Post-Conflict Reconstruction & the Media:
Discussion Points

How do we keep the past alive without becoming its prisoner? How do we forget it without risking its repetition in the future? - Ariel Dorfman

"What seems apparent in former Yugoslavia is that the past continues to torment because it is not the past. These places are not living in a serial order of time but in a simultaneous one, in which the past and present are continuous, agglutinated mass of fantasies, distortions, myths and lies. Reporters in the Balkan wars often observed that when they were told atrocities they were occasionally uncertain whether these stories have occurred yesterday or in 1941, or in 1841, or 1441. […] This is the dreamtime of vengeance. Crimes can never safely be fixed in the historical past; they remain locked in the eternal present, crying out for vengeance."- Michael Ignatieff

Truth, justice, vengeance and forgiveness are societal responses to collective violence. They are also emotive buzz words used in discussions of post conflict societal reconstruction. But what do they really mean? What is their relationship to one another? What role do they play in post-conflict societies? And what can or should journalists do to aid societal reconstruction?




VENGEANCE

"Boundless vindictive rage is not the only alternative to unmerited forgiveness."
- Susan Jacoby

Vengeance is a word that is pejorative yet in many ways it embodies important ingredients of moral responses to wrongdoing.

What is vengeance?

• Vengeance is the impulse to retaliate when wrongs are done to ensure that wrongdoers
   pay for their crimes.
• Vengeance is the expression of a violation of our basic self-respect.
• Vengeance is dangerous if people exact more than necessary as they become hateful   themselves by committing the reciprocal act of vengeance.
• Vengeance can set in motion a downward spiral of violence in a mechanism of retaliation
   that becomes unappeasable.
• Vengeance can lead to horrible excesses and can never restore what was destroyed initially.




FORGIVNESS

"Forgiveness…seems to rule out retribution, moral reproach, nonreconciliation, a demand for restitution, and in short, any act of holding the wrongdoer to account."- Chesire Calhoun

Forgiveness as the opposite of vengeance is often considered an ultimate post-conflict goal. Yet it is a concept that is as complex as it is controversial. Some feel that victims must choose either justice or forgiveness, maintaining that to forgive is to sacrifice justice or the ability to exact punishment. In addition, some crimes are unforgivable. In those circumstances societies and individuals must find ways to reconcile and coexist without forgiving.

What is Forgiveness?

• Forgiveness is to renounce resentment and to avoid the self-destructive effect of holding
  on to pain.
• Forgiveness is to break the cycles of violence and to look forward by forging new
  relationships built on trust which create the foundation for a new society.
• Forgiveness is for the victims to reassert their own power and reestablish their own
  dignity while also teaching wrongdoers the effects of their harmful actions.
• Forgiveness is a way to choose to be different from the wrongdoers, to embrace different
  set of values.
• Forgiveness is a power held by the victimized, not a right to be claimed.
• Forgiveness cannot be commanded.

In theory, forgiveness does not and should not take the place of justice or punishment.
Yet, in practice, forgiveness often produces exemption from punishment. Even if the rigor of prosecution and punishment are not pursued, some other public process, such as public acknowledgment of crimes committed to give victims voice and to combat communal denial, is the very least that can be done to restore dignity to the victims and empower communities.



JUSTICE

Justice is a complex and innate human need whose definition, function and attainment have occupied human thought as long as we can trace history. Justice is essentially, a formal and tempered process of punishment for wrongs committed.

What is Justice?

• Justice as punishment is retributive and should be in proportion to the crime.
   It should also be corrective; depriving wrongdoers of power, deterring future aggression,
   and publicizing moral norms
• Justice in the form of tribunals or courts curbs extreme punishments, and in the words of       Martha Minnow, "[tribunals] mark an effort between vengeance and forgiveness.
   They transfer the individual's desires for revenge to the state or official bodies."
• Retributive justice is largely a western tradition based on the concept that society cannot       forgive what it cannot punish. What about cases like the break up of Yugoslavia where    neighbors were fighting neighbors? It would be impossible to punish all those guilty of war      crimes and to determine which crimes were justified under self-defense or duress.
   In situations where the distinctions between victims and perpetrators are blurred and
   where both must rebuild society together, retributive justice may not only be insufficient
   but impossible.
• Other concepts of justice, however, may be more suitable in situations of mass and    systematic human rights abuses such as, restorative justice as championed by the
   South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The aim was to restore a balance in    society and the dignity of people by exposing the truth by documenting the narratives of
   their collective history. This process is geared to repair social connections, moving victims    beyond anger and powerlessness and ultimately enabling the reintegration of offenders
   into the community.

"Underneath truth, justice, and forgiveness lie 'the twin goals of prevention and reparation in the process of moral reconstruction'"- Jose Zalaquett, a Chilean human rights activist.

TRUTH

What is truth?

• Truth is highly contestable. There are psychological truths based on memory and historical    truths based on facts. Is there then really only one truth?
• Truth means different things to different people. Archbishop Desmond Tutu:
  "The purpose of finding out the truth is not in order for people to be prosecuted.
   It is so that we can use the truth as part of the process of healing our nation."
• South African journalist and poet Antije Krog writing in reference to truth seeking by       commissions: "If its interest is linked only to amnesty and compensation, then it will have    chosen not truth, but justice. If it sees truth as the widest possible compilation of people's    perceptions, stories, myths and experiences, it will have chosen to restore memory and
   foster a new humanity, and perhaps that is justice in its deepest sense."
• Truth has different levels, including individual and collective. It is crucial to introduce
   individual memories and individual voices into a field dominated by political decisions
   and administrative decrees.




MEDIA ROLES

Communication has been described as the "mechanism through which human relations develop ' all the symbols of the mind, together with the means of conveying them through space and preserving them in time." Author John Durham Peters takes communication to a deeper level, describing it as the means of reconciling the self and 'other.'

What opportunities exist for the media during post-conflict reconstruction?

• The Media are the social constructs that house and facilitate mass communication;
   they are "the institutions and forms in which ideas, information and attitudes are transmitted    and received." The media create the space for communication within societies and among    communities and between nations.
• The media can create either a societal conversation or clash. In the words of
   communications scholar James Carey, "we first produce the world by symbolic work
   and then take up residence in the world we have produced."
• The media, when infused with a sense of social responsibility, can provides tools and    strategies to manage and process the myths, images, collective memories, fears and
   needs that shape perceptions that drive human behavior. The media reflect and create this    myriad of internal complexities within society. Conflict may be natural and normal but
   violence is a choice - as is reconciliation.
• The media can help turn collective storytelling into public acts of healing. Conflict resolution    expert Jean-Paul Lederach explains, "People need opportunity and space to express to and    with one another the trauma of loss and their grief at that loss, the anger that accompanies
   the pain and the memory of injustice experienced. Acknowledgement is decisive in the    reconciliation dynamic. It is one thing to know; it is a very different social phenomenon to    acknowledge. Acknowledgment through hearing one another's stories validates experience
   and feelings and represents the first step toward restoration of the person and the    relationship."
• The media through the telling of stories can assist in the releases feelings of shame and    humiliation in victims, so that the story becomes one of dignity and virtue. Transferring the    shame from the victim to the perpetrator creates a sense of justice and retribution.
• The media's capacity for public shaming is an extremely important one, especially in more       traditional societies where concepts of honor and reputation still drive behavior.
   Shaming must be distinguished from blaming.
                - Blaming is a call for accountability for an action but does not imply the                        perpetrator' repentance.
                - Shaming is a more effective tactic. It "encompasses all social processes of                        expressing the disapproval which have the intention or effect of invoking
                       remorse in the person being shamed and/or condemnation by others who                        become aware of the shaming." When culpability and responsibility are                        acknowledged, shaming becomes a form of public penitence.
• The media in the volatile post-conflict atmosphere must not succumb to pressure to exploit
   or sensationalize stories which would only retraumatize victims as well as society in
   general. Nor should they reduce testimonies to mere lists of atrocities which removes vital    context and accountability. Careful reporting must facilitate the societal conversation,    respecting victims and the effects of trauma on themselves as well as society.

"Whether it wishes or not, television has become the principle mediation between the suffering of strangers and the consciences of those in the world's few remaining zones of safety. No matter how assiduously its managers assert the medium's function is merely informative, they cannot escape the moral consequences of their power. It has become not merely the means through which we see each other, but the means by which we shoulder each other's fate. If the regimes of representation by which it mediates these relations dishonor the suffering they depict, then the cost is measured not only in shame, but in human lives." - Michael Ignatieff

Vengeance and forgiveness are marks along the spectrum of human responses to atrocity. Yet they stand in opposition: to forgive is to let go of vengeance; to avenge is to resist forgiving. Perhaps justice itself partakes of both revenge in the form of punishment and forgiveness. In order to affect lasting change and reconciliation, larger patterns of atrocity and complex lines of responsibility and complicity must be investigated, acknowledged and documented. Finding alternatives to vengeance - such as government-managed prosecutions, institutional reforms or other social processes - is a matter, then, not only of moral and emotional significance, it is urgent for human survival.

Further Discussion Questions:

1. How are social divisions and conflicts reflected inside the media?
2. How has the composition of the media changed in the time period after the violence?
3. What kinds of debates have been staged among members of the media about their role
    in the past and in the present and future?