Responding to genocide: The role of institutions

George Chigas



In the aftermath of genocide, what are our primary objectives?

In the aftermath of genocide, our responses should be guided by two interrelated objectives. The first deals with the plight of individual survivors, primarily in terms of what is called “the process of healing.” This involves attempts to restore the survivor’s sense of self-worth and trust in others that were severely diminished during the genocide but are necessary for normal life. Affirming the truth of the genocide, the guilt of the perpetrators and the innocence of the victims are integral elements of this process. The second objective deals with issues of truth and justice on communal, national and international levels. This often manifests itself in efforts to fulfill the elusive promise of “never again.” Here, we find initiatives to build civil society, the rule of law and historical memory, both within the country where the genocide took place and on an international level. Both of these objectives are ongoing and unrelenting, and fully achieving them is perhaps impossible. Most survivors never fully heal or achieve “closure” in the aftermath of genocide. And the threat of future genocides is never fully vanquished.



What’s at stake as we pursue these objectives?

Despite the tremendous challenges to achieving our objectives, the stakes couldn’t be higher. For survivors, what’s at stake is the ability to exert some degree of control over the traumatic events that can disrupt their personal and family lives in very fundamental ways, from the ability to sleep at night to the ability to experience love and happiness. For the larger society (i.e., those who did not directly experience the crimes of the genocide), as well as survivors, what’s at stake has to do with our fundamental belief in the goodness of humanity and our capacity to prevent or at least deter what Raphael Lemkin identified as humanity’s most evil crime.



How effective have we been at achieving our objectives?

In the aftermath of genocide, we have seen survivors and members of the larger society, such as politicians, lawyers, academics, therapists, activists, concerned citizens, etc., working together to further the process of healing and the cause of justice. Despite our best efforts, however, our ability to further these central objectives has consistently fallen short. As the ongoing genocide in Darfur , Sudan , sadly attests, genocides continue to take place with alarming frequency and severity, and the growing number of survivors debilitated by traumatic experiences is in the tens of millions. Yet, genocide is an extremely complex problem that is as old as humankind, and our organized efforts to address these problems are relatively new. As far as we may have come over the last fifty years, we clearly have a long way to go. As we attempt to improve the effectiveness of our responses to genocide, we must constantly ask ourselves what helps and/or hinders our efforts to pursue our objectives and how does this happen.



How do institutions affect our efforts?

One conclusion that I keep coming back to is this: although the results of our efforts (both good and bad) are ultimately realized on a personal level, they are usually enabled and supported (financially, organizationally and otherwise) by established institutions (e.g., political and judicial systems, universities, foundations, publishers, etc), which, in turn, fundamentally help and/or hinder our individual efforts. It stands to reason that the more aware we are of the way these institutions influence our individual efforts, the more effective we will be in pursuing our ultimate objectives. As we consider how political, legal, academic and literary institutions influence our efforts to further the process of healing and the cause of justice, one of the first things we observe is the way these institutions function according to rules, priorities and conventions that are not always consistent with our objectives. In order to understand this better, we will look at each of these institutions in turn beginning with political institutions or governments.



How do political institutions (e.g., national and international governmental organizations) help our efforts to further the process of healing and the cause of justice?

Political institutions affect our efforts more than any other institution because they provide the overarching framework in which we conduct our activities. Without the support of governments it would be very difficult to obtain the necessary permission, financial and legal support, security, etc. to conduct our activities. Thus, political institutions exert the first and perhaps most profound influence on our efforts and have the greatest potential to help or hinder our objectives.



How do political institutions hinder our efforts?

Most people would agree that a government’s first responsibility is to safeguard its nation’s security and socio-economic interests. However, depending on its specific strategies for pursuing these objects, a government’s policies can prohibit or severely limit our efforts to further the process of healing and the cause of justice. The rationale for these policies can cover a wide range. At one end of the spectrum there may be a general disregard for victims and justice as the state single-mindedly pursues its political and economic priorities. At the other end, there may be a genuine attempt to take into account the needs of victims and the cause of justice as it attempts to safeguard its nation’s security and socioeconomic interests. For the most part, however, governmental priorities have historically subordinated the needs of victims and the cause of justice to the nation’s so-called strategic and national interests thereby hindering our efforts.



What can be done to minimize the extent to which political institutions hinder our efforts?

Until very recently, the needs of survivors and the cause of justice were seen to be in competition with the state’s vital interests. According to this thinking, a state must choose one or the other; you can’t have both. However, this assumption is being seriously challenged, and a new political perspective is emerging. Samantha Power has written extensively about the US government’s responses to genocide in the 20th century, arguing that the needs of survivors and civil society did not figure highly in an administration’s political calculus because the general public did not make responding to genocide more costly politically than the risks (e.g., economic, political, military, etc) inherent in responding to this most heinous of crimes. Darfur is instructive here as well. Since 2003, widespread public response to the genocide in Darfur , Sudan , has shown how organized public demands for effective government response to genocide that prioritizes the needs of victims and the cause of justice can change the political calculus. To wit, for the first time in history, an acting head of state has been indicted for the crime of genocide as it is taking place. Slowly but surely, the political framework for responding to genocide is being reconfigured as the cause of justice and the state’s vital interests are no longer seen to be in opposition. According to this argument, they are in fact directly linked, such that you can’t have one without the other. In a promising development along these lines, the new Obama administration, has argued that a state can be true to its ideals without compromising its security or national interests. This position represents an important and significant departure from traditional policies based on realpolitik. In terms of our discussion here, this shift in priorities has significant implications for the extent to which political institutions can help or hinder our efforts in the future.



How do legal institutions help our efforts to pursue the process of healing for survivors and the cause of justice?


While all of the institutions discussed here are important and necessary in different ways, legal responses can potentially provide the greatest direct help to our efforts to pursue healing and justice. It is important to note that in practice legal systems are often powerless without the support of political institutions. In the same way that political institutions provide the overarching framework for other efforts to pursue healing and justice, political institutions provide the necessary support to legal systems to open cases and pursue alleged perpetrators to stand trial. With political support, however, legal systems can help our efforts in ways that are not possible for any other institution. It is in the courtroom that the guilt of the perpetrators and the innocence of the victims are publically affirmed according to the rule of law. During the legal proceedings, evidence is presented and an official historical record is established. It is here that survivors, under oath, have the opportunity to bear witness to the crimes they suffered and have these crimes publically acknowledged by the larger society. In legal custody, perpetrators are for the first time stripped of their power and claims of impunity and held accountable for their crimes. In full public view, the self-worth of the victims, eradicated under the genocide, can be partially restored according to the rule of law. Upon the trial’s conclusion, the cause of justice is furthered as legal precedents are established that help to build the still-fragile body of international law against genocide and crimes against humanity. Thus, as with political systems, legal systems provide an essential context for pursuing our objectives. And like political systems, we find that the priorities and systemic realities of legal systems can both help and hinder our efforts.



How do legal institutions hinder our efforts?

As with political institutions, there is a range of systemic reasons why legal institutions do not always help our efforts as much as we would like. At one end of the spectrum is undue political influence on the legal process. Although legal systems are designed to be independent of political influence, this is only an ideal. In practice, political interference can delay or manipulate legal attempts to hold the perpetrators of genocide accountable for their crimes. If excessive political influence or corruption renders the trial illegitimate in the eyes of the domestic or international community, the testimony of the victims and the historical record established during the proceedings are also discredited. Nothing could be more harmful to the process of healing for survivors than to have their personal accounts of the crimes they experienced discredited and dismissed by the larger society.



At the other end of the spectrum are the legal system’s honest attempts to meet international standards of justice. Ironically, in some cases, the court’s attempts to ensure due process in accordance with established standards of justice can lead to delays and added costs that ultimately hinder the objectives of healing and justice. In the case of genocide, much of this problem can be attributed to the lack of precedent and experience in adjudicating these complex crimes. As legal systems struggle with these challenges, it is important for participants and observers to try as much as possible to take a pragmatic, long-term view. At the same time, as with the example of political institutions, it is important for the general public to hold the legal system to the highest standards possible.



It is a difficult and often frustrating process, especially for victims and their families, as we try to balance the pressing need for swift justice with the need to allow legal systems the time to build their capacity to handle these complex cases.



How do academic institutions help our efforts?

Academic institutions make an invaluable contribution to the process of healing and the cause of justice by providing the necessary resources for producing an accurate historical account of the genocide. We should note here that depending on the particular time and place, academic institutions are generally more independent of government support than legal institutions and are therefore able to respond to cases of genocide earlier and more freely than legal institutions. Historians and social scientist are often the first to conduct much of the primary research and analysis subsequently used by political institutions to formulate policy. Thus, academic institutions can influence the design of the overarching political framework in which our efforts, as well as those of other institutions, work. Additionally, once legal systems have the political support to pursue cases of genocide, they often depend heavily on the work of academics to determine the facts of each case. In these important ways, academic institutions help our efforts directly and vis-à-vis political and legal institutions by documenting the historical truth of the genocide in general and the responsibilities of individual perpetrators in particular. This help is essential to both the process of healing and the cause of justice.



How do academic institutions hinder our efforts?

As with political and legal systems, academic institutions can limit or hinder the process of healing and the cause of justice for a range of reasons. At one end of the spectrum is the politics of academia. Ideally, universities have an obligation to support the pursuit of knowledge and truth in an independent and unbiased way. In practice, universities have limited resources to provide to faculty to conduct their work and award these resources based on one’s status and ability to add to the institution’s prestige. Under these circumstances, even the most scrupulous academics in search of the historical truth are affected by the competition or infighting that can permeate the ivory towers of academia.



With an emotionally charged subject like genocide, the race to produce the definitive historical record or determine the underlying ideology and motivations of the genocidal state is all the more imperative and compelling. In pursuit of the prize, attention can become deflected from the kind of intellectual inquiry that fundamentally contributes to our understanding and knowledge of the events, and individual positions can become unnecessarily entrenched and personal.



At the other end of the spectrum is the academy’s honest obligation to “get it right.” Accomplished historians and social scientists feel a powerful responsibility to themselves, to the institution that represents them and to the cause of justice and truth to marshal all their intellectual capabilities and energy to contribute to a viable solution to this horrific problem. Again, however, because he stakes are so high, the ultimate purpose of one’s work can become deflected and become more focused on arguing the veracity of one’s theory and the failings of others. While intellectual debate is essential to the academy’s objective to further knowledge and truth, again, the debate can become overly personal at the expense of healing and justice.



How do literary institutions help our efforts?

Literary institutions (e.g., publishers, cultural institutions, etc) provide a much needed forum for survivors to bear witness to the crimes they experienced. In the form of memoires, autobiography and historical fiction, survivors are able to give voice to their experiences and in doing so begin to make sense of and gain a degree of control over the traumatic events that can be so disruptive to their daily lives. Also, by speaking on behalf of those who died, these writers are able to reconcile the conflict between speaking and silence that haunts many survivors. By publishing these personal accounts and making them available to the larger society, publishers enable the exchange between the larger society and survivors that is essential for the process of healing and the cause of justice.



How do literary institutions hinder our efforts?

As with the obligation of academic institutions to “get it right,” in an effort to safeguard the historical truth of the genocide and sacred memories of those who died, literary institutions can impose criteria that may be unnecessarily detrimental to our primary objectives of healing and justice. Terrence Des Pres has noted that responses to the Holocaust have long been governed by three implicit rules, namely the need to use a solemn tone, to be historically accurate and to treat the Holocaust as a unique event in history.



Of course, there are very good reasons for this. Using a solemn tone shows respect for the millions who suffered and died under the Nazis. Maintaining strict adherence to historical accuracy ensures that deniers and revisionists of these crimes will not be given the opportunity to undermine the truth of the events. And treating the Holocaust as a unique event prohibits comparisons with other events which can mitigate the absolute and unprecedented evil of the crimes committed. When representations of the Holocaust meet these governing criteria, they are considered legitimate and acceptable. When they do not, however, as with legal proceedings that fall short of minimal standards of justice, they may be rejected or possibly condemned for betraying the memory of those who died or, worse, assisting the perpetrators and their sympathizers in their attempt to produce revisionist accounts that erase these crimes from the historical record. Again, nothing could be worse for the process of healing or the cause of justice.



At the same time, however, these rules can also lead to the rejection of Holocaust representations that may not comply with these conventions, yet make a valuable contribution to our understanding of the events and ultimately the cause of justice. For example, until recently, the use of comedy to represent the Holocaust was considered unconscionable. Like historical revisionism, Holocaust laughter was believed to betray the dignity of the victims and the truth of the crimes they suffered.



What can be done to minimize the extent to which literary institutions limit our efforts?

Over time, exceptions have been made for representations that do not adhere to these criteria. There is now greater acceptance of Holocaust representations that do not use a solemn tone, such as Art Spiegleman’s Maus that uses a comic strip format to describe his personal account of the Holocaust. Another more recent example is Roberto Benigni’s 1997 film Life is Beautiful. In the film, an Italian Jewish family is brought to a Nazi death camp. In an effort to protect his son from the horrors of their predicament, the father convinces his son that they are engaged in a game in which the person with the most points for not complaining, running away, etc., wins a real tank. Some critics derided the film and its use of comedy as inappropriate at best and a naïve rejection of the reality of the Holocaust at worse. However, many more critics argued that the film is able to bring audiences closer to the horrific tragedy of the Holocaust than many other more conventional representations.



According to this argument, the father’s pathetic use of comedy effectively relates the sense of helplessness and powerlessness felt by parents during the Holocaust to protect their beloved children and provide for their happiness, a universal value shared by all. In this way, although the film does not add to our historical knowledge of the Holocaust, it does enable us to connect to the horror of the experience of the victims, which is typically seen as too horrible to understand and therefore beyond or outside of our lives. The point here is that the success of Life is Beautiful would not have been possible fifteen or twenty years ago when the conventions governing acceptable responses to the Holocaust were more narrow and rigid.



Summary

To summarize, we find that our efforts to further the process of healing and the cause of justice are both helped and hindered by the political, legal, academic and literary institutions that enable and support our efforts. Further, the way these institutions affect our efforts is a function of the priorities, rules and conventions that govern their activities.



Also, while some of the reasons these institutions hinder our efforts may be currently beyond our reach to change, in other cases, we have made progress in getting these institutions to change or revise their priorities to be more consistent with our common objectives. Finally, it is vitally important to understand that despite the limitations and shortcomings of these institutions, it is not an option to reject them. They are essential to our attempts to further our objectives. Accepting this reality and working with and within these institutions to enhance their capacities as we simultaneously work to further our objectives is one of the great challenges of our work. Taking a long-term, patient and pragmatic approach, while simultaneously balancing the need for timely and effective action, provides our best way forward.



Conclusions and general observations

To conclude this paper, I would like to suggest some general guidelines that seem to have been useful. As stated above, although our efforts to further our objectives are enabled and supported by institutions, on a day-to-day basis, they take place between individuals in the form of a personal exchange. Also, the exchange typically takes place in relation to an object (a policy, a trial, a law, a book, a film, a news article, etc) that has been sponsored and produced by the institution.



There are countless examples of these kinds of exchanges. In Cambodia , they will soon take place in high schools among teachers and students in reference to an historical account of the genocide written by Dy Khamboly. In addition, they are taking place in homes between survivors and their children in relation to news stories of Duch’s ongoing trial in the ECCC. They are taking place online between readers and critics in relation to Harper Collins’ publication of Loung Ung’s First They Killed My Father. They are taking place in universities among professors and students in relation to David Chandler’s and Ben Kiernan’s and Steve Heder’s published theories on the underlying ideology of the Khmer Rouge leadership. They are taking place in medical offices between therapists and survivors in relation to accounts of the crimes she witnessed as a child. In other words, these individual exchanges can and do take place in countless contexts and in countless ways.



My central argument here is that the extent to which these exchanges help or hinder the process of healing and the cause of justice is a function of how well we, as individuals, understand and respond to the influences exerted by these larger institutions on our efforts. The work of DC-Cam’s staff to document mass graves and prisons throughout the country; interview survivors and perpetrators in distant villages; engage the general population in the day-to-day events of the Khmer Rouge trials; work with domestic and international governments, legal systems, universities, etc, certainly provides an excellent model to emulate . As I follow the work of DC-Cam’s research and documentation teams to document the events of the genocide, preserve memory and pursue truth and justice, it seems to me that some of the key elements of their success are: their humility and awareness of their limitations; the patient persistence of their efforts to build institutional and community capacity; the importance they place on being good listeners and promoting compassion and mutual respect; their pragmatic approach based on the understanding that the process of healing and the cause of justice are life-long pursuits; etc. These values and methods will certainly be invaluable to Cambodia ’s teachers as they embark on this important phase of their country’s growth and development.



George Chigas. Served as Associate Director of Yale University ’s Cambodia Genocide Program (CGP), professor at the University of Massachusetts , and currently Adjunct Professor in Asian studies at Cornell University . Author of the translation of a Cambodian literary classic titled, “The Story of Tum Teav,” published by the Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2005.

(This paper is prepared for the DC-Cam’s Genocide Education Project -- National Training Teacher for Lower and Upper Secondary School of Cambodia. Senate Library, Phnom Penh , Cambodia , June 29-July 7, 2009)