Justice for all

The task of a truth commission is an arduous one: it involves creating from a set of subjective memories, often blurred by time and marked by trauma, a common narrative that will no longer divide society.

Over the past three decades, in the course of media and scholarly discussions on settling accounts with the past, the institution most frequently invoked has been the truth commission. The origins of that concept should be sought in the bringing of the military dictatorship of Argentina to account in 1983. However, the truth commission owes its ‘international career’ to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, which functioned in 1995-2000 under the leadership of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Popularity

The ability for perpetrators to obtain amnesty in exchange for full disclosure of the truth about their crimes, public hearings evolving into religious ceremonies, and finally the charismatic chairman - all this meant that over the years South Africa and its truth commission were presented as a model solution to be used in other countries.

It is worth noting that many of its ideas had been used earlier in committees of inquiry in Great Britain and its former colonies. The popularity of the truth commission and continuing academic deliberation as to what exactly such a commission should be has led to the widespread creation of public and private institutions bearing that name.
Truth commissions have dealt with the causes of slavery in Mauritius (reaching back as far as 1638!), evaluated the issues of doping in cycling or paedophilia in the Irish Church.
The associated devaluation of the concept makes it difficult to determine the number of truth commissions involved in settling accounts with the past. However, 22 truth commissions can be identified, operating in 21 countries around the world. They share several characteristics: they are public institutions (appointed by the State or an international organisation), they are extraordinary, they operated for a defined period of time, they are set up during a time of transformation, also after a period of authoritarian rule, as in the case of post-conflict peace-building; they deal with human rights violations in the past and focus on the victims of these violations. As can be seen, not all of commissions identify the perpetrators of crimes (some even omit this issue), and only two (in South Africa and Kenya) had the right to grant conditional amnesty. The last truth commission was established in Brazil in November 2011.

Compromise

Historically, the greatest threat to settling accounts with the past is the emergence of the phenomenon known as victor's justice. After a former authoritarian regime has given up power, following the signing of a peace agreement, ‘after every war someone has to clean up’ (W. Szymborska).

The desire to obtain quick redress for grievances leads to self-appointed courts, show trials and witch hunts without guaranteeing the rights of offenders, without seeking to justify their circumstances, without regard for the future.
Revenge by some generates a sense of grievance in others; it creates a vicious circle which in the long term prevents reconciliation. Truth commissions are usually established on the basis of a worked-out compromise that in all appearances may seem unacceptable.

Acknowledging social peace and future reconciliation as the highest values, they try not to violate the agreements of transformation. The former opposition accounted for one-half of the members of Chile's truth commission and people involved in the Pinochet regime made up the other half. The representatives of various racial and religious groups sat next to each other in the commission in South Africa. These commissions were also careful about naming the perpetrators (making it possible to investigate the fate of the victims of the Chilean junta).
Truth commissions are sometimes accused of maintaining the impunity of perpetrators. However, in situations following internal conflict, when any criminal proceedings could threaten a return to violence (such danger existed for example in El Salvador), or if after the departure of authoritarian rule the armed or security forces continued to protect their interests (as in the countries of South America), the establishment of a truth commission becomes the optimum solution - as often pointed out by political journalists - second only to the courts.

The right to the truth

During a period of authoritarian rule, when judges cooperate with the authorities to cover up their transgressions and government officials deny that they ever took place, a truth commission, with the participation of recognised spiritual and secular authorities, seeks to bring this truth to light. Initially, commissions were limited to collecting data from police and military archives, carrying out interviews with the families of the victims and exhumations.

Since the establishment of the commission in South Africa, public hearings have become their most distinguishing characteristic. At such hearings, victims are able to present their truth about the crimes carried out, and the perpetrators are able to explain what guided them. From both of these monologues a truth commission is able to produce a new narrative: the truth about the past. This reference to subjective truths, to people’s memories, has allowed the past to be talked about in a language different from that of dry NGO reports or those found in secret-police files. Hearings held by truth commissions have become spectacles: they have revealed all the drama of what being a victim and a victimiser is all about. Addressing the motivations of individual people is perhaps the greatest achievement in the history of these commissions.

It is not difficult to note that the task of a truth commission is an arduous one: from a set of subjective memories, often blurry after many years and marked by trauma, to produce an intersubjective narrative that will no longer divide society. Although the role of the members of truth commissions has been entrusted to authority figures, this has not protected them from accusations that they lack impartiality in the creation of narratives about the past. Even the model commission of South Africa was seen by the white population, according to a 1999 study, as a tool of revenge.

The voice of victims

In a criminal case, typically the accused is th4e central figure, round whom the proceedings take place. But truth commissions were set up give a voice to the victims. The fact that they were not judicial bodies gave them the opportunity to function on a more flexible basis: they have often been compared to a treatment and healing process. However, giving a voice to the victims has led to two paradoxes which seem to have diminished the popularity of truth commissions as a means of reconciliation in the early twenty-first century.

The first paradox concerned the perpetrator-victim relationship. In Chile and Argentina, the division was clear: the victims were mostly left-wing opposition activists, whilst officers of the security forces and the army were the perpetrators. However, very soon it turned out that these categories were not mutually exclusive. In El Salvador, both parties to the conflict were guilty of crimes; in Sierra Leone it was not possible to even identify which of the warring factions was the government side; the truth commission of South Africa faced the problem of human rights violations carried out by activists as an expression of opposition to apartheid; in Ecuador there emerged the problem of extensive ranks of police informers.

It turned out that being the perpetrator and the victim is not as straightforward as it seemed at the beginning of transformation.

The second paradox is associated with the mechanics of a commission's operation. The more flexible and open the procedure is to the voice of the victims, the smaller the range of guarantees of a fair trial for the perpetrator. Can one then evaluate the past by violating human rights and making the past offender the present victim? Faced with that dilemma, successive truth commissions have developed a set of procedural guarantees, which have ultimately made commission procedures resemble criminal proceedings.

The functioning of a truth commission shows that human rights violations are not made in a vacuum. Its effects do not apply only to the perpetrator and the victim, but cover the whole of society. Therefore, a commission operates in public, it makes its reports available, and its meetings take on a solemn character. A truth commission is the beginning of a new history for the whole of society, in order to prevent it from returning to authoritarianism or conflict.

MARCIN KOMOSA holds a doctorate in political science and is a cultural anthropologist, the author of the monograph Sprawa Pinochet. Odpowiedzialność za naruszenia praw człowieka (The Case of Pinochet. Responsibility for violating human rights) 2005, and the book Komisja prawdy. Mechanizm odpowiedzialności za naruszenie praw człowieka (The Truth Commission. A mechanism of responsibility for human rights violations) 2013.

The text in Polish was published in a special Genealogies of Memory supplement in the latest issue of Tygodnik Powszechny on 11.12.2013.