Democracy, Dialogue, and Community Action: Truth and Reconciliation in Greensboro

4. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions Seek Healing, Not Vengeance

ChApter 4 Truth and Reconciliation Commissions Seek Healing, Not Vengeance Neither truth nor justice alone,but a democracy that does its best to promote both, is the bedrock of any worthy truth commission. —AMY GUTMANN AND DENNIS THOMPSON TO BETTER UNDERSTAND why Greensboro initiated its truth and reconciliation process, this chapter discusses when, how, and where around the world these nonjudicial bodies for truth seeking have operated . The goal is to provide the contextual frame for the work of restorative justice that is the foundation of truth commission activity. Restorative justice, unlike retributive justice that seeks to punish individuals held responsible for misdeeds or crimes, aims instead for reconciliation by highlighting the strengths and shared solutions that arise from the interconnections among people. Reconciliation using restorative justice principles thus focuses on the community as a precondition for the well-being of individuals. In Africa, that tradition is known as “Ubuntu.” In the United States, Ubuntu is most closely related to conceptions of dialogic ethics and ethics of care.This chapter thus considers if and how Ubuntu,dialogic ethics, and an ethics of care provide the moral suasion necessary for truth and reconciliation in the United States. It has been only since the s that TRCs have acquired legitimacy as a means to address human rights violations. Initially, these commissions were fueled by ambitious hopes but not always useful processes and thus many proved ineffective at documenting past  crimes or gaining public trust (Hayner, ). By , many of the earlier insufficiencies had been corrected when the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was launched. It remains the most well known and stands out as the preferred archetype for truth seeking and reconciliation among the more than fifty TRCs that have functioned in all regions around the globe. The South African TRC was both hailed and critiqued as a political compromise that eventually included the collection of , statements,fifty public hearings over the course of  days, seventeen truth commissioners, and sixty staff members.Its work concluded with a five-volume Final Report handed to then president Nelson Mandela nearly three years afterward. TRCs are temporary bodies generally established by a new or transitional government.Operating independently of government influence, they seek to bridge unjust pasts with more promising futures based on truth, tolerance, and equality. TRCs hope to mend factions and restore faith for a more peaceful coexistence (Verdoolaege, ). Critics notwithstanding,truth commissions offer an alternative justice-seeking method that advances direct democracy by providing a meaningful public platform for citizen speech, deliberative processes, and public policy changes. TRCs most often arise from the need of victims and survivors who have been silenced to be included as legitimate bearers and makers of history. Truth commissions link together complex ideas about suffering, justice, human rights, accountability, history and witnessing. Alongside legal practices they involve and invoke memorial and narrative practices that have important effects in shaping understandings and sculpting new social possibilities. (Ross, , ) In other words, the very personal stories of pain are used “to answer troublesome questions and be clear about yet unresolved doubts”that enrich and complicate archived documents and legal proceedings (Magarrell and Roehm, , ). Priscilla Hayner, author of Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocities, asks if any society can“build a democratic future on a foundation of blind, denied, or forgotten history” (, ). History teaches us that the answer is simply, no.  TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSIONS SEEK HEALING In Latin America, commissions were introduced upon regime changes following periods of oppression and violence in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Panama, Peru,and Uruguay.In Africa,truth commissions targeted national reconciliation in Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana,Kenya,Liberia,Morocco,Nigeria,Rwanda,Sierra Leone,South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Other truth and reconciliation commissions operated in East Timor,Fiji,Germany,Nepal,the Philippines, Serbia and Montenegro, South Korea, the Soloman Islands, Sri Lanka, the United States (in Greensboro, North Carolina), and more recently, Canada.1 In accounting for the surge of TRC activity around the world,proponents argue that our understanding and decisions surrounding human rights issues are better when people speak openly of their painful experiences (Amjad-Ali, ). Thus, TRCs invest great effort to create supportive environments at their public hearings, absent the adversarial tension more common in courtrooms.When this is accomplished , survivors communicate publicly what injustices they experienced or witnessed. Their stories contribute to a coauthoring and rewriting of an...