Last week, Jewish World Watch (JWW) co-sponsored a conference at Loyola Law School called “New Challenges to Justice: Genocide in the 21st Century.” The event began with a screening on Thursday evening of “Amae, Thamee, Ama (Mother, Daughter, Sister),” a documentary by Jeanne Hallecy about the Burmese military’s practice of using rape as a weapon of war. The film juxtaposes the heart-wrenching testimonies of several Rohingya rape survivors forced to flee to camps in neighboring Bangladesh, with a group of internally displaced Kachin women coping with loss and persecution from inside Burma. Bit by bit, the women from both groups regain some of their agency; we witness laughter and joy in both dismal settings.
But, what’s unique about this film is how it connects the two groups of women — one Muslim, one Christian — and shows them how they are joined in the same struggle for protection and control over their bodies and destinies. The film champions these alliances, these bridges, as the key to building civil society in Myanmar and augmenting one another’s calls for change.
The screening was followed by a panel discussion, including the filmmaker, Jewish World Watch (JWW) Advocacy & Grantmaking Director Ann Durbin, and attorney Michael Ghilezan. They discussed why the Myanmar military’s August 2017 crackdown against the Rohingya Muslim minority constituted genocide, the next steps for ensuring the safe return of the Rohingya population from Bangladesh, and how to prevent further persecution of other minority groups like the Kachin still living in fear within Myanmar’s borders.
On Friday, there were two more panels as well as a lunchtime keynote address. The first panel dealt with challenges to securing post-conflict justice. David Akerson, an international lawyer who played key roles in the international criminal tribunals in both the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, spoke about the evidentiary challenges posed by these international prosecutions. He pointed out two themes in tribunals with respect to evidence: irregular militias or rebel groups that don’t document their policies or chains of command, and government-organized atrocities, documented in meticulous military archives — all of which must be translated, cataloged, and assessed. He noted the need for greater efficiency in evidence collection as well as the need to develop better chain-of-custody practices for establishing authenticity and reliability of evidence in a world dominated by social media.
Sam Garkawe of Southern Cross University in Australia discussed the challenges of victim participation in international tribunals and before the International Criminal Court. Article 68(3) of the Rome Statute establishing the ICC allows for victims to have their own representation before the Court. However, to keep this from getting too unwieldy, the ICC requires that these attorneys be supervised by a common representative who serves as the victim liaison with the Court. Mr. Garkawe also addressed some of the difficulties in enforcing convictions and obtaining reparations for victims. Despite these gaps, he maintained that the project of victim participation is worthwhile because it gives them the opportunity to be heard and proactive in countering impunity for the abuses they suffered.
Margarete Myers Feinstein, a Holocaust historian from Loyola Marymount University, gave a fascinating historical presentation on how to move victims past revenge and towards justice and reconciliation. She juxtaposed different types of revenge tactics used by victims of the Holocaust (e.g., inflicting bodily harm, destroying or acquiring property of abusers, hiring perpetrators for manual labor, creating a Jewish state) with retributive, justice-seeking approaches, epitomized by the Courts of Honor set up in DP camps by the Jews. She pointed out that manifestations of both revenge were largely motivated by survivors’ need to assert and take back power. However, grievance procedures before the Jewish Courts of Honor demonstrated that the restoration of agency could also be satisfied through justice mechanisms, thereby reducing vigilantism. Feinstein pointed out that the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was weak on the issue of victim participation, as evidenced by its very small number of survivor participants and its refusal to accept testimony in Yiddish.
All of the panelists recognized the importance of involving victims in order to meet their needs of demonstrating agency without relying on extrajudicial solutions. Akerson suggested a two track system whereby separate processes for victims (like peace and reconciliation commissions or gacaca-type local courts) occur simultaneously with criminal prosecutions that would limit victim participation because of the myriad obstacles posed by their inclusion. Myers and Garkawe, while acknowledging the vicissitudes of victim participation in criminal proceedings, believed the endeavor was still worthwhile, especially given the symbolic importance of these high-level prosecutions for survivors.
The lunchtime keynote address was delivered by Holocaust reparations attorney and Chapman University professor Michael Bayzler. He spoke about a law in Poland criminalizing statements attributing responsibility to Poland for crimes committed by the German Third Reich during the Holocaust. While Poland was indeed occupied by the Nazis, and many Poles risked their lives in order to protect their Jewish neighbors, other Poles gave up their friends and neighbors, thereby assisting the Nazis in their plan of extermination. Frustrated by the use of such phrases as “Polish concentration camp” to describe Auschwitz, the Polish government instituted this law, threatening both civil and criminal penalties. Bayzler has been working to reign in this law, and while deprivation of liberty has been removed as a potential penalty, the possibility of civil litigation still remains. Bayzler commented that the battle over whether an atrocity situation amounts to genocide is useless and only amounts to stalled interventions while states squabble, both internally and externally, over this determination.
The second panel of the day focused on challenges in genocide prevention advocacy. Attorney, producer, and Burma activist Michael Ghilezian spoke about his experiences working with local groups on the ground in Myanmar, and asserted that the most effective advocacy technique for engaging in the Rohingya crisis was by empowering local civil society. He also spoke of the necessity of connecting different persecuted minority groups, like the Rohingya and Kachin, so that they may stand stronger in solidarity and leverage their shared experiences.
Ann Strimov Durbin discussed the various advocacy techniques and strategies that JWW and other genocide prevention organizations employ, including educating and promoting legislation to members of Congress; calling for various actions by the U.S. government, including genocide designation and disengagement from assisting countries responsible for atrocities; drafting letters and legislation for legislative officials on pressing issues; writing editorials; running online campaigns; and putting together the Walk to End Genocide. She agreed with Ghilezian that empowering survivors so that they could advocate for themselves and move from surviving to thriving is the most powerful advocacy mechanism. Durbin also spoke of the importance of a genocide designation not only because of the international attention and pressure to act that such a label elicits, but also because of the meaning it holds for the affected population.
Dydine Umunyana, author, public speaker, and child survivor of the Rwandan genocide, spoke about storytelling as advocacy. She shared her journey from surviving to thriving, but made it clear how difficult that transition is to make for most survivors of mass atrocities. She emphasized the importance of testimony and being heard and shared her thoughts on alternative transitional justice mechanisms employed in Rwanda, like the gacaca courts and the Peace and Reconciliation Commission. Umunyana argued that victim participation and agency are crucial ingredients of any lasting peace.
In terms of victories in advocacy, the panelists acknowledged that prevention is difficult to measure. Ghilezian shared that the greatest success in his Burma-related advocacy was connecting two different minority groups so that they could join together and lean on each other in a shared struggle against the Tatmadaw. Durbin spoke about contributing to the commutation of Noura Hussein’s death sentence as an advocacy victory, while acknowledging that the fight is not over. She said that the greatest victory in advocacy work is seeing the youth of war-affected countries emerge as visionaries, changemakers, and peacebuilders themselves. Dydine agreed that empowering survivors to be their own advocates through education and skill building is the overarching objective of all this work. Panelists also discussed the importance of mass information campaigns to counter the use of the media as a means of spreading hate speech and propaganda as well as fomenting violence (e.g., radio in Rwanda and Facebook in Burma/Myanmar).
Overall, the conference was extremely informative with a diverse set of panelists from various disciplines. JWW looks forward to partnering with Loyola Law School and other educational institutions on these types of events in the future.