BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: Bringing the perpretrators of ideologically-motivated mass crimes to Justice

Radovan Karadzic made his appearence today at the ICTY where he listened to his indictment. This happened one day after two generals, Antonio Bussi, 82, and Luciano Benjamin Menendez, 81, former members of the military junta that between 1976 and 1983 terrorized Argentina, were sentenced to life imprisonment by an Argentinian tribunal

For many years, the families and friends of those whom they sent to death demanded justice. Too many people preferred to simply forget about it, but they kept demanding justice. The courage and dignity of the mothers of Plaza de Mayo always impressed me, and when I heard about the women from Srebrenica their example immediately came to my mind.

For 30 years they kept asking for justice, fighting oblivion, not allowing anyone to forget what the expression ‘Dirty War’ meant… and these were mostly simple uneducated women, whose strength came from their sense of justice and from the fact that, having already lost what most precious they had, intimidation and fear could not silence them.

…dirty war, ethnic cleansing, somebody invented these expressions, as I was writing them I noticed how they mirror each other. What do they have in common? Their fascist essence.

Last time I was in Serbia, a person with whom I had a very interesting conversation about the question of facing the past told me about a current that I didn’t know about, who is advancing the idea that the best choice is not to face the past at all. These people, who don’t consider themselves nationalists. Those who consider themselves nationalists don’t really deny the past, because in fact they are proud of it, they are just sorry that they didn’t go far enough.

This is an argument that is being discussed among so-called moderates, who are using the Spanish case as an example. It goes like this: look, Spain didn’t face the past, and that didn’t prevent the country from becoming a democracy and a wealthy and powerful country. I will not go into this question in detail now, I’ll just remind the readers that this an argument that reveals either ignorance or the wish to falsify the truth. Spain didn’t face the past because those who didn’t want such process to happened managed to prevent it for 30 years, but now the issue is finally being tacked. Here, here and here for more…(in castellan and galego, sorry for the non speakers, the english version in wikipedia is not updated, but here’s an article from the Guardian) (I will return to this subject latter).

Those who benefit from this kind of approach, not only in former Yugoslavia or Spain or Latin American, believe that time will work in their favour.  It does, but only if the voices of the victims is silenced or ignored.

The case of the Argentine generals proves that it doesn’t have to be like that. I believe there are valuable lessons to be drawn from this. Justice will never be entirely accomplished, but at least it will be harder to falsify the past.

(photos from BBC, what’s in common between these three men, besides the fact that they are monsters? they don’t scare anyone anymore)