International Criminal Law. . Old Evidence and Core International Crimes edited by BERGSMO Morten, and CHEAH Wui Ling. Beijing: Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher, 2012. xviii+313 pp. Hardcover: £16; $22.50. (original) (raw)
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In the introduction to their book After Testimony (2012) Jakob Lothe, Susan Suleiman and James Phelan ask the question whether the disappearance of the last witness will affect the way the public discourse deals with the Holocaust. This article attempts to address that question and suggests a mode of writing that might in fact come "after" testimony. In this paper I attempt to describe a mode of writing in contemporary literature on memory and history, which allows later generations to address historical events to which they did not bear witness, challenging the testimonial mode while bearing its strategies and strengths in mind -"after" in both senses of the word. The central argument is that just as the legal concept of testimony was introduced into the cultural sphere to describe a particular genre or mode of writing, the legal concept of forensics will serve as a useful term for describing a number of contemporary literary works that take up the responsibility of addressing past events after testimony.
Forensic memories - after testimony
In the introduction to their book After Testimony (2012) Jakob Lothe, Susan Suleiman and James Phelan ask the question whether the disappearance of the last witness will affect the way the public discourse deals with the Holocaust. This article attempts to address that question and suggests a mode of writing that might in fact come "after" testimony. In this paper I attempt to describe a mode of writing in contemporary literature on memory and history, which allows later generations to address historical events to which they did not bear witness, challenging the testimonial mode while bearing its strategies and strengths in mind -"after" in both senses of the word. The central argument is that just as the legal concept of testimony was introduced into the cultural sphere to describe a particular genre or mode of writing, the legal concept of forensics will serve as a useful term for describing a number of contemporary literary works that take up the responsibility of addressing past events after testimony.
The Frailties of Human Memory the Accused’s Right to Accurate Procedures
Criminal Law Review , 2019
The argument presented in this paper is that not only should the state make greater use of scientific research, it is under a moral and legal obligation to do so. The source of this obligation is the right to the most accurate procedures for determining innocence and guilt. I will suggest that this right is implied by the presumption of innocence. The paper compares and contrasts the way in which the evidence of witnesses to events, eyewitness identification evidence is obtained and tested. It goes on to envisage what the most accurate procedures for obtaining and testing the former class of evidence might look like.
Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2016
This article analyses how judicial activity in domestic prosecution of dictatorship-era human rights violations shapes and contributes to the accumulation and verification of archival evidence. In particular, it discusses the ways in which trials challenge the status of existing sources of truth, such as truth commission findings, as well as producing new kinds of information and new sources of doubt about crimes of the recent past. The paper argues that novel 'truth orders' are produced by transitional artifices such as the truth commission and other administrative instances. Trials constitute another such order, with a separate and in some senses more socially established claim to legitimacy. It is in some senses inevitable, therefore, that competing truth claims arise when prosecutions are added to the post-transitional mix. Particular aspects of the technically challenging process of investigating long-ago crimes introduce additional professional considerations. The procedures and protocols applicable to forensic science and police work must be assimilated and evaluated by judges charged with turning old and new data into usable evidence. The particular rules of evidence, probatory value, and standards of proof that judges are mandated by law to apply challenges and transforms, in sometimes unpredictable ways, the social legitimacy or veracity previously attributed to such data. This challenge is particularly significant when the imperative of judicial truth interacts with sources of social truth. The production and diffusion of verdicts in criminal trials affects public perceptions of past and present judicial neutrality and legitimacy, and also alters relatives', survivors' and bystanders' views about past events and present responsibilities. Investigations carried out under written judicial procedure lead, eventually, to the production of a new meta-archive, a repository of tested and validated truth which may reinforce, challenge, complete or utterly discredit previous versions of events.
CRIMES TRIALS AND CONTROL OF THE NARRATIVE: THE STATE OR COLLABORATIVE ENTERPRISE?
Bangladesh was born in a violent struggle many label genocide. Few were ever prosecuted. The article considers the issue in terms of competing narratives and the issue of ownership of 'truth' and the contribution of images of 1971 to the constitution of Bangladesh. Since 2010 belated war crimes trials have been help for local collaborators; the accused mainly come from Islamic political parties and the verdicts have spurred popular protests resulting in violent confrontations. The trials have been criticised as political trials aimed at eliminating political opposition rather than achieving justice and healing historical wounds. Is this a defining moment for Bangladesh that can change the form of politicsone that breaks the hold of the state over the narrative and ushers in a new form of collaborative enterprise -or is this the occasion for a resurgence of religious sentiments that weakens the secular constitution and increases social instability?
“Who will be left to tell the tale?” Recordkeeping and international criminal jurisprudence
2007
The article sets out to pose the question ‘Is it possible for an archive to aid the process of reconciliation?’ Is the scale of a given event, in some cases, insurmountable in terms of reconciling the parties? The graphic nature of the archives and the issue of psychological impact of an archive on the archivist is explored. It is contended that through outreach and dissemination of the contents of the archive, it is possible to provide to the affected communities the information of what the international community has done in terms of judicial redress. Archives can also fulfil-dual roles and this issue is touched upon in that the purpose and organization of the archive is changing from an active records center or a tool of repression to suit a future audience of researchers or to aid reconciliation.