Belfast News Letter (Northern Ireland)
April 26, 2004, Monday
LIFESTYLE: ARE WE READY FOR THE TRUTH
THE prospect of a truth commission to explore what really happened
during the Troubles has once again been raised after the Cory
reports. On the eve of Freedom Day in South Africa, ROSS SMITH asks
whether a process that helped heal that troubled country’s wounds can
have the same success here.
WITH the publication of the Cory reports, the question of whether to
set up a truth commission for Northern Ireland has once again been
raised.
Policing Board chairman Des Rea has said it should be the way forward
for dealing with the huge number of cases in which families of
victims still want to learn the full facts of what happened.
The Bloody Sunday Inquiry has only just finished its hearings, four
public inquiries are to begin as a result of Judge Cory’s
recommendations, while a number of cases dating back to the Troubles
are being looked into by the Police Ombudsman.
As more and more people seek answers, it is believed by many that an
over-arching process to look into the whole violent history would be
the best way to deal with the past.
University of Ulster sociology professor Bill Rolston says weaknesses
in the criminal justice system create a need for a commission.
He believes the system does not have the resources to cope with the
backlog of unsolved cases people wish to see investigated, and that
it has in the past been “skewed” in terms of how it has dealt with
republicans, loyalists and state forces.
“I’m not into necessarily making Hugh Orde’s job easier,” he says.
“If getting the truth means making his job harder then so be it. But
it seems to me the criminal justice system as we know it here cannot
handle the past and cannot handle impunity.”
However, Brandon Hamber, a South Africanborn researcher now working
in Belfast, warns against launching a commission for “pragmatic”
reasons.
There has to be a desire to deal with the past and then a belief that
a truth commission will be beneficial – not simply a wish to save
spending further millions on the back of the Saville Inquiry, or to
make life easier for the PSNI. Experts argue there is no chance of a
truth commission working without broad agreement about its form.
Mr Hamber stresses: “What’s needed is a really large scale debate
about this, so you get to that consensus driven approach.
“It couldn’t be something which is just invented by a few academics
and foisted upon society. It will not work if that’s the case.
“The starting point is not for some model to be cooked up behind
closed doors.”
What has not happened in Northern Ireland is the clear discrediting
of a government or system of government that has occurred in just
about every other society prior to a truth commission being set up.
Bill Rolston points out: “The truth commission in South Africa was
uder the auspices of a new majority government with a charismatic
chairperson. The truth commissions in China and Argentina were set up
by civilian geovernments after a military overthrow. The Rwandan
truth commission was handled by international NGOs. El Salvador was
the UN.
“In all sorts of ways you can say it’s clear they had broken with the
past and the previous governments were discredited.
“Have we a reguime change here? Are we in a transition to reguime
change, or will there never be one? At the very least it’s
premature.”
The notion of amnesty for terrorists is a massive stumbling block for
many victims. In South Africa this was offered on the basis that
perpetrators told the whole truth. A separate committee was set up to
decide on amnesty applications before witnesses gave evidence to the
truth commission.
But the South Africa model need not – and could not – be replicated
in a different context in Northern Ireland, says Bill Rolston.
He suggests the principle focus here ought to be investigation rather
than reconciliation.
That was a view taken by the Eolas project, a consultation on truth
and justice which Prof Rolston worked on. Its idea was for a
committee to gather complaints and questions put by people who
believe they have been wronged by bodies including paramilitary
groups, the RUC and the army. Separate investigators would be tasked
to put these matters to each group.
The committee would then publish a report in which it would evaluate
the quality of the answers given.
Prof Rolston says: “It seems to me something like that could actually
work. This does not require people to stand up in public and deny
what they did. Nobody loses face. Nobody has to back down in public.
“If the committee has a crosscommunity legitimacy, it could work. It
seems to me an imaginative way to try to deal with the issues, given
the problems of trying to have a reconciliation model.”
But Hanif Valley, the national legal officer of South Africa’s Truth
and Reconciliation Commission, explains the value of a system in
which people are prepared to publicly admit what they have done.
“People can’t deny something happened when the person who did it came
to apply for amnesty for what he did,” he explains.
The reality of what a truth commission could do is probably a long
way from many people’s expectations. While the South African
commission dealt with a host of individual cases, Brandon Hamber
cautions that no one should expect that every detail of what happened
in their own particular situation will be brought to light.
“You might not get the exact specifics about who did what to whom,”
he says. “It’s very different to an individualised judicial process.
“You could go for individual cases through the courts, but how much
broad structural truth are you going to get, and how many people will
actually go through that process? If you go for a commission, you
sacrifice that level of specifics.”
Nor should anyone expect that Northern Ireland’s communities will
instantly be reconciled after a commission.
“There’s a perception that victims meet perpetrators, everybody says
sorry, has a big hug and cry and the world’s better for it,” says
Bill Rolston.
“I think reconciliation is the end of a process but we cannot
engineer it. We cannot orchestrate it.”
When it comes to the experience in South Africa, Hanif Valley adds:
“We have always maintained that reconciliation is a process. It’s not
ended yet and it’s not something that is going to happen overnight.”
And what people certainly cannot expect is that they will be able to
sit back and watch others being embarrassed by their past actions.
Brandon Hamber explains that society as a whole was put under the
microscope in South Africa, not merely the individuals who were
directly responsible for human rights abuses.
“Anyone who thinks this is an easy option is very mistaken,” he says.
“If you read through the role of the South African commission, for
example, it looks at the way you couldn’t understand human rights
violations without looking at the role of business in cosying up with
the state, or look at churches, or look at the media.
“In the last decade, truth commissions have been much more about
looking at society and try to understand the causes in a much wider
forum than a court would.”
But as the debate continues, Bill Rolston is sure that sooner or
later, some form of commission has to be set up – otherwise the past
will always linger.
He concludes: “Whether it’s Hugh Orde’s professional problems or
Geraldine Finucane’s need for closure or whatever, or whether it’s
victims’ need for acknowledgement, it will not go away.
“That’s the evidence of every single other past conflict.
“In Spain, the grandchildren of people who were disappeared by Franco
are now demanding to know the truth.
“Armenians still want the truth told about how they were slaughtered
by the Turks.
“There is an organisation in Russia trying to get at the truth of
what Stalin did.
“I just think at a social level, never mind an individual level, you
can’t draw a line under the past or think about doing so. It’s
something that has to be confronted, if it’s now or later.”