Justiça de transição, por Anthony Pereira

[Music] so transitional justice is a concept which is generally associated with the period after World War two when through the Nuremberg trials and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights you had a global process of creating the norms the norms for international human rights through the various treaties at the at the United Nations and other acts I would say though the transitional justice as an idea not necessarily the words the phrase transitional justice but the idea of transitional justice is much older than that and an example I like to give is comes from Great Britain in

the 17th century when the monarchy was restored there was a period of 19 years when there was Republic after King Charles the first was executed in 1649 and when King Charles the second came back on the throne after this republican period his government passed an indemnity and Oblivion act in 1661 and what this act did was selectively punish those members of parliament who would sign and would participate in the trial of Charles the first the father of Charles a second and had him executed so 10 of these individuals were a lot of people were responsible

for this but 10 of them were executed and interestingly three of the conspirators they were seen as truth as traitors at the time by 1661 three of these people were already dead including Oliver Cromwell and they were dug up and hung in change from Tyburn as an example to other people who might want to have the King executed so there was also a part of the Act which forbade people to talk about the Republican period and the execution of the King so I used this example to show two things one is that there's a strongly

symbolic element in transition justice and there's it's also a form of mechanism that can be used for a variety of different political projects and different political regimes it's not only it's not necessarily only a mechanism used by democracies so to get to the definition of it I would say that one important way to think about transition justice is that it's a an attempt to address violence and human rights abuses in the past after a civil war or an authoritarian regime and we've seen and become more and more common now when you have this type of

transition if you go back to even as recently as the 60s and the 70s it's relatively uncommon for a new regime coming to power after a war or a Authority regime to want to do something about the past but now it's almost expected that something has to be done and the mechanisms that are used vary but they include trials of perpetrators of human rights abuses truth Commission's that try to investigate the past not necessarily to punish it but investigated memorials of some type to the victims might involve educational programs with the way people think about

the past it could include reparations for victims and their families it could also include and this happened in some of these two European countries purges of institutions like the own forces and the police where there's been responsibility for human rights abuses and so this forms a range of different options or ranging mechanisms that have been used especially in regimes that have come to power since the late 1970s and it's important to mention that Latin America is a leave it is probably the leading region in the world for innovation in transitional justice this argument is made

by Catherine synciq and her will the justice cascade and she argues that a large percentage of the human rights trials that have happened since 79 have happened in Latin America and some of the most important truth commissions have occurred in by America I think the consensus is this comes from petitioners book on unspeakable truths a first truth commission that she identifies is was the one in Uganda after Idi Amin's rule so she she argues that the truth mission he's created in Africa but some of the most important ones that we've had I've been in in

Latin America so there was truth commission that came to came to be to be after the Argentine military regime collapsed in 1983 and there was one in Chile in 1991 and those two examples were in the minds of the South African the Meuse of African regime that came to power in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected after the end of apartheid and they studied those of the Chilean and Argentine examples and they consulting with people who've been involved in the street commissions and they used those examples to create their own trade commission which had was

active later so each of these mechanisms have constant benefits there's a very good book by Martha Minow called between vengeance and sorry between forgiveness it's art between vengeance and forgiveness and I think that shows the two poles through which people trying to initiate transitional justice try to steer in other words they don't want past simply to be forgotten and to be silenced they want victims voices to be recognized they want the state to take responsibility for the crimes of the past but they also don't want they want justice to take place within the constitutional norms

using the established judicial organizations so that the acts that addressed the past are not at of vengeance they're not a form of mob rule they are part of the democratic rule of law and will build a foundation for the future and so people talk sometimes they'll say that justice justice is all about the past it's it's backward-looking justice most people would say it's also forward-looking justice because the intention is to create strong institutions create more respect for the rule of law and the rights so that the new regime whether attempters war after an authoritarian period

can be strong and and make the likelihood of repetition less likely that's why the phrase never again which was used immediately after World War two to talk about the Nazi atrocities has often been used in transitional justice in places like Brazil Chile and Argentina [Music] you [Music]