Localising Memory in Transitional Justice

The Dynamics and Informal Practices of Memorialisation after Mass Violence and Dictatorship

Mina Rauschenbach, Julia Viebach, Stephan Parmentier, Mina Rauschenbach, Julia Viebach, Stephan Parmentier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000575736
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Diritto
• Subtopic: Teoria e pratica del diritto

This collection adds to the critical transitional justice scholarship that calls for "transitional justice from below" and that makes visible the complex and oftentimes troubled entanglements between justice endeavours, locality, and memory-making. Broadening this perspective, it explores informal memory practices across various contexts with a focus on their individual and collective dynamics and their intersections, reaching also beyond a conceptualisation of memory as mere symbolic reparation and politics of memory.

It seeks to highlight the hidden, unwritten, and multifaceted in today's memory boom by focusing on the memorialisation practices of communities, activists, families, and survivors. Organising its analytical focal point around the localisation of memory, it offers valuable and new insights on how and under what conditions localised memory practices may contribute to recognition and social transformation, as well as how they may at best be inclusive, or exclusive, of dynamic and diverse memories.

Drawing on inter- and multi-disciplinary approaches, this book brings an in-depth and nuanced understanding of local memory practices and the dynamics attached to these in transitional justice contexts. It will be of much interest to students and scholars of memory and genocide studies, peace and conflict studies, transitional justice, sociology, and anthropology.

Part I
Memory and transitional justice

Chapter 1
International memory entrepreneurs’ prescriptions for the remembrance of the Srebrenica genocideWhat implications for local understandings of collective victimhood?

Mina Rauschenbach

DOI: 10.4324/9780429330841-3

Introduction

The duty to remember is a moral and ethical aspiration, often formulated as an imperative within the contemporary “urge to commemorate” (Levy 2010) human rights violations and serious international crimes. This duty is closely connected with another memory imperative of “Never Again” and a global human rights discourse which advocates for the responsibility of all to draw lessons from the past and the sufferings of victims. While born from efforts to come to terms with the Holocaust in the Western world, this duty is now often related to the notion of a cosmopolitan memory; it is transnationally and transculturally salient within the current global human rights regime (Levy and Sznaider 2010). Central to a global human rights-based discourse invoking the necessity to memorialise past atrocities, this duty has been integrated in soft law and within memorialisation standards. This standardisation has resulted in the increasing application of a global (Western) template on why and how to represent the past in policymaking about memorialising human rights violations (David 2017a).

The global diffusion of memory imperatives related to the duty to remember and “Never Again” (Levy 2010) is translated in the social arena into the proliferation of memory sites across the globe and the prominent position of memorialisation in cultural practices in our contemporary world (Williams 2007). Testifying to “the internationalization of a new commemorative paradigm” (Bickford and Sodaro 2010, p. 66), memorials and museums are proliferating globally. Behind those processes, there are various agents driving the global push for memory imperatives and promoting their practices (Barsalou 2014). While these agents, often coined as “memory entrepreneurs” (Jelin 2003), may adopt similar narratives of “Never Again” and of duty to justify remembrance, their engagement can be grounded in different interests, agendas, and power positions, reflecting also multiple and conflicting views of the past.

Memorialisation always involves strategic choices made by agents about what should be remembered and what should be forgotten, about the validation of certain understandings of victimhood (and the exclusion of others), as well as about normative assumptions about the audiences of memory work (e.g. humanity, the nation, a local community). In transitional justice (TJ) settings, memorialisation practices are frequently the theatre of struggle and conflicts around memories involving various social groups and individuals all striving to put their truth about the violent past to the fore (Barsalou 2014).

Within these struggles, various “memory entrepreneurs” (Jelin 2003) are likely to attempt to appropriate particular interpretations of the past and strive to have them recognised as legitimate truths. This category includes a number of protagonists such as actors from the human rights movements, political groups and elite figures, victim groups and other civil society groups, international institutions, but also members of the academic and cultural sphere (Jelin 2003; Mannegren Selimovic 2013; Milosevic and Touquet 2018a; Shaheed 2014). The role of human rights movements in the context of the Southern Cone dictatorships in promoting certain memories of the violent past and mobilising societal support for the public acknowledgment of these narratives amidst intense contestations over the past involving various memory entrepreneurs has been comprehensively analysed by Jelin (2003). Victim associations (Kent 2019) and diaspora organisations (Orjuela 2020) can also constitute powerful memory entrepreneurs in raising public awareness for silenced memories and advocating for their recognition, as well as lobbying for the international support of their struggles.

Local memory entrepreneurs, often elite figures or politicians, can also be heavily involved in conflicts over memories with the aim of promoting nationalist and self-serving agendas. They may champion specific understandings of the past for (often) power-related purposes while side-lining memories which contradict or question their agendas. For example, in Rwanda a key strategy used by elites to maintain their power has been to promote hegemonic national narratives upholding the victimhood of one community (Tutsi) while excluding memories of violence perpetrated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF, the ruling party) against other groups, and other atrocities committed post-genocide (Ibreck 2012).

Memory entrepreneurs can thus actively appropriate memories and foreground them over others, using particular interpretations of the past to further their present political claims. Another relevant illustration is the lobbying activities of political actors and civil society pressure groups at the European Parliament (EP), as in the case of efforts to keep the memory of past Communist crimes salient in European remembrance practices (Neumayer 2019). Moreover, as will be addressed in this paper, international NGOs or international actors like United Nations (UN) bodies or the European Union (EU) also engage in the political enterprise of memory insofar as they attempt to elicit support for memorialisation processes or help local actors to generate strategies or funding for those memory practices (Blustein 2012). These actors of regional or global governance constitute also international memory entrepreneurs (Mannergren Selimovic 2013), as they promote memory imperatives and related objectives of conflict prevention, redress, and reconciliation in post-genocide Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH). This paper focuses on the EU and the UN (institutions with a long-standing engagement in BiH) but also on other relevant international actors, such as state officials, foreign dignitaries, and other international community actors.

While the significance of memory practices for those affected by atrocity cannot be dismissed, the implications of the duties and assumptions attached to memorialisation for transition settings have yet to be clearly ascertained and are a subject of much debate and critical questioning (David 2017a; Viebach 2018). I wish to add to these scholarly debates by addressing how memorialisation initiatives not only constitute markers of acknowledgment and means for prevention, but also reflect the power and the agendas of various stakeholders. More particularly, with a focus on the role of international memory entrepreneurs, I analyse here the implications of discourses prescribing memorialisation for understandings of past (and present) victimhood in the post-genocide context of Srebrenica.

This paper is structured as follows. I begin by briefly describing the standardisation of the duty to remember and its translation within international human rights instruments, as well as policymaking in TJ. I proceed with an examination of the role of international memory entrepreneurs in promoting norms related to memorialisation in transition contexts. I then focus on the case study of the remembrance of the Srebrenica genocide in post-war BiH where the international community has been actively engaged in promoting memory imperatives (Mehler 2017). Through an examination of policies, resolutions, and speeches, I aim to analyse how international memory entrepreneurs support, more or less explicitly, particular approaches to memory which denote specific moral and political stances towards the past deployed to pursue their strategic interests. I analyse the arguments deployed to promote remembrance practices as well as how this international entrepreneurship intersects with local memory entrepreneurs. Through their recommendations and discourses on why remembrance is necessary and on how, when, and what to remember, these memory entrepreneurs can unwittingly contribute to the legitimisation of exclusive and partial constructions of collective victimhood dividing communities locally (Bar-Tal et al. 2009). The choice of focusing on the promotion of norms around remembrance in relation to the context of the Srebrenica genocide is not insignificant. Its pertinence lies in the particular moral and historical relevance of the category of the crime of genocide to the imperative of remembrance (Eltringham and MacLean 2014). Moreover, the remembrance of Srebrenica involves interactions between “global memory entrepreneurs” and more local ones, which all promote the necessity of remembrance, while diverging in their motives for remembering due to contrasting political agendas and concerns (Mannergren Selimovic 2013).

The duty to remember in transitional justice (TJ) and human rights

The contemporary focus on the commemoration of violent pasts and on the imperative of “Never Again” finds its roots in the globally concerted, but very much Western-shaped, necessity to commemorate mass crimes. Imperatives of memory are also being increasingly associated with duties of justice in the aftermath of conflict and political violence, as observed in the development of the field of TJ (Neumann and Thompson 2015). Memorialisation measures, such as symbolic reparation and tools to promote social reconstruction, are increasingly recognised and recommended by policymakers as significant TJ mechanisms for societies seeking to deal with past injustices (Barsalou and Baxter 2007). The establishment of truth commissions has often been justified by the need to preserve memories of atrocity and to establish a historical record of the past (Bakiner 2016). Memorialisation measures have also been included in the recommendations of several truth commissions (Viebach 2018).

In parallel with the emergence of the field of TJ and a Holocaust-based memory regime, the imperative of remembering has become a central norm for global policymakers. The 2001 Durban Declaration of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance illustrates this trend well. Focusing particularly on the duty to remember the injustices resulting from the slave trades and colonialisation, it conveys an understanding that remembrance should be a means of combating injustice and promoting reconciliation:

remembering the crimes or wrongs of the past, wherever and whenever they occurred, unequivocally condemning its racist tragedies and telling the truth about history are essential elements for international reconciliation and the creation of societies based on justice, equality and solidarity.

(cited from Shaheed 2014, p. 5)

This tendency to place the moral duty of remembrance on the international agenda is also accompanied by an ever-increasing move towards its standardisation, that is to develop a global legally grounded template on how to represent the past (David 2017a). The duty to remember, as a legal norm, is gaining ground in contemporaneous international law and policymaking in relation to serious human rights violations, particularly with regard to issues of combatting impunity and reparation for victims. Legal frameworks mentioning explicitly this duty, containing principles detailing the appropriate ways to remember, and, in some cases providing examples of good practices, have been developed: 1) the UN principles for the protection and promotion of human rights through actions to combat impunity¹ (hereinafter the Joinet Report 1997), 2) the Updated Set of principles for the protection and promotion of human rights through action to combat impunity (hereinafter the Joinet/Orentlicher report 2005), and 3) the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law (hereinafter the Basic Principles on Reparation 2005).

The Joinet Report (1997) was the first instrument to explicitly recognise the duty to remember. Listing a set of Principles to combat impunity, it highlighted four pillars of TJ, including the “the right to know”, considered as a corollary to the duty to remember (p. 5, para. 17). This duty, placed on to the State, is justified in consequentialist terms to “guard against the perversions of history that go under the names of revisionism or negationism; the knowledge of the oppression it has lived through is part of a people’s national heritage and as such must be preserved”. This State’s duty is further elaborated as

A people’s knowledge of the history of its oppression is part of its heritage and, as such, must be preserved by appropriate measures in fulfilment of the State’s duty to remember. Such measures shall be aimed at preserving the collective memory from extinction.

(Annexe II, p. 17, Principle 2)

This report also explicitly relates the victims’ right to reparation through symbolic measures of acknowledgment, including memorialisation, to the duty of remembrance:

Symbolic measures intended to provide moral reparation, such as formal public recognition by the State of its responsibility, or official declarations aimed at restoring victims’ dignity, commemorative ceremonies, naming of public thoroughfares or the erection of monuments, help to discharge the duty of remembrance.

(p. 9, para. 4.)

The Joinet/Orentlicher Report (2005) reformulated the duty to remember into a duty to preserve memory, included as Principle 3 within the rubric of the right to know. This duty is expressed similarly to Joinet’s interpretation, e...