8 February 2001 Edition
Lessons of South Africa's Truth Commission
Ten years ago, Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest who for many years travelled the world fighting apartheid, received a letter bomb hidden between the pages of two religious magazines. South African government agents had sent it. Fr Lapsley suffered horrific injuries, losing both hands and an eye. For him, this was the beginning of a journey that led him to establish the Institute for Healing of Memories.
Michael Lapsley aims to become a victor in the sense of becoming a participant in creating a different kind of society. He spoke recently in Trinity College at a conference organised by AfrI, the Irish School of Ecumenism and the East Timor Ireland Support Campaign.
``Many people on this planet have very good reason to be bitter, to want revenge,'' he told his audience. ``But the problem is that those feelings would eventually destroy us. We got involved in workshops called the Healing of the Memory, which give people the space to share what is within them.'' Since 1998, workshops have been organised in South Africa and other places with traumatic experiences fresh in the memory: in Rwanda, Sri Lanka and few months ago in Dili, the capital of East Timor.
Last year, Michael Lapsley ran a workshop in Portadown.
``I believe that here in this island is very important that people do not forget what people have done to each other. It should not be forgotten. It should be remembered forever,'' he said. ``But we have to find ways of healing the wounds.''
Lapsley believes a common fundamental issue linking different conflict situations is how to deal with the past. He has found that it is mostly the oppressors who want to turn the page of history but ``the problem we face in South Africa is that the page of history is too heavy. It will not turn, and we realised as a nation, as a people, that we have to look at it if we were to proceed.''
Possibly no other society in history has faced its past in the same generation as openly as the people of South Africa have done through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There have been other truth commissions around the world, in Latin America and Africa, but they tended to meet behind closed doors, hampered by very limited budgets and extremely limited powers. Sometimes, the first news that the general public had of the commission was when the final report was produced.
``We looked into the face of our pain,'' said Lapsley. ``Under apartheid we inverted the moral order. So for example, if you spent your life as a torturer, you would be promoted and rewarded. At the end of your life, you would be given a golden handshake. And the ones that were tortured were told `scream for all you like, there is no one listening... Do not worry, we will not leave marks, so no one will believe you'.''
The Truth Commission was for many people the first time that what happened to them was acknowledged. Twenty-three thousand people came forward, speaking in their own voices of killings, attempted assassinations, torture, severe maltreatment.
One of its most controversial aspects was the question of amnesty for those who declared their crimes during its hearings. Lapsley explains that this was decided during the negotiations between the Apartheid regime and the African National Congress. ``The apartheid generals said to the negotiators, `unless there is amnesty, these negotiations are going nowhere'. What we saw was the possibility of an escalating civil war that would have cost millions of lives. Our negotiators took a step back from the table and said `There should be amnesty'.''
There was a third aspect to the commission, a committee responsible for making recommendations to the state for reparations and rehabilitation for victims.
In October 1998, the Truth Commission presented to the president its final report, listing the forms of reparations it believed that victims should receive. These included symbolic reparations; methods of institutional reform; the issuing of death certificates for those who had disappeared; the issuing of scholarships and bursaries for children from those families where the breadwinner had been killed; the holding of services and national commemorations; and medical and counselling services for those who had been traumatised. It also decided that everybody who had been declared a victim should received a form of monetary reparation every month for six years.
These reparations apply to 18,800 people and would cost three billion rand.
``Now, more than two and a half years later, the state has not said what its response is to the reparations requirement,'' states Lapsley. ``The state has not said we will not have reparations, but it has not said when and how and to what degree it will fulfil reparations.''
``The government has said it is waiting until the final amnesty decisions have been made before it makes its decision. So the relatives of victims and the survivors are being held hostages of the amnesty process.''
As Michael Lapsley rightly points out, if those reparations do not happen, the Truth Commission will go down in history as ``a perpetrator-friendly exercise''. On the other hand, if there were reparations, the commission would go down in history as the most extraordinary examples of restorative justice in human history.
``The jury is still out on that question'', says Lapsley.
Martial law in Ecuador
At least three indigenous people have been killed and about ten injured after the Ecuadorian army opened fire against 5,000 indigenous Quichua who were demonstrating peacefully on the bridges over the rivers Napo y Misahualli. This latest development could be the starting point of an armed conflict between Ecuador's indigenous population and the government of the country.
On Saturday 3 February, Ecuador's President, Gustavo Noboa, declared a state of national emergency after the breakdown of talks with indigenous leaders over price hikes that have sparked nationwide protests. Indigenous, peasant and workers' organisations have been holding peaceful protests against IMF-sponsored cutbacks for the past two weeks, blocking roads and occupying marketplaces and a university.
The emergency allows the government to limit group meetings and nationwide travel, inspect private homes without other legal authority and dispatch military and police forces as it deems necessary, according to the constitution.
Throughout the previous week, from across the impoverished Andean nation thousands of indigenous were arriving in Quito, where most are camped out at Salesian University, to protest government-mandated hikes in transportation and fuel prices. Police have estimated some 3,000 indigenous people have arrived to the capital, but the university sets the count at 6,000.
Throughout the highlands of this nation of 12.4 million people, protesters have blocked highways, making vehicle travel nearly impossible and triggering a scarcity of basic goods in some major cities.
As the talks broke down between the government and the indigenous leaders, who last year led an uprising that ousted then-President Jamil Mahuad, they threatened to intensify their protests.
The defence minister has announced that the army would intervene to end the protest, but Antonio Vargas, president of Ecuador's National Indian Federation and leader during the protests that overthrew Mahuad, vowed not to back down: ``They've been insisting we talk and threatening to evict us. They want to apply a strong hand. We're not going to run, we're not going to faint, we are going to stay right here until we reach our objective.''
Ecuador has had four presidents in four years. But this time political analysts have said it is unlikely this year's protests will topple Mahuad's successor President Gustavo Noboa because he has the backing of the business community and, in particular, the military, which often acts a key powerbroker.
World leaders hacked off
On Sunday, 4 February, it emerged that computer hackers had managed to steal personal information about the rich and powerful from the organisers of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss resort of Davos.
Although security was tight around the meeting, anti-globalisation activists approached a Swiss newspaper, Sonntagszeitung, with accurate data including mobile phone numbers, credit card numbers and home addresses of such figures as Bill Clinton, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat among others.
The WEF confirmed that its computer security had apparently been breached during its annual gathering, which ended on 30 January, and that it was treating the matter as a crime. Organisers refused to speculate as to whether the hackers might be anti-globalisation protesters, who were mostly kept out of the Swiss resort town during the WEF meeting by a heavy police presence.
Michael Lapsley aims to become a victor in the sense of becoming a participant in creating a different kind of society. He spoke recently in Trinity College at a conference organised by AfrI, the Irish School of Ecumenism and the East Timor Ireland Support Campaign.
``Many people on this planet have very good reason to be bitter, to want revenge,'' he told his audience. ``But the problem is that those feelings would eventually destroy us. We got involved in workshops called the Healing of the Memory, which give people the space to share what is within them.'' Since 1998, workshops have been organised in South Africa and other places with traumatic experiences fresh in the memory: in Rwanda, Sri Lanka and few months ago in Dili, the capital of East Timor.
Last year, Michael Lapsley ran a workshop in Portadown.
``I believe that here in this island is very important that people do not forget what people have done to each other. It should not be forgotten. It should be remembered forever,'' he said. ``But we have to find ways of healing the wounds.''
Lapsley believes a common fundamental issue linking different conflict situations is how to deal with the past. He has found that it is mostly the oppressors who want to turn the page of history but ``the problem we face in South Africa is that the page of history is too heavy. It will not turn, and we realised as a nation, as a people, that we have to look at it if we were to proceed.''
Possibly no other society in history has faced its past in the same generation as openly as the people of South Africa have done through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There have been other truth commissions around the world, in Latin America and Africa, but they tended to meet behind closed doors, hampered by very limited budgets and extremely limited powers. Sometimes, the first news that the general public had of the commission was when the final report was produced.
``We looked into the face of our pain,'' said Lapsley. ``Under apartheid we inverted the moral order. So for example, if you spent your life as a torturer, you would be promoted and rewarded. At the end of your life, you would be given a golden handshake. And the ones that were tortured were told `scream for all you like, there is no one listening... Do not worry, we will not leave marks, so no one will believe you'.''
The Truth Commission was for many people the first time that what happened to them was acknowledged. Twenty-three thousand people came forward, speaking in their own voices of killings, attempted assassinations, torture, severe maltreatment.
One of its most controversial aspects was the question of amnesty for those who declared their crimes during its hearings. Lapsley explains that this was decided during the negotiations between the Apartheid regime and the African National Congress. ``The apartheid generals said to the negotiators, `unless there is amnesty, these negotiations are going nowhere'. What we saw was the possibility of an escalating civil war that would have cost millions of lives. Our negotiators took a step back from the table and said `There should be amnesty'.''
There was a third aspect to the commission, a committee responsible for making recommendations to the state for reparations and rehabilitation for victims.
In October 1998, the Truth Commission presented to the president its final report, listing the forms of reparations it believed that victims should receive. These included symbolic reparations; methods of institutional reform; the issuing of death certificates for those who had disappeared; the issuing of scholarships and bursaries for children from those families where the breadwinner had been killed; the holding of services and national commemorations; and medical and counselling services for those who had been traumatised. It also decided that everybody who had been declared a victim should received a form of monetary reparation every month for six years.
These reparations apply to 18,800 people and would cost three billion rand.
``Now, more than two and a half years later, the state has not said what its response is to the reparations requirement,'' states Lapsley. ``The state has not said we will not have reparations, but it has not said when and how and to what degree it will fulfil reparations.''
``The government has said it is waiting until the final amnesty decisions have been made before it makes its decision. So the relatives of victims and the survivors are being held hostages of the amnesty process.''
As Michael Lapsley rightly points out, if those reparations do not happen, the Truth Commission will go down in history as ``a perpetrator-friendly exercise''. On the other hand, if there were reparations, the commission would go down in history as the most extraordinary examples of restorative justice in human history.
``The jury is still out on that question'', says Lapsley.
Martial law in Ecuador
At least three indigenous people have been killed and about ten injured after the Ecuadorian army opened fire against 5,000 indigenous Quichua who were demonstrating peacefully on the bridges over the rivers Napo y Misahualli. This latest development could be the starting point of an armed conflict between Ecuador's indigenous population and the government of the country.
On Saturday 3 February, Ecuador's President, Gustavo Noboa, declared a state of national emergency after the breakdown of talks with indigenous leaders over price hikes that have sparked nationwide protests. Indigenous, peasant and workers' organisations have been holding peaceful protests against IMF-sponsored cutbacks for the past two weeks, blocking roads and occupying marketplaces and a university.
The emergency allows the government to limit group meetings and nationwide travel, inspect private homes without other legal authority and dispatch military and police forces as it deems necessary, according to the constitution.
Throughout the previous week, from across the impoverished Andean nation thousands of indigenous were arriving in Quito, where most are camped out at Salesian University, to protest government-mandated hikes in transportation and fuel prices. Police have estimated some 3,000 indigenous people have arrived to the capital, but the university sets the count at 6,000.
Throughout the highlands of this nation of 12.4 million people, protesters have blocked highways, making vehicle travel nearly impossible and triggering a scarcity of basic goods in some major cities.
As the talks broke down between the government and the indigenous leaders, who last year led an uprising that ousted then-President Jamil Mahuad, they threatened to intensify their protests.
The defence minister has announced that the army would intervene to end the protest, but Antonio Vargas, president of Ecuador's National Indian Federation and leader during the protests that overthrew Mahuad, vowed not to back down: ``They've been insisting we talk and threatening to evict us. They want to apply a strong hand. We're not going to run, we're not going to faint, we are going to stay right here until we reach our objective.''
Ecuador has had four presidents in four years. But this time political analysts have said it is unlikely this year's protests will topple Mahuad's successor President Gustavo Noboa because he has the backing of the business community and, in particular, the military, which often acts a key powerbroker.
World leaders hacked off
On Sunday, 4 February, it emerged that computer hackers had managed to steal personal information about the rich and powerful from the organisers of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss resort of Davos.
Although security was tight around the meeting, anti-globalisation activists approached a Swiss newspaper, Sonntagszeitung, with accurate data including mobile phone numbers, credit card numbers and home addresses of such figures as Bill Clinton, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat among others.
The WEF confirmed that its computer security had apparently been breached during its annual gathering, which ended on 30 January, and that it was treating the matter as a crime. Organisers refused to speculate as to whether the hackers might be anti-globalisation protesters, who were mostly kept out of the Swiss resort town during the WEF meeting by a heavy police presence.