Making Peace With the Past, Means Looking Back ... Reconciliation Between Ethnic Groups Critical

It was the ultimate in reality television. For more than two years, beginning in April 1996, a weekly primetime show in South Africa broadcast hearings of the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Victims and perpetrators of the recently abolished practice of apartheid related graphic examples of human rights abuses suffered and inflicted through the legalized system of segregation that had disenfranchised the non-white majority for more than 40 years. Some wept. Some demanded justice. Some begged for forgiveness. It was a dramatically public exploration of injustices that, until recently, societies had typically tried to deny or forget.

For more and more nations, going forward means looking back. “In recent decades, with the growth of a universal human rights culture, seeking the truth and giving victims a voice has emerged as an important issue,” says Eduardo Gonzalez, Senior Associate at the ICTJ. “Today there’s practically no politically resolved conflict that has not included some measures to deal with the past.”

Here at home, many are turning a sharper eye on America’s own past misdeeds. In the last two years, six states have approved resolutions expressing regret or apologizing for slavery and a similar proposal is before Congress. To some, apologizing for a system that ended generations ago, the victims and perpetrators of which are no longer alive, is pointless at best and divisive at worst.

But others stress that the economic and social disparities stemming from slavery are still very much a part of our society and that more than 150 years after the Civil War ended the institution, the wounds still haven’t healed. As presidential candidate Barack Obama put it in his March speech on race, quoting William Faulkner, “The past isn’t dead and buried. It isn’t even past.”

Healing Old Wounds

This recognition of how the past continues to haunt us has in the past century begun to influence global politics. Up until World War II, there was a tendency toward victor’s justice and victor’s memory, according to Gonzalez. The new leaders revised history to suit their purposes and either exacted revenge on the old leaders or never held them accountable for their crimes. But the international tribunal that met in Nuremberg, Germany, to try Nazi war criminals and accurately record their atrocities broke that pattern, he says. Still, the challenges of confronting the past can be daunting.

“If you have a negotiated peace, the new leaders may recognize that the old leaders still have the potential to crate chaos and think dealing with the past will only provoke trouble,” says Gonzalez. “But in the long term not dealing with the past actually makes things worse.”

So while political leaders might be encouraging their citizens to forgive and forget, resentments can build up over time. “Wounds tend to break open again if not healed,” says Daniel Philpott, Associate Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame University. “Look at places like Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Rwanda and Sudan — generation after generation, old wounds continue to resurface and result in new episodes of violence.”

Ultimately, then, the goal of examining the past is preventing more conflict by bringing about reconciliation. Reconciliation is a rebuilding of damaged relationships that can take many forms: between ethnic or religious groups, between citizens and the government, or between individuals. Fundamentally, it is about reestablishing trust so people can coexist peacefully.

Truth and Reconciliation

So how does a society best foster the slow, complex process of reconciliation? How does it begin to repair the damage caused when one segment of society persecutes, subjugates, or even attempts to obliterate another?

Experts say there are many potential building blocks of reconciliation: truth, justice, apology, reparations, community rituals, memorials, institutional reform, and forgiveness among them.

“I think simple acknowledgment is very important,” says Philpott. “One thing that prevents reconciliation is when victims feel they are forgotten or ignored. I would ask where current hatred [between ethnic or religious groups] comes from and very often it’s from past injustices — be they 30 years ago or 600 years ago.”

An approach that has gained wider use in recent decades is a truth commission — an investigative body that seeks to document human rights abuses committed during a relatively recent conflict in a country’s history. The commission holds hearings and produces a report with recommendations on how to best give restitution to victims and prevent future violations.

“Truth-seeking is not just a forensic description of who did what to whom and where. It is also an attempt to situate the facts in a historical and political context,” says Gonzalez, who served on a truth commission in his native Peru researching human rights abuses by rebel group Shining Path and the military under President Alberto Fujimori during a civil conflict.

Though Peru’s 2001 commission followed South Africa’s historic one, several other Latin American countries had such commissions earlier. In fact, it was Argentina that created the first truth commission in 1983, the National Commission on the Disappeared, to help citizens learn what happened to loved ones who went missing under junta rule.

But South Africa’s TRC broke the mold in its interpretation of reconciliation. Borne out of the strong leadership of anti-apartheid activist and President Nelson Mandela who forgave those who’d imprisoned him for almost 30 years and the healing presence of spiritual leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s TRC granted amnesty to perpetrators who confessed their crimes and encouraged forgiveness.

“The South African TRC really was a watershed moment,” says Mark Freeman, head of the ICTJ’s Brussels office and author of Truth Commissions and Procedural Fairness. “Tutu described it as a ‘third way’ to deal with perpetrators, impunity being on one side and prosecution on the other. Theirs was a completely innovative approach to the past.”

A Different Type of Justice

Indeed, never before had a country confronted its past so quickly and so openly. As more than 20,000 victims spoke in the hearings of persecution, torture, or losing loved ones, the South African TRC brought the idea of restorative justice into the spotlight. When most people think of justice, they think of what’s called retributive justice, which focuses on leveling a punishment that fits the crime — the execution and imprisonment for those convicted in the Nuremberg trials or the hanging of Saddam Hussein for example.

While most still see trials as necessary when it comes to the most heinous war crimes, there’s a growing movement toward restorative justice for lesser perpetrators. “Restorative justice is not just about accountability but also about restoring relationships between victims and perpetrators and the community in the process,” says Philpott. This can be vital in conflicts where the sheer number of offenders makes individual trials economically and logistically impossible.

In South Africa, restorative justice took the form of amnesty for human rights offenders who could prove they acted out of a political motivation. A negotiated precondition for the truth commission, the granting of amnesty, which was the most groundbreaking aspect of the TRC, was also its most controversial. Studies have shown that many South Africans feel angry that wrongdoers were not punished. But others say the opportunity to learn what happened to loved ones and to have their sufferings heard and acknowledged brought them a measure of healing.

However successful South Africa’s TRC ultimately was, its impact is undeniable. Truth commissions have since sprung up in the wake of conflicts in countries all over the world, including Morocco, Liberia, East Timor, and Nepal.

Saying “Sorry”

As powerful as truth can be, it is seldom enough to dull the sting of past injustice. For many societies, the next step is an apology and restitution, whether through money, land, or government programs to provide new opportunities for a mistreated population. Most truth commissions recommend reparations, though not all deliver (even in South Africa, only marginal reparations have been made to victims listed in the TRC report).

“Apology without reparation is generally regarded as hollow,” says Simpson. “Reparation without acknowledgment is often treated as blood money.”

For example, many Korean and Chinese “comfort women,” who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II, turned down reparations because they were not accompanied by an official apology.

Apologies are often a long time coming. Since the mid-90s in Australia, activists had called for a government apology to the “Stolen Generations,” thousands of aboriginal persons who were forcibly taken from their families as children and raised in church-sponsored schools rife with abuse. More than 50,000 people were taken in this manner between 1910 and 1970. New Prime Minister Kevin Rudd opened the parliament in February with a long, fervent apology and promises of programs to improve the life expectancy of aborigines (currently 17 years shorter compared to non-aboriginal Australians) and housing and employment opportunities.

In Canada, an almost $2 billion-reparations package for similar offenses toward Native peoples includes promises of a truth commission and government apology.

“Apologies can be very important,” says Lisa Magarrell, who is head of the ICTJ’s reparations program and is working with the Canadians on their process. “But there must be steps taken to deal with the repercussions of the past or they’re not that meaningful.”

Reconciliation Rituals

In some cultures, it is not the words of truth or apology that bring healing but community-based symbolic acts based on ancient traditions and beliefs.

In Mozambique, for instance, a brutal civil conflict that killed hundreds of thousands ended in the early 1990s without any significant national measures to foster reconciliation. But community healers would arrange public ceremonies to help villagers access spirits that would cry out memories of crimes committed or suffered--after which the responsible parties would make amends in some symbolic way. “Drawing on animist spiritual traditions,” Freeman says, “they allowed victims and perpetrators to cleanse their spirits in a way that was quite profound.”

In Uganda, an ongoing civil conflict has involved the abduction of thousands of children to serve as soldiers. Many communities in the north reintegrate these children through a process called mato oput that involves sharing a drink made from a bitter root and stepping on an egg. “With children one is not looking at legal accountability. These rituals are ways of bringing home the kids,” says Simpson.

These approaches show that there is no one-size-fits-all formula for reconciliation and that a strategy’s usefulness has a lot to do with how well it reflects the nature of the conflict, political climate, and attitudes of a nation’s people.

And Simpson says such community-based methods are as necessary as national strategies if reconciliation is to be successful.

The Power of Forgiveness

But some believe the most crucial — and elusive — ingredient of reconciliation is personal one: forgiveness.

“Forgiveness is the crown jewel of reconciliation,” says Philpott. “Apologies are common in global politics, but almost unheard of is forgiveness.”

Perhaps forgiveness is a semi-taboo topic precisely because it is so personal. “No legal or political process can make any person forgive. It is an eminently individual, psychological, spiritual process that you cannot really force,” says Gonzalez.

It was, though, highly encouraged in the South African TRC, chaired by Tutu. How many were able to forgive is as subject to question as how many who sought amnesty were truly contrite for their crimes.

Unlike with other reconciliation approaches, the burden of forgiveness is on the victim and Simpson worries that it can be too heavy. “Real reconciliation is about rebuilding relationships that acknowledge the residual trauma, the unresolved pain, the irreparable loss — rather than presuming that it can be forgiven,” says Simpson.

Robert Enright, a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Forgiveness is a Choice agrees that forgiveness cannot be forced but believes it is the key to lasting peace. For the past six years, he’s been training teachers in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to educate children about forgiveness, hoping they will one day apply these lessons to the long-standing conflict there between Protestants and Catholics.

“Our work is to carve a road-map to forgiveness. The central part is to know what forgiveness is — it’s not condoning or excusing or even reconciling.” Enright says trying to understand the motivations of the other person evokes compassion and empathy that make it easier to forgive.

Of course the hope is that forgiveness will bridge gaps between races and religions just as it can couples, friends, and families. “Justice can never really close the gap caused by injustice — any two people will think each suffered more than the other,” says Everett Worthington, Jr., Professor of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of Five Steps to Forgiveness. “Forgiveness is something that can be used to close that gap.”

But what about those who’ve had their entire family wiped out, their entire culture destroyed? Many might not even wish to try to forgive such crimes. But even if they do, are there acts that are simply unforgivable? No, says Worthington. “There is nothing that is impossible to forgive, though that doesn’t mean it will be easy or that everyone will be successful. The amount of injustice is proportional to the difficulty of forgiving. But the passage of time may make it easier.”

“No Abyss So Deep”

The importance of time to any process of reconciliation is clear when you consider that experts consistently cite Germany as the best example of successful reconciliation efforts. In the sixty-plus years since World War II, Germany has paid out billions of dollars in reparations to survivors of the Holocaust, offered unconditional financial and political support to Israel, and apologized again and again for the Holocaust. Most recently Prime Minister Angela Merkel became the first prime minister to apologize before the Israeli Parliament. “It’s impossible to graduate from any school in Germany without being deeply aware of the crimes committed by the Germans in the Holocaust. There have been countless trials and reparations,” says Freeman. “Now you have Jews moving to Germany and a celebration of Jewish culture there.”

Today museums and thousands of memorials cover the country, keeping alive the memory of the six billion people who died in the Holocaust. But Philpott says it wasn’t till the 1960s that the call for remembrance seized the nation. “Much more happened in the last 30 years than in the first 30 years,” he notes.

Elazar Barkan, Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and author of The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices, says Germany’s progress toward reconciliation is all the more impressive because it has had to atone for so much. “The Holocaust is often held up as the most clear example of atrocities. When we look at the relationship between victims and perpetrators now, we see there is clearly no abyss we can’t emerge from.”

Should America Look Back?

America thankfully has not had to deal with the aftermath of ethnic cleansing or religious animosities dating back hundreds of years. Yet in our short 232-year-long past, we’ve made our share of mistakes, just like any nation. After all, our country’s past includes broken treaties with Native Americans and the so-called “original sin” of slavery. And a deeply divisive Civil War that took 600,000 lives.

“America is beginning to address misdeeds better than in previous generations,” says Donald Shriver, author of Honest Patriots: Loving Your Country Enough to Remember Its Misdeeds. “For the most part Americans like the future better than the past. It’s easy to say let’s get on with the future and forgive and forget. My motto is remember and forgive.”

Scholars point to the way we addressed the Japanese-American internment as our best success. During WWII, Roosevelt ordered more than 100,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans into internment camps. Upon release, many found their property, possessions, and former way of life gone. In 1989, the first President George Bush apologized for the internment and sent $20,000 checks to each survivor of the camps.

“The American reconciliation with Japanese-Americans was extremely successful because it allowed us to instead of being ashamed about the internment camps to be proud of owning up to the past,” says Barkan.

Too Late To Apologize?

But with situations like slavery, where no slaves or slave-owners are alive today, issues of apology and reparations become far more complex. Alabama, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida have all passed recent statements of regret or apology. However, repeated efforts to pass an apology resolution in Congress have been unsuccessful.

Opponents say today’s Americans shouldn’t have to apologize and possibly pay for the actions of previous generations. “An apology is a meaningless gesture,” says Stephan Thernstrom, the Winthrop Professor of History at Harvard University. Thernstrom says more than half a million Americans already paid with their lives in the Civil War and that affirmative action is an effort to compensate for past inequalities. He favors focusing on providing equal educational opportunities to close racial economic gaps.

Shriver agrees that educational and other institutional reform is important but also thinks an apology is in order. “An apology doesn’t complete the process, but it’s better than nothing,” he says.

And Simpson points out that young men in post-apartheid South Africa have turned to gangs in the absence of educational and social equality. He sees a parallel in the African-American experience. “It’s important to acknowledge a pattern of exclusion which is a long-term product of slavery,” he says.

A similar resolution of apology to Native Americans is also still rolling around Congress. Honoring land agreements with Native Americans is essential, says Shriver, but not enough. “I think especially with Native Americans, they just want our history books, our national celebrations, and public speeches to be honest about what happened to them.”

Our Own TRC

Several American communities have also sought the truth about uncomfortable episodes of the past. In Greensboro, North Carolina, a grass-roots group adopted the truth commission model to investigate the 1979 killings at a demonstration of five labor activists associated with the Communist Workers Party by the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party.

“The Greensboro TRC was seen as part of a larger effort to build trust and bridge gaps between the white and black community,” says Magarrell, who worked with the commission. She says the commission’s findings are now being discussed in college classes and incorporated into the telling of Greensboro’s history.

“I believe that if instead of gathering people together and saying we need to talk about race in the community, we said we need to talk about what happened in a specific event, it would be helpful,” she says. “That would give us a concrete situation to focus on where we’re not just talking about perceptions but about understanding the different experiences of what happened.”

One by One

Ultimately, exploring the past can pose more questions than it answers. In societies ravaged by racism and atrocities, can the truth ever really be found? Is there an expiration date on remorse? Can revenge truly be quelled by forgiveness?

But Worthington says even if we wish to forget the past, our bodies remember. “History conditions us. Once you’ve hurt me, I remember that, so if you hurt me again, it can be worth a million hurts in that context,” he says.

“But past healing also becomes part of that history and slowly we can build up a whole new set of precedents to draw upon.”

Making peace with the past is fundamentally the same whether on a personal or global scale. It involves an honest assessment of past wrongs, an attempt to make things right, and a commitment to not making the same mistakes again.

Of course the damage of our pasts can’t be undone overnight.

New conflicts continue to arise out of old divisions despite all the peacemaking institutions that have sprung up to prevent them. Reconciliation happens in fits and starts and can be the source of more arguments. It can seem hopeless sometimes. “Healing and the readjustment of attitudes takes generations,” says Philpott. “But it’s never too late to start.”

About the Author: Julie Mehta is a freelance writer for both print and online media. She currently writes and edits for New York magazine’s Website. Her work has also appeared in publications such as Positive Thinking, Parenting, and Current Health. She lives in New York City.