From the Colonization of Africa to Richard von Weizsäcker

Germany hasn’t processed its colonial past the way it confronted Nazi-era crimes. A search for traces in Berlin.

Pierre Hazan,

“You will be locked up in a room for exactly 60 minutes. This room contains several locks, doors, and devices. Your goal is to solve all the quests in order to escape the room. You will find hidden […]

When business helped a genocide

The technical department of Topf und Söhne in June 1940. Under the Nazi, the German company became an indispensable helper in mass murder in concentration camps.

Pierre Hazan,

The German company Topf and Sons contributed to the efficiency of the gas chambers and the cremation of its victims in Nazi Germany. The former buildings of their headquarters […]

March 24th, 2022|Uncategorized|Comments Off on When business helped a genocide

FRANCE-ALGERIA: HAVING THE COURAGE TO CREATE A TRUTH AND MEMORY COMMISSION

Pierre Hazan,

France is still struggling with the memory of its past in Algeria. For decades, and despite the evidence, the official story has been of “operations to maintain order”, even though this war claimed an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 lives between 1954 and 1962, including nearly 25,000 French soldiers, and forced one and a half million “pieds-noirs” […]

October 16th, 2021|Actualités, Press EN, Press EN, Press EN, Press EN, Press EN, Press EN, Press EN, Press EN, Press EN, Press EN, Press EN|Comments Off on FRANCE-ALGERIA: HAVING THE COURAGE TO CREATE A TRUTH AND MEMORY COMMISSION

2011: the Peace Conference in the Basque Country

Pierre Hazan,

Ten years already.

I have strong memories of the Aieté conference. 

First, I liked the inversion of symbols. On October 17, 2011, the peace process took possession of what was once General Franco’s summer residence in San Sebastian. It was here that one of the key stages in ending the Basque conflict was played out in […]

October 13th, 2021|Actualités, Press EN|Comments Off on 2011: the Peace Conference in the Basque Country

MAKING GOOD USE OF AMNESTIES IN PEACE PROCESSES

Pierre Hazan,

According to the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, amnesty is – in theory – prohibited for perpetrators of serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. In practice, explains transitional justice expert Pierre Hazan, the reality is much more nuanced. Amnesty is and will remain an often necessary component of peace […]

April 18th, 2020|News, News|Comments Off on MAKING GOOD USE OF AMNESTIES IN PEACE PROCESSES

GUANTANAMO: INTO THE HEART OF A JUDICIAL FRANKENSTEIN

Pierre Hazan,

Tortured prisoners, lawyers being spied on, redacted indictments (including for the judges), and the CIA deciding if debates should be public at Guantanamo. A recent analysis in the “Cahiers de la justice” review paints a monstrous portrait of the judicial machinery in place since 2001 for the prisoners of the American enclave on Cuba.

What […]

January 29th, 2019|Uncategorized|Comments Off on GUANTANAMO: INTO THE HEART OF A JUDICIAL FRANKENSTEIN

REVISING THE PAST: A SWISS RESPONSE TO A GLOBAL DEBATE

Louis Agassiz, 1870

Pierre Hazan,

To what extent should we take down statues, change the names of streets, towns and mountains when they bear the names of people who contributed to human misery? The spectacular removal in Charlottesville, US, of a statue of General Lee, a pro-slavery hero of the American South, is far from the only case. The debate is ongoing in several countries. But Switzerland has found its own, very Swiss response.

How much should we wipe out the past according to the values of the present? The question is not new, but it has taken on a new resonance in Switzerland. Louis Agassiz was long a respected personality in the country. Born in canton Fribourg in 1807, he emigrated to the United States and was one of the fathers of the natural sciences in the 19th century. His reputation might have remained intact if Swiss historian Hans Fässler had not in 2007 shed light on the openly racist theories of the scientist, who called Africans a “degenerate race”, opposed mixed marriages and offered scientific support for the so-called Jim Crow laws which institutionalized anti-black racism in the southern United States. Hans Fässler therefore decided to set up the “Take down Louis Agassiz” committee, which proposed to get the scientist’s name removed from prestigious places. It suggested changing the name of the Agassiz peak, rising to 4,000 metres in the Bernese Alps, to Rentyhorn, after a slave that Agassiz photographed as a so-called demonstration of the inferiority of black people. The committee also suggested that Agassiz, who was one of the first glaciologists, be excluded from the Swiss Alpine Club, where his name figures as an honorary member.

The “Take down Louis Agassiz” committee failed almost everywhere. The Alpine club, for example, refused to “falsify history”. But the University of Neuchâtel is an exception: since the beginning of September, the Espace Louis-Agassiz – a street on which the university’s Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences is located – has been renamed Espace Tilo Frey, after one of the first women MPs in Switzerland whose mother was Cameroonian and who was a pioneer of women’s and minority rights.

SWISS COMPROMISE

The Neuchâtel authorities explained that this “exceptional” name change was because the university’s reputation could suffer, especially in the US where Agassiz developed the theories that were used to back racism and racial segregation. The bust of the botanist and glaciologist nevertheless remains at the university, as well as a big portrait at the museum of natural history.

The merit of this typically Swiss compromise is that it does not wipe out the memory of Louis Agassiz, but recognizes in him both his qualities as a great scientist and the strength of the prejudices that inhabited him, helping to feed and back the disease of racism which our societies have not yet wiped out. It is to the “Take down Louis Agassiz” committee’s credit that it opened the debate. By failing almost everywhere, perhaps it even better fulfilled its goal, since what is important is not to eradicate the past but to learn from it. Can the Swiss compromise be applied elsewhere? Not necessarily. The crystallization of tensions between white supremacists and antiracists in Charlottesville over the statue of General Lee demonstrates this. Finding a balance between remembrance and eradication, between glorification and contextualization is all the more difficult in societies where symbols serve as identity markers for the battles of today.

September 20th, 2018|Uncategorized|Comments Off on REVISING THE PAST: A SWISS RESPONSE TO A GLOBAL DEBATE

UN SCHIZOPHRENIA AND THE CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL JUDGES

 

Swearing in of ICC judges, March 9, 2018

Pierre Hazan, 

International criminal justice puts forward the idea of universal, detached justice delivered by judges who are themselves completely independent and impartial because they are not part of the reality of societies at war whose crimes they judge. But the practices of the United Nations, international and mixed tribunals are questionable in terms of this ideal of justice.

The blindfold on the eyes of Justice is a symbol of impartiality. It signifies that justice is (or should be) delivered objectively, without fear or favour, independently of the identity, power or weakness of the accused persons: justice, like impartiality, is blind. This presupposition is strongly affirmed by the UN, which has put in place specific procedures to choose international judges. A Commission of experts composed of a majority of former international judges examines new candidates to ensure the morality, independence and impartiality of these men and women. In the case of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the judges are nominated by the States, but in other international jurisdictions they can also be nominated by “eminent persons”. The selected candidates are then interviewed behind closed doors by an ad hoc committee of three people, and judged according to their skills, independence and moral uprightness, independently of race, ethnicity or religion. This stateless justice claims to be fundamentally universal and impartial.

A closer look nevertheless reveals a much more nuanced image of the judges’ selection. The first set of judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia did not include any judge from the Orthodox or Muslim religions, as if their religion might taint their impartiality and independence in terms of the way the UN sees public perception of impartiality and independence. Strangely, four of the ICTY judges were from countries with big Muslim populations, but the Egyptian was Copt, the Pakistani Zoroastrian, the Malaysian Buddhist and the Nigerian Christian. At the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which is a mixed Lebanese-UN court, the Lebanese authorities selected the judges according to community quotas (Christian, Shia and Sunni), which again is far from the dictates of international law. As we mentioned in a previous article, Swiss judge Robert Roth was forced to resign because, in the eyes of the court president, the fact his wife is Jewish could taint public perception of an independent, impartial tribunal charged with prosecuting crimes in Lebanon.

CAN A JUDGE REALLY BE DETACHED?

In reality, the international courts are caught in a contradiction. They are subject to constant tension. Their very essence rests on the idea of universal, detached justice. But is it possible for a judge to be in a position of radical exteriority? Recurrent criticisms in Africa that the ICC is neo-colonialist also reflect the fact that the law imposed by colonial powers in the 19th century was designed to consolidate, justify and organize European domination. As the saying goes, justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done. This implies that the perception of the concerned populations is a central concern. If the work of the international tribunals is not “owned” by the societies most affected, they lose their moral authority, their real and symbolic effectiveness and, at the end of the day, their reason to exist.

But up to what point should public perception of justice be taken into account?

Where should the line be drawn without falling into a hysterical debate about the current or past origins of judges, their spouses or other members of their family? Should these perceptions be combatted in the name of respecting the norms of international law or, on the other hand, should they be embraced, with the risk that they end up leading to a withdrawal into community origins, where judges are labelled according to their origins? United Nations practice has been to preach a norm without ever putting it into practice. The UN, without ever recognizing it, has tried to reconcile two contradictory objectives, namely respect for the rules of International Humanitarian Law and how it sees perception of a court by the population. The tension provoked by these two contradictory objectives has led to an unsatisfactory – because arbitrary – situation, which reflects both the impossibility of completely detached justice and the risk of withdrawal into identity and negation of the very idea of justice.

NAVIGATING TWO PITFALLS

In its work, the UN and international courts have thus had to navigate for better or for worse between these two pitfalls. The ICTY selected judges who knew very little about the Balkans, with the risk that they lack the tools to lead the cases of which they were in charge. The International Criminal Court (ICC) faces the same challenge today. It is difficult for European or Asian judges to understand the complexities of Central African society or how communities in the western DRC provinces of the Kivus operate, how armed groups were formed, their organization and command structure, what scope the police and army have. It was to respond to this need and make justice more relevant to local populations that mixed or hybrid courts were created from the end of the 1990s, notably in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia Herzegovina and Lebanon, with the risk – sometimes a reality – that these hybrid tribunals pay a political price for being in the country concerned.

From this point of view, the experience of international criminal justice in the Balkans holds a lot of lessons. The ICTY proved unable to sanction the perpetrators of crimes committed by the UCK Albanian rebels because information from the tribunal leaked out too quickly and intimidated witnesses withdrew from trials. And so, under pressure from the United States and the European Union, a special tribunal was set up to judge the perpetrators of war crimes. It is officially part of Kosovo’s judicial system but is based in The Hague, presided by a Bulgarian judge and with an American prosecutor. This complicated formula is designed to square the circle: create a tribunal for Kosovo without Kosovars, for fear that it be infiltrated and manipulated by elements linked to the former rebels, so as to deliver justice to victims of the UCK. Given that ICTY justice from outside the country failed, does a mixed Kosovo tribunal without Kosovars have more chance of success? The challenges for international justice are only just beginning…

May 19th, 2018|News|Comments Off on UN SCHIZOPHRENIA AND THE CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL JUDGES

Swiss judge delivers harsh criticism of Lebanon Tribunal

Pierre Hazan,

Robert Roth, professor of law at the University of Geneva and former judge of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has for the first time explained why he resigned from that court in September 2013. He points in particular to a lack of independence of the STL, which he says has succumbed to multiple political […]

May 18th, 2018|Uncategorized|Comments Off on Swiss judge delivers harsh criticism of Lebanon Tribunal

Democratic Recession and Transitional Justice

Pierre Hazan,

In an article that made an impact, American political sociologist Larry Diamond says that since 2006 we have been living through a “democratic recession”. The events of the past few weeks prove him right. The nomination to the post of US Secretary of State of Mike Pompeo, a supporter of torture, and of Gina […]

March 16th, 2018|Uncategorized|Comments Off on Democratic Recession and Transitional Justice