universidad diego portales, chile ipsa, sao paulo febrero...
TRANSCRIPT
Transitional Justice After Pinochet: Human Rights Trials and Democratisation
in the Southern Cone
Cath CollinsUniversidad Diego Portales, Chile
IPSA, Sao Paulo febrero 2011
Starting point1990s→ ‘reirruption’ of demands for justice
for past human rights crimes in LatinAmerica
• Particularly noticeable, and local, in the Southern Cone
• More ‘transnational’ for Central America
• Focused on formal justice, as the main previously ‘missing’ dimension
• But also important advances in truth recovery and memory politics
Post-transitional justice?
Main differences from earlier TJ• Driven by civil society actors, not the State
• Usually a minority interest
• Occupies judicial terrain: judicialisation of politics
• Internationalised and globalised in repertoire
• Most successful where there have been substantial advances in institutional democratisation and judicial reform?
• BUT – the relationship is not exact (ES), AND late justice can be an independent variable in democ ratic deepening?
Transitional Justice
(Amnistía)
Reconciliación
Verdad
Suppositions• Fragility of new democracies• High risk of authoritarian reversal • Need to compromise with outgoing regime• HR legacy can be closed quickly and definitively
““““NosNosNosNos dijerondijerondijerondijeron quequequeque era era era era necesarionecesarionecesarionecesario optaroptaroptaroptar: : : : justiciajusticiajusticiajusticia o o o o democraciademocraciademocraciademocracia””””- Juan Méndez
Post-transitional justice
Justicia
Reparación y Memoria
Verdad
Suppositions• Successful democratisationrequires ‘normalising’ justice (no more ‘special justice for special circumstances’)• And (re)normalising the idea of democratic politics as contestation• There is some kind of link between past accountability and the quality of present rights protection
• The question of justice is broken open
• The link between truth and its consequences is restored
Implications for transitional HR settlements
Post-transitional justice is commemorative...
…but also confrontational
CausesInternational context, the justice cascade, norm
convergence, the ‘age of accountability’?
But in a post 9/11 world the idea of an international normed space is on the retreat
In any case, Southern Cone change has been mainly domestically driven and the distribution of change in the region is very patchy (LA vs CA)
So we need more local explanations for change
The need for more truth: unanswered questions
Peru: 40.000 dd ‘demás’– y nadie se dió cuenta
Centroamerica: muchos dd y epen zonasrurales nuncaexistieronsegún registrosestatales
Chile: más de 1.000 ddaún sin encontrar. 1a Comisión de la Verdad no consideró a sobrevivientes
Argentina: apropiación de menores operócomo un ganchointergeneracional
Emblematicanniversaries
Argentina 1996
Chile 1998
‘Incidents and accidents’
• Pinochet flies to London
• Fujimori flies to Chile
• Castresana sees coverage of the Spanish 1996 anniversary on Spanish TV
‘Hints and allegations’: revelations leading tonew demands
Archivos del Terror Vuelos de la muerte Banco Riggs
‘Superjudge syndrome’
The Pinochet Effect
The Garzón Effect… and now the Cóndor effect?
Third country litigation
Judicial reform- Democratic engineering does matter, but so does judicial culture
- Unrelated reforms can be determinant for TJ change- Question: is judicial reform a precondition or a consequence of late
justice?
Military reform
Transparency measuresAccess to information laws
US State Dept declassifications
Opening of military archives in Guate, Paraguay, Argentina
Political replacement and the ‘rise of the left’
Awakens expectation and action from civil society even when eventual public policy change is actually minimal
Does post transitional justice change anything?Impact has included:
• Reaction• Solid proof that late justice isn’t destabilising• Advances in guaranteeing victims’ rights• Due process has generally been exemplar: rehabilitation of judicial system (Peru)• ‘Virtuous cycle’ of judicial sensitisation on international law • Fact that justice has largely been national has increased potential legitimacy with national populations (vs ICC)• (Some) broader reopening of questions of social repudiation, remaining authoritarian legacies
Specific achievementsArgentina
• Truth trials led to revocation and annulment of amnesty
• Clear symbolic repudiation, political will thrown behind trials
Chile
• Fragile consensus now recognises and rejects HRVs
• Second truth process and extended reparations
Uruguay
• Colorado Partidocracia in decline
• Both living ex presidents currently in jail
Peru
• 1st head of state extradited & successfully tried for HR crimes
Guatemala
• Cases in Spain for genocide and at home for massacres
LimitationsJuridical• Unevenness of decisions to prosecute and of results• Amnesty still exists and is still applied. Use of loopholes not legislation• Real practical problems: complex investigations, low investigative capacity• Use of special judges reduces systemic learning
Human• Too little, too late for many• Civil claimants tend to be stigmatised• Innovators pay the price: survivors are bearing the burden• “What happens if I lose?” Re-victimization AND possible steps backward in previous repudiation or lustration (presumption of innocence)
Polítical• Absence of political will and/or open hostility (Peru) • Trials establish individual guilt, don’t necessarily indict state practice• Repudiation of authoritarian crimes DOESN’T seem to lead automatically torepudiation of authoritarian government
10 December 2006
Pinochet dies:
• under charges in 3 HR cases
• discharged for medical reasons in 3 more
• under charges in a major corruption case
12 December 2006
Pinochet’s funeral, Escuela Militar
According to Carlos Huneeus:
• Hardline ‘Pinochetismo’ has only dropped by 8% en Chile since 1996
• Outright rejection of Pinochetismo has gone up by less than 1%, and because of corruption not HR revelations
So late accountability doesn’t guarantee repudiation even of the individual, much less of their political project
Peru
2010His daughter Keiko leads the polls as candidate for the presidency in 2011. Her main campaign platform is a promise to pardon her father. Fujimoristas attack a victims’ memorial in Lima
200925 year sentence against Alberto Fujimori confirmed by Supreme Court
Opinion poll work
UDP 2009 Public Opinion Poll:
Segment on Perceptions of Human AccountabilityPERCEPCIONES SOBRE DERECHOS HUMANOS
(BASE: TOTAL MUESTRA)
% TOTALES
En Chile se han discutido una serie de opciones par a resolver el tema de las violaciones a los derechos humanos durante el gobierno de Pinochet, ¿ Con cuál de las siguientes opciones Ud.se considera más de acuerdo?
59.6
29.5
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Seguir investigando hasta que se juzgue a todos los
responsables
Cerrar pronto los casos aunque no se juzgue a los
responsables
*Los NS/NC completan el porcentaje total (100%) con un 10,9%
Procesamientos a militares
(BASE: TOTAL MUESTRA)
% TOTALES
Tomando en cuenta el alcance de las violaciones a l os derechos humanos cometidos en Chile durante el régimen militar, ¿cree usted que el actu al número de condenados es muy bajo, muy alto o correcto?
44.4
7.9
19.0
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
Muy bajo Muy alto Correcto
(BASE: TOTAL MUESTRA)
¿Está usted de acuerdo o en desacuerdo con las sigu ientes afirmaciones?
% TOTALES
7.3
14.4
14.7
24.4
10.3
9.2
68.3
75.4
76.1
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Chile requiere dar vuelta la
página en el tema de los
DDHH y mirar hacia el
futuro
Los civiles que participaron
en el gobierno militar
también son responsables
por las violaciones a los
DDHH
El General Pinochet
siempre supo de las
violaciones a los DDHH
De acuerdo
En desacuerdo
NS/NC
Web page: case statistics
Causas activas
32
514
Por ejecución y desaparición
Por torturas y exhumación
ílegal
Agentes
147
71
568
Condenados con sentencia
definitiva, l ibres por
beneficios o cumplir
sentencia
Condenados en prisión
efectiva
Procesados o condenados
sin sentencia definitiva
Total de agentes procesados y condenados desde año 2000: 786
Bulletin- Regional coverage (Cono Sur y Perú)
- Bilingual
- Judicial and sociopolitical news
www.icso.cl/observatorio-derechos-humanos
Socios regionales:
CELS Argentina www.cels.org.ar
IDL Peru www.idl.org.pe
AcknowledgementsMany of the images used here belong to the author. Others have been used with permission or accessed
from open sources.
None should be reproduced for commercialpurposes
If any permission or credit has been overlooked, please contact [email protected]