Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

In Central and Eastern Europe, an experiment is taking place that
is known as lustration: the exclusion or punishment of criminals or
collaborators associated with the previous regime. Vaclav Havel
and Adam Michnik were right to try to avoid a witch-hunt and to
look for national reconciliation based on democracy rather than
artificially fuelling the fear of an already defeated enemy. It does
testify to the need for clear consideration of the nature of communist
regimes and for a distinction between leaders, executioners
and torturers personally guilty of crimes who should be punished,
and the mass of citizens who collaborated with the regime in order
to survive and who may or may not be blamed morally but who
cannot be confused with the active criminals.
The second quite different experiment is that of the truth and reconciliation
commissions based on the South African model. Their
approaches and results are varied: sometimes they are just the expression
of a political compromise resulting from stalemate; sometimes,
as in South Africa, they take on a religious or psychoanalytical
flavour with an emphasis on confession and forgiveness. The commissions
sometimes lead to mutual dissatisfaction but they do
testify to the need for reconciliation that is not simply about forgetting
the past.
Finally there is the innovative and fragile progress of international
criminal justice through the creation of the special tribunals on Yugoslavia
and Rwanda, and of the International Criminal Court. The
balance sheet to date is mixed, to say the least. The process is
hampered by its dependence upon states for funding and for the
execution of warrants and sentences, as well as by potential conflicts
with compromises, for example guarantees of immunity to
dictators in return for a relinquishment of power.
All these new features of the international judicial scene are imperfect
but positive. Whether or not they have succeeded in promoting
reconciliation is questionable but in several cases they have
certainly helped to establish and make public the truth about a number
of dark and disputed episodes of recent wars and genocides.
However, it should not be forgotten that these positive results do
not represent the main function of these international tribunals – to
apply the law according to certain very specific criteria. Judges are
79 Pierre Hassner