As repressive regimes fade, questions about the past are often central to the politics of the present. Human rights leaders throughout the world have argued that reconciliation and recovery depend on confronting the state crimes of the past, and that a silenced past will lead to bitterness and simmering conflict. Responding to popular demands for a full accounting of past atrocities, political authorities in many transitional countries have realized the need for a formal acknowledgment of past abuses.
There have been many important nongovernmental inquiries into rights crimes by a prior regime, such as the secret project undertaken by the Catholic Church in Brazil during that country’s military regime which documented the systematic torture of political prisoners. But truth-seeking carries a different weight when it is done with the authority of the state in the form of an official truth commission. A “truth commission” is distinguished by several defining characteristics: truth commissions focus on patterns of abuses over a period of time in the past, rather than on a specific event; they are temporary bodies, generally ceasing to exist after the submission of a final report; and they are somehow officially sanctioned by the government (and/or the aimed opposition, as appropriate), giving them greater authority and better access to official sources of information. Truth commissions are also defined by what they are not. Most importantly, they lack the power to prosecute or punish perpetrators or to make judicial pronouncements, and thus should be distinguished from national and international prosecutors or courts, such as the ad hoc tribunals now focusing on the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, or the permanent International Criminal Court that was recently agreed to in Rome. Truth commissions, moreover, do not have the power to implement the reforms or reparations programs which they may recommend in their reports. Their implementation depends entirely on the will and interest of the political authorities.
Official truth-seeking is not a simple or uncontroversial proposition. It is wise to be skeptical of an “official truth” in any country, but especially in unstable, politically contested spaces where facts of great dispute and intense passion are under consideration. As official truth-seeking unfolds, victims and rights advocates may fear getting something other than The Truth, or other than The Truth in the shape and depth that they had wanted. They may fear a truth packaged for other purposes: truth as a balm (“please feel better now, the past is now closed”), or truth as an escape from other state responsibilities (“we have done what we can; no more is possible”). But the overall record of past commissions has been positive. Despite political constraints and pressures, most have documented the testimonies of thousands of victims and witnesses, producing strongly worded and politically unbiased reports.
There have been over 20 truth commissions around the world over the past 25 years. Headlines have recently focused on South Africa, where a very public and provocative Truth and Reconciliation Commission will wrap up this year. But South Africa crafted its commission only after studying the truth commissions that preceeded it in Latin America. Those who drafted the legislation for the South Africa commission were particularly conscious of the blanket amnesties awarded in many Latin American countries and the failure of most truth commissions to gain the cooperation of perpetrators in their search for the truth. The result was the truth-for-amnesty formulation in which perpetrators who disclose all they know about politically motivated crimes during the apartheid era are granted amnesty for those crimes.
In Latin America, truth has often been a first and fundamental demand as repressive regimes or civil wars have come to an end. One of the first acts of the new civilian government in Argentina was to craft a truth commission, the first in the region to attract Significant international attention. Over a nine-month period in 1983 and 1984, the National Commission on the Disappeared documented close to 9,000 disappearances that took place under military rule from 1976 to 1983 (though even the commission understood this was not an inclusive total; the actual number of disappeared is estimated to be from 15,000 to 30,000). With the assistance of survivors of detention and torture, the commission surveyed over 200 former torture centers, primarily in police and military installations. The commission report, Nunca Más, is one of the best-selling books in Argentine history, and is still sold in kiosks on the streets of Buenos Aires. Perhaps most importantly, the commission’s files were handed directly to prosecutors, providing the backbone of evidence and a pool of witnesses for the subsequent trials of junta leaders.
When the newly elected government of Patricio Aylwin took power in Chile in 1990, it concluded that it could not overturn the 1978 amnesty law which prevented punishment for the great majority of crimes committed during the military regime of Augusto Pionchet. His government turned to official truth-seeking to confront the violent acts perpetrated over the prior 17 years by state forces and the armed opposition. Chile’s years of repression resulted in greater numbers of survivors of torture and fewer executions and disappearances compared to Argentina, but the National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation was enjoined from documenting cases of torture. Instead, it focused on close to 3,000 disappearances and killings along with a number of political kidnappings, and only described practices of torture in general terms. As a result, the extensive reparations policies which were put in place by a follow-up commission did not reach torture survivors, who constituted the majority of the victims. But the commission’s formal recognition of state responsibility for disappearances was important in acknowledging the victims.
In 1991, the parties to the peace talks in El Salvador agreed to a Commission on the Truth to be appointed and administered by the UN to investigate abuses by both sides of the country’s 12-year civil war. Due to political polarization and continued insecurity and fear about reporting rights crimes, this commission, unlike its counterparts elsewhere, was comprised of international commissioners and staff. The commission’s report, released in 1993, was criticized on some grounds, particularly for an imbalance in identifying which sectors of the armed left were implicated in abuses and for failing to identify who was behind the country’s death squads. But the commission’s naming of dozens of high-level perpetrators and its strong and detailed policy recommendations helped to force the retirement of abusive officers and eventually to push through important judicial reforms. The political leadership, however, was not ready to accept, acknowledge or apologize. The high command of the armed forces openly rejected the report as biased and unfair, and the government passed a sweeping amnesty law just five days after the report was published.
Recent events in Guatemala highlight the dangers of truth-telling. On April 28, 1998, Monsignor Juan Gerardi Conedera, the head of the Guatemalan Archbishop’s Human Rights Office, was brutally assassinated just two days after he presented a powerful report produced by the Project for the Recovery of Historical Memory (REMHI) summarizing three decades of atrocities. The investigation into Gerardi’s killing remains open and no motive has been officially established, but most Guatemalans believe the killing was in direct response to the release of the report. That speaking the truth can he dangerous is hardly news. Interviewers in many countries—Haiti, El Salvador and many countries in Africa—have found that victims do not always speak easily about what they have suffered. When perpetrators still live nearby, witnesses understand the danger of telling what they know. Some are not willing to speak at all, intimidated by implicit or explicit threats from those involved in past crimes. Despite the murder of Bishop Gerardi, Guatemala’s official truth commission, which was created by the Peace Accords signed in 1996, is continuing its investigations and is expected to release its final report in late 1998.
To the extent that official truth is a step towards a full and inclusive national memory which allows the voices of the victims and survivors to be heard, it is a crucial step in transitional processes. But for victims and survivors of state repression, truth is rarely sufficient. Most victims see official truth-telling as only a first step towards real justice. A truth commission can only begin to address the considerable needs of a transitional society. The crimes of the past are not easily put to rest , and truth without justice in the courts will be unsatisfactory to many. But it is clear that official truth-seeking has taken a firm place in the toolbag of transitional mechanisms to address past crimes, and it is also often a central demand of victims and human rights groups.
Many past truth commissions have had significant limitations. In some cases, restrictions were written into their mandates, while in others, they were granted limited time frames or resources to carry out their investigations. But the major weakness of past commissions has not been in the commissions themselves, but in the failure of governments to implement their recommendations, or in weak or compromised judiciaries which fail to use the commission’s information to pursue perpetrators. The challenge, then, is to strengthen future commissions so that they are more likely to uncover a full and fair rendering of the truth and to strengthen, rather than side-step, judicial action against those responsible for past crinics.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Priscilla Hayner is an independent writer based in New York City. She is currently completing a book on truth commissions worldwide.
