places on the streets in areas of the north where many Tamil victims live. Victims I spoke to in those areas said that they felt that the erection of the statues intensified the suffering and grief that they felt. This was because the victims knew that some of those persons were implicated as perpetrators of war crimes committed against them and their families. This was an unnecessary affront to them and a block to healing. In this situation the Sri Lankan government intended the memorialisation to pay homage to persons that they considered ‘heroes.’ Great care needs to be taken in relation to memorialization of military figures or those who have been actively involved in a conflict in areas where there are many victims. In addition to the potential to amplify the suffering of the victims those kinds of memorialization programs can hinder the stated goals of reconciliation and increase levels of resentment, deepening the division and hatred caused by the violations.
Many museums include a ‘walk-through’ exhibit that can provide the participant some level of understanding of the victims of the violations. Powerful examples include the museums in Washington and Berlin dedicated to remembering the more than six million victims of the regime of Nazi Germany during the ‘Holocaust.’
Examples of powerful ‘walk through’ exhibits in museums that provide an effective form of memorialization in the Asia region include the Bangladesh “Liberation War Museum (LWM)” in Dhaka and the Centro Nasional Cega (CNC) in the old Comarca prison building in Timor Leste. Those two museums provide interesting examples of how ongoing memorialization can be mixed with other transitional justice programs.
The LWM in Dhaka commenced as a program of a non-government civil society organization dedicated to the victims of the conflict in 1971 when an estimated three million people died during the conflict related to the separation of the new state of Bangladesh from Pakistan. The LWM was established in 1996 and for many years operated from a simple and relatively small office where they ran programs of truth seeking, advocacy for justice and reform. One interesting program provided an opportunity for school children to record the accounts of their grandparents in relation to the mass violations. More than 60,000 victim stories were recorded by the children and the LWM assisted the schools to bind the stories from the school into a book for each, creating a living memory to the experience of the victims. The LWM also uses buses to travel around the country providing truth seeking outreach and education programs. More recently in 2018 the organization opened a major new state of the art museum with audio-visual walk-through exhibits. Thousands of victims and witnesses across the country have donated items to contribute to the memorials.
From 2000 to 2003 I was the Principal Legal Counsel at the Timor Leste Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CAVR.) During the preparation phase for the Commission a decision was made to restore the old Comarca Portuguese era prison that had been used as a torture centre by the Indonesian military during the 24 -year occupation. It was decided to transform the old torture centre to serve as the offices of the truth commission. The renovation of the old prison took place, with two ‘dark cells’ left as they had been during the time of the violations. Visitors can go into the cells and close the door, leaving them in the damp blackness to imagine the terror of those who had been left there following sessions of torture with electric shocks or worse. In the centre of the prison staff of the truth commission planted a new garden, which became a symbol of the transformation of the society, being able to “grow flowers in a prison torture centre.”
After the three-year work of the CAVR was completed the Comarca building became a human rights museum with a walk-through exhibit that explained the invasion, occupation and violations year by year, giving an impression of ‘walking through the history’ of the nation and the trajectory and patterns of violations. The building also now houses the library and archives of the CAVR, including the more than 8,000 witness statements, historical documents, photographs and videos. The Comarca building now also houses the new institution, the CNC which is one of only a small number of post truth commission permanent institutions dedicated to ensuring that the impact of the commission’s work is not lost. Following the closure of the truth commission It took ten years of constant advocacy by a civil society coalition to finally persuade the government to create the CNC, which now manages the memorial site, the museum, archives and education programs for schoolchildren who come to the Comarca and walk through the prison and its exhibits. Importantly, the CNC is recognized as a core government intuition, receives an annual government budget and implements a range of programs to monitor and assist with the implementation of truth commission recommendations. The experience of Timor Leste provides valuable guidance to other contexts as too often the extremely valuable work of a truth commission does not provide a base for the important memorialization, reparations education and prevention work because no mechanism is established to undertake that work. The CNC housed in the old Comarca torture centre is a living example of memorialization mixed with other parts of the TJ framework.
It is estimated that the Khmer Rouge killed at least 1.7 million innocent Cambodian civilians in a few short years during the 1970’s. In response to those events the UN and the Cambodian government established the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC,) a hybrid court set up to try the leaders of the Khmer Rouge for the crimes they committed. In addition, there has been a major program of documentation and gathering of evidence by Cambodian civil society organizations such as the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DCCam.) In addition, a number of striking and very moving memorials have been organized. These include preservation of some of the sites of mass graves of the “killing fields” and the famous museum at Tuel Sleng where visitors can see rows and rows of human skulls and photographs of faces, as the Khmer Rouge meticulously recorded each of the persons they tortured and killed in that centre.
Some years ago, I conducted a series of workshops for those who were involved with and would contribute to the hybrid court, the ECCC. As part of the process I put up four large sheets of paper around the room, one representing each of the four elements of the transitional justice framework: Truth-seeking, Prosecution, Reparations, and Reforms that can assist non-recurrence. Forty participants were asked to walk around and place ticks on the area that they felt was most important for Cambodia. The results were that more than 30 of the 40 participants chose Truth-Seeking. This process was repeated in a number of workshops, always with the same result. I remember being shocked at the time, as the facilitator of those events I expected that the demand for justice and reparations for victims would be the major priorities of the informed human rights defenders who were the participants.
After visiting the museum at Tuel Sleng I reflected on the fact that the exhibits and the visits to the “killing fields” tell the story, to some degree of ‘what happened’ in Cambodia. However, the way that they are organized do not examine the root causes, contributing factors and reasons why such a thing could happen in Cambodia. The memorials are very moving and help to focus on the memory of the events but the failure to examine the deeper truth in relation to the history of Cambodia is a major gap. Memorialization must be combined with effective truth seeking or its impact will be limited. In Cambodia this has led to a number of young people now rejecting that the genocide and the killing fields ever happened at all. In the words of one young person I spoke to “It could not be possible for Khmer people to do that to other Khmers. It cannot be true and was made up for political purposes.” There is a massive amount of historical material, photographs, videos, witness and victim stories to reinforce the historical truth that the mass extermination carried out by the Khmer Rouge did in fact take place. Memorials like Tuel Sleng are incredibly important and pass very powerful messages but they need to be linked to a deep national experience of exploring the complete truth about the violations, such as the processes conducted by well-implemented truth commissions.
There are many thousands of memorials that have been constructed across the globe to help us remember the victims who suffered, those killed and disappeared and the dark periods of history that allowed this to take place. I have only been able to refer to a very small number of examples in this paper but each does, I believe, demonstrate that memorials are an essential tool to assist healing and that they are most effective when they are part of a holistic whole-of-society attempt to deal with the mass violations that includes all elements of the transitional justice framework.
1 National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Children from their Families 1997
https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.pdf
