Above: CONADEP, Argentina's official report on the Dirty War.
English translation: "Never Again: Report of the National Commission on the Disappeared"
Just wanted to thank each and every one of you for an awesome job. Vagisha and I thoroughly enjoyed your tribunal simulation and we hope you did too! - Nerey
Post 3: Keep with the role playing, write from the POV of the individual or group you were representing. What concerns did you voice at the tribunal today and what did you respond? What did the hearing body ask you to elaborate? If you were the hearing body, announce your verdict and how you came to that conclusion.
14 comments:
Unfortunately, many human rights violations are addressed several years after the occurrence. This makes it very difficult to "blame" someone and demand retribution. What happens if the criminals are dead or the crimes were committed too long ago? Who will pay?
Victims would say that the criminals should pay, no matter the reason. But there is no price on human life and no way to reverse time. Countries and organizations can make formal apologies but to a family ravaged by grief, "sorry" comes far too late. I think that victims should receive monetary compensation for their loss to reinforce the strength of an apology. But victims should instead focus on prevention of these crimes. They should try to pass new laws, new treaties, and other measures to ensure that future crimes will not be committed. Victims should broaden their goals to include programs that would aid future generation sand prevent human rights violations.
Keeping with the role playing:
I warned her not to go. She was always such a sensible girl, my Ana, and she knew how to be careful. God knows we never supported the military regime in our family, but any criticism we had we kept quiet and saved it for vague remarks at the dinner table and whispered fears in bed. I am ashamed to say that I worried too much about my own family to ever voice outrages against the regime in public. While we all felt the tension and the fear in our daily lives, our silence was what allowed the regime to continue its atrocities. It encouraged them, even. Our silence betrayed the memories and wishes of los desapariedos. But what could we do? Why put more people at risk? Isn’t it human nature to protect one’s own loved ones over strangers and even neighbors?
But Ana, the good Catholic that she was, took to heart the Golden Rule. She loved everyone as she loved herself and her family, and she took it upon herself to protect them as well. At fist it was all non-political, but after she became closer to that handsome boy Pablo of hers, she joined in political protests as well. In the beginning I hated him for that. But Ana gave voices to the silent until she became one of the silent herself. Every time I shushed her, every time her father told her to go to her room rather then hold discussions, I felt in my heart that we were shushing God’s will.
After Ana was disappeared, I felt all former reservations leave me. With a sick husband, a son safely in the U.S. and a disappeared daughter, what did I have to lose? I stopped blaming Pablo for taking my daughter away from me and started blaming those truly responsible. So, against common sense, I joined the mothers who protested at the capitol. At first my husband angrily ordered me not to go, and when that didn’t work, he begged me. But eventually even he came to realize that my work was not only Ana’s, but God’s. Soon, he even started sending with me regards to the other women gathered, or silently handing me baskets of fruit and pastries to share. I know that Ana is proud of us both and that gives me enough strength to continue her struggle.
as the the hearing body diana phil and i came to the following verdict.
1. a formal apology was needed from the military officials for the mother of anna for the violent actions at the riot which violated articles 19 and 20 pt. 1 according to the udhr.
2. we suggested the u.n. investigate argentinian police funds, jail system, and funding records.
3. probation for police officers until the previous investigation came to a close .
4. ngo and argentinian goverment must cooperate to find more productive and efficient means of record keeping and financial management in the military and jail systems.
I think that while certain important topics werent breached (torture, genocide, and arbitrary arrest)each group did a very good job with the information they were given. While we obviously werent as prepared and informed as those really involved in a case such as that it was clear how the lack of hard facts and credible information could be detrimental to a just verdict. In reality i would think that people such as pablo and annas friend would be far more reluctant to involve themselves in such a trial for fear of a similar fate as anna. d phil and i wrote down as many of the udhr articles which had been violated in reality and we 6 or more possibilities. however, there was no way of really prosecuting or punishing the military officers becuase of the huge lack of evidence. it seemed to me that this kind of trial was a rarity in times similar to the argentinian dirty war and it was unimaginable how many civilians were tortured and killed with absolutely no representation in any court at all.
fallon and i discussed monetary reparations and we agreed that we had our doubts as to their efficiency. as of now i dont believe in monetary reparations for wrong doings. after ww1 (as far as i can recall) germany was made to pay huge monetary reparation sums which ultimately had a large effect on the great depression and had ties to ww2. i dont understand why money would really make a difference to a grieving mother of a university student whom we can assume wasnt supporting the entire family. this doesnt make sense to me but i also dont know the arguments in support of it. when it comes to some sort of reparation of a wrong money is not the clearest choice to me. a formal apology was the closest thing we could get to some sort of closure for annas mother because there was not evidence which supported her cause. even though i dont think this is enough i think that alternatives to monetary reparation in terms of human rights cases specifically is something to be explored.
i was part of the NGO group...duh, only the best. besides the fact that we kind of dominated out there, i felt true to the points we touched upon. There were clear violations of human rights in Argentina but it was shocking how typical the case study actually seemed. it seemed so easy to evade persecution from the point of the military/police force. i am sure that in cases like these the military force always plays dumb, not knowing what went on...and there are no records to prove anything. I feel that this puts the tribunal in a very difficult position, because even though the world is aware of the attrocities that were commited, it isnt fair to punish the coup on something "lacking evidence".
its a lose/lose situation. its way not cool. but i feel that this problem might be a main cause in the UN's "inability" to get things done. so many of the problems to deal with are so serious and horrendous, yet so easy to get away with. in todays information-run world, files and records are evrything. without them people arent skeptical of what people say, but unable to prove 100% of that is true...because theres still the possibility that 30,000 people and their families made it all up.
liv and i talked about the idea of monetary compensations and reperations, and if they are necessary, and even further, helpful. we both agreed that reperations seeked by the victims create a cycle of revenge that will ultimatley halt any peacekeeping progress the world can make. i think in this case, the best thing the victim's family could do is spread word about what happened, and prevent it from happening ever again. this helping of all of mankind will bring more peace, and i feel closing, than money.
The role of the NGO in the role play was interesting in that in real life, the NGO was not affected by the Dirty War, as was the military officers and the families, but that it still had an effective role. We voiced the violations of human rights and monetary compensation for affected families.
The hearing body (P$Money) said that we did not elaborate and explain enough on the people who were afflicted by the crimes and that we were too focused on the verdict and not the issues themselves.
My personal beliefs on intl tribunals are that it is used to blame and not to punish, as many dictators and other rulers are given lenient sentences. It is important to regard those countries sovereignty when punishing intl criminals esp. heads of state. However, when heads of state are tried in their own court, using the Nuremberg Trials as an example, they are often given lenient sentences.
I found the tribunal simulation very interesting. As the police I was glad how the verdict came out- we only got probation and had to make an apology.
When the tribunal began i expected to lose miserably. I was representing the police and even in my view before hand, i saw us as the guilty party. I was unsure if we could make our case by just denying everything and blaming it all on lack of funding, lack of training, and our bad courts system.
It did work, and it was interesting to listen to the different cases put forward by the other parties. What i found out after, and what i was questioning while the simulation was proceeding, was the information we were given. With the view on funding, we were police chiefs in a small village, whereas the on the defendants sheets we were in a large city and part of the military, therefore they assumed we would benefit from thier funding.
I realized how hard it was to convince other people to our point of view, and how each party had very strong arguments, such as the people who represented the UN.
On another note, what i learned about the PMCs surprised me a lot as i had no idea that these organizations even existed. Even though they are paid by the government, couldn't they turn against it? If they are strong could they gain even more power that could be threatening society?
I find it frightening almost that the government is even unsure about the workings of these organizations. For example that out of the number of people they hire from these companies, they do not know how many have died. These are American citizens and they do not know what has happened to them. Sure they are aiding the country as it is getting difficult to get volunteers to enlist, but is there a reason why people do not want to enlist? Maybe they should just stop sending soldiers.
The tribunal activity today was especially interesting because it allowed us the class to address a specific case of human rights abuse from multiple perspectives. Because we were granted a great deal of latitude in our roles, we were able to create a persona (mine being Pablo Andres Guzman) and try to really see the issue from our perspective. However, being only a witness to the crime, I was frustrated that I was unable to cross examine or question the officials put on trial. This was, in fact, a valuable lesson as it revealed the frustration and sense of powerlessness that the families of the 30,000 victims must have felt as justice was not brought the men responsible for the atrocities. Although local trials were held, there was never an international hearing to try the men involved in this genocide. And as a result, most of these atrocities were largely unpunished.
Today’s topics, especially the tribunal, were extremely interesting. However, I guess all day the subject I wanted to blog on was PMCs.
I knew of private military contractors/companies before today’s class, but their size and significance within Iraq was something new and sort of shocking to me. It’s not so much the fact that the government hires mercenaries that surprises me, but more the “details” of the PMCs and the work they do.
They’re not recorded in official death tolls for American soldiers, or even really reported by the media. How do the families of the PMC personnel feel? When a PMC fighter dies in combat, what happens to his or her body? I’d expect it to be sent back to the family, if it is recovered; I assume that a multitude of PMC personnel who die in conflict zones are left in the place they perished. They disappear in that way, don’t they? The deceased are technically “civilians”, albeit ones with soldiering skills, whose employers may not be committed to honoring their remains and whose employing country, the U.S., is certainly not committed to honoring their memory. It just seems sort of wrong. I can’t say it’s a violation of the mercenaries’ human rights, as they sort of chose that fate for themselves, but it is still unsettling.
What’s further unsettling about PMCs is sort of a volatility that they represent. What does it tell us when any country cannot muster together an adequate army, and must rely on mercenaries? Furthermore, what does it tell the mercenaries themselves? Mercenaries are not necessarily bound to the cause they’re fighting for (at least, not the cause their employers are employing them for). They could, theoretically, turn on their employer and take over an area. This was proposed in class, and Vagisha had a good counterargument: the mercenaries earn a ridiculous amount of money, and they aren’t too keen on giving that up. But what if there is even more incentive to turn on an employer in a future situation than even money?
I realize this might be too much speculation, but our lesson on PMCs raised a lot of questions in my mind. Personally, I think they should be regulated somehow. Ideally, perhaps, the UN should try to organize some sort of guidelines or hard laws (as well as soft laws) to keep international situations with PMCs fair.
The tribunal activity today was alot more fulfilling and fun than I had anticipated. I was the police chief accused for the human rigths violations. Briefly, the role portrayed was a character who had little military and political training. Furthermore, the knowledge of the character consisted of nothing specifically based on Ana and only mentions other officers and the existance of torture in order to gain confessions to successfully put away arrested people in an already corrupt court system. Therefore the mentality of the role had to be stubborn and incompetent. The central arguements Helen and I presented was the issue of the lack of training, funds, and a supportive governemt. When we were counteracted with the arguement of Ana's disappearance, our only answer was that we had no records of any accounts. When we were accused of violating human rights with torture, we admitted to simply incidents occurring within our untrained police force that we were addressing. Furthermore, we were able to accuse the NGO of publishing a previous media article that was exaggerated and untruthful, which was part of the information of our role. The general role we had was one that had to be ignorant and pretend like everything was fine. This was how the real military and human rights violaters acted when accused by the UN were. I suppose they had the idea that incompetance andignorance can allow them to avoid a harsh conviction. Likewise in our trial, the hearing only put us on probabtion as officers, asked for a formal apology for the human rights violated, and asked that the UN continue to investigate. Of course, this decision is incomprehensible in reality. However, based on the lack of real proof and so much unspecific testimony by us and the other groups, it is clear why the hearing came to their decision. This was a good example of how human rights could have been clearly violated and how the UN was unable to harshly punish anyone.
The major event of today was when we got to role play an international tribunal case. Olivia, Diana and I got to play the role of the hearing body, which was responsible for determining the verdict of the case. In this particular case we discussed the fate of a woman who's 19 year old daughter had been abducted by Argentine police officers and allegedly tortured and murdered in part of the "Dirty War." Along with the death of the girl (Ana), 30,000 other people were "disappeared." Our final verdict as the hearing body was fairly moderate and did not even address the genocide of the 30,000 people. We felt that we had to make it moderate because the NGO, family and IO groups were short on hard evidence that people had been tortured. Although in real life this atrocity has been recognized as a genocide, we were unable to say that it was more than just a single incident of police brutality. The two representatives of the police did a pretty solid job as pointing out that shoddy funding and record keeping abilities were the reasons for why Ana had disappeared with so many others. They were also able to make it clear that she had been considered a threat to security of Argentina. We decided that an apology from the police force and UN funding for new training and record keeping materials were what was needed to help prevent future problems. Another key decision that we made was that there should not be any monetary reparations. Overall today was a fun and interesting activity where we all got to get involved and get experience on a simulated international stage.
The group I was in was the Peacekeeping Force. The outline of our charater involved a senior officer from a peacekeeping cintingent who was stationed in the small town that Anna was from. When we became confused concerning our role in the case we were told to imagine working for the UN and be ordered by them to gather the truth. We spoke to the Police in hopes of gaining knowledge on the reasoning behind the disappearences and what exactly was done to the victims. They were unable to give us any information and blamed their actions on untrained policemen and insufficient funding. The family of Anna was helpful in retelling the events of the night, but we were not able to get any solid evidence from them that the event occurred the way they explained it. When giving our opening statment the points were brought up concerning the limited abilities of the police force and how the UN could improve upon this situation with funds. All that would depend on the verdict, which we were not included in. The purpose of our presence was to gain and release information to the media was brought up. Our goal was to unveil the truth and broadcast it to the world. All our group gave was an opening statement because. There were no questions I suppose because our purpose was a little unclear and not easily expressed in the case.
In the morning session of the class I was extremely interested in the Private Military Companies lecture. The subject is totally foreign to me; I was surpirsed I hadn't heard about this from my history teacher- a complete War in Iraq enthusiast. The potential problems invovled in hiring such a company are concerning. Not only are they fighting purely for money, which might not be enough incentive for one to risk their life (it cetainly wouldn't be for me) but they are also very secretive. The fact that their deaths and casualties are not counted leads one to feel as though they are being mislead by the gov't. The video which included an interview with a member of Congress who was not at all framiliar with the goingson of the Blackwater company was pretty scary. If they dont know what is going on then who does? This whole discussion was very enlightening in a scary way
I was part of the hearing body today. I thought a lot of the information that people had on their paper was not announced during the tribunal. If facts such as that bodies were being found on the lakes, or specific evidence of how Anna may have been torture was brought up, the victim's family would've gotten more reparations during the verdict. The lack of information presented during the tribunal really posted a problem for us. We knew the victim's family should have gotten more reparations but we didn't see enough evidence to support that. This illustrates how important the transparency of organizations, of events, of issues are, and how informations should be kept in record and accessible to the public. It is fair to say that in some of tribunals or court cases nowadays, judges still have to make decisions that favors to the side that violated the human rights more, even if they know that that's wrong. That may be because information that can be used as against the "bad guys" are being hidden or just not being found. Lack of information can definitely cause morally wrong decisions, and in a lot, if not all, countries today informations are still being hidden by governments and organizations.
I was also pretty overwhelmed with all the information I got today. I had a hard time processing everything I was hearing into a form that fits the world view I have. We were discussing about Transnational advocacy networks and how they operated. The thing is, in China, we never hear anything about the different non-state actors in the world...so how much should I care about how they function? Well, i care now, because I've learned that they are affecting the world in a lot of positive ways. However, it is also interesting to note that we are having sessions about NGOs in America, talking about how they would help the people in the developing countries attain human rights, where people in the countries who need these NGOs don't know much about them. Being aware of these issues and the organizations is a good thing. But are we being too idealistic here? Hopefully that'll be a no, that at the end of the three weeks we can put our ideals into action and make sure things are actually being done in this world.
As a member of the NGO team, I lobbied for a public apology from the Argentinean government and reparation for the victims. This was only fair given the blatant human rights violations which the government had committed, including violations of the right to a fair trial, the right to freedom of speech, the right to assembly, and the freedom from arbitrary arrest. Though these claims were justified by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everything was not as clear cut as it seemed.
Each organization had a different story, representing our differing view points. Evidence in certain cases (such as information on torture) was lacking, which only impeded the judicial process. Hence, as different organizations we had to communicate with each other to gather information to help our respective causes before presenting our cases to the hearing body. This activity certainly provided considerable insight concerning the operation of the various parties involved in international hearings.
What really became apparent from this activity was the power of transnational advocacy networks, NGOs, and social movements, which were all discussed in the morning lecture.
Not only did we hear about their methods of operation, such as information, symbolic, leverage, and accountability politics but used these very same tactics ourselves. This raises a significant point. When used effectively, these methods can be used to achieve significant good, which, then again, is relative.
Post a Comment