 I'm Jay Fidel. This is ThinkTech. This is Finding Global Justice. We are in a search for global justice. And today we're talking to Mutasim Ali, who's from Sudan, and who joins us from Baltimore, Maryland today by Zoom. Thank you for joining us on the show, Mutasim. Thank you, Jay, for what you did. I'm grateful to have this conversation. Well, I think it's important that we do. So my background on it is that when we talk about transitional, we're talking about changes that take place in a given country or area, and how it sort of shakes things up. And maybe you don't have the rule of law the way you'd like, and people take advantage of each other, and you get all kinds of bad acts. And when we talk about, therefore, when we talk about transitional justice, we're talking about those acts and how to deal with them. And we're talking about Sudan. Lord knows Sudan has had plenty of trouble. And I wanted to ask my friend Alexa over here, if she would help us with the definition of transitional justice. I'm going to do that now, if you don't mind, Mutasim. Yeah, go ahead. Alexa, what is transitional justice? According to Wikipedia, transitional justice consists of judicial and non-judicial measures implemented in order to redress legacies of human rights abuses. Such measures include criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations programs, and various kinds of institutional reforms. Okay, that's helpful to start. And maybe you can tell us also, you're a lawyer, as I understand Mutasim, and you're with the Project Expedite Justice, which is actually out of Hawaii. So could you talk about Project Expedite Justice and what you do as a lawyer in connection with transitional justice in Sudan? Thank you once again, Jay, for the opportunity to discuss this timely topic. I think it is extremely important. This is not just for Sudan, but also worldwide and probably, you know, very relevant to America today. You know, I joined the Project Expedite Justice August 2020. And one of the reasons why I joined this incredible organization, I'm grateful for the opportunity to work with incredible lawyers who are very much dedicated to protecting and preserving human rights and making actually our world a better place. Part of the reason why I joined Project Expedite Justice is because of the commitment to human family. What we do basically is to follow human rights violations and to do our best to remedy the affected communities as a result of authoritarianism, prosecutions, world crimes, and crimes against humanity and genocide. There are a lot of things, you know, that we do not just litigation, but also raising awareness, training attorneys in, you know, in many places. As you know, Project Expedite Justice is based on Hawaii, but we do work in many places in Africa, in Ethiopia, in South Sudan, in Sudan, in Europe, in Cambodia, and there are many places we do a lot of work. And of course, you know, this continues as we continue to experience and witness human rights violations across the world. For me, particularly, it's very important, right, as a person from Sudan. You know, I speak here as a lawyer, but also, you know, I am a survivor of atrocities in Darfur. I don't know if you heard about Darfur. Darfur is in the western part of Sudan. And for your audience, Sudan is northeastern Africa. And Darfur is located in the western part of Sudan, where genocide was committed, world crimes and crimes against humanity. And for me, is currently special to join such organization. Maybe you can help us understand exactly what was going on. And for that matter, what is going on in Sudan over these war crimes. You know, I get the notion that when you're talking about transitional justice, it's because people were dislocated. Because for one reason or another, they had to move from their existing environment to another, or they were disrupted in some way. And then you have people taking advantage of them. But what was the, at least on the superficial level of it, why were their war crimes conducted? What was the hostility in Darfur that made for such bad conduct? So Darfur is one part of the largest Sudan that is experiencing atrocities. There were other parts. For decades, Sudan has grappled with authoritarianism and the military coups that, you know, produced marginalization and prosecution. South Sudan is one of the regions, now it's like a new independent state, that where approximately two million people were murdered as a result of a civil war between Sudan and South Sudan. There are a lot of arguments about the root causes of the civil war. But not only the government of Sudan targeted its civilians, right? This is not a militia group that targeted other people. It is atrocities sponsored by the government, right? And Darfur in 2003, when the government recruited militia groups named John DeWitt, these are tribal militias. They were recruited to support the government to fight rebel groups that picked up machine guns to fight against marginalization towards, you know, democratic Sudan. Those militias, together with the government, committed, you know, various human-wise violations to say the least. Genocide, that's why the former president of Sudan, Omar Bashir, was indicted by international criminal court for, you know, genocide in Darfur, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Over approximately 300,000 people were murdered in Darfur. Over two and a half million people were displaced from their original homes. And now the living IDP camps and internally displaced persons camps. And there are others who are refugees in the neighboring countries like Chad, Central Africa Republic. And there are many who somehow successfully made it to Western countries. And so this is just a glimpse of, you know, what is happening, actually, in my home country, in Darfur in Sudan. And that's why we're having this conversation today about transitional justice. We have, like we speak about transitional justice, usually in post-conflict societies, right? Because we like to move from repression or authoritarianism to democratic societies. And so how do we do that? This is why we speak about transitional justice. There are, you know, three main aims, you know, that I can just list briefly. One is to, it's a recognition for the recognition of victims, right? Like we do transitional justice to recognize, right, to sympathize with the victims of atrocities. This is number one thing. Number two is to also memorialize, right, like memorialize the atrocities, like in a stall museum. So to make sure that these events are very well documented. And so, and the most important thing is reconciliation, right? Like a societal healing that we are, yes, post-conflict era and that now we can live together and, you know, begin democratic transition. Well, I get two things out of that. One is transitional for this purpose is the transition toward in the direction of democratic government from autocracy and dictatorship to a democratic government. That's the transition we are talking about in Sudan. How far along is Sudan? Is Sudan closer to a democratic government now than it was when this started, what, 20 years ago? I'd like to say the answer is yes. Because in 2018 and after, you know, several protests, like wide public outrage against, you know, the former regime of President Bashir, the military, transitional military consulate in Sudan removed Bashir from office, right? A person who has been in office for nearly 30 years, he committed a process, as I said, in Darfur, in South Sudan. And there are other areas, right? Noba Mountains and Blonheim. And so the people of Sudan successfully removed him from office. Now, that's just one step towards that transition, because Sudan still deals with the remnants of the Bashir regime. And it is not easily, you know, it cannot be easily removed from the system. And so it's going to take a little while. And part of that, part of the process in the country right now is the transitional justice, right? And to begin the transitional justice, there are a few things that, you know, Sudan and many countries who aspire to begin the transitional process need to do. One is to set truth commissions, right? The idea of these truth commissions is to, you know, they're basically non-judicial investigative bodies. There are temporary commissions. And the goal of these commissions is to make reports about violence, abuse that occurred, the causes of those, you know, atrocities and abuse, and the consequences, right? This is very important, again, is to set the truth, to acknowledge the atrocities and to recognize the victims, right? And then we have criminal prosecutions. This is part of accountability, right? Because the reason why we do criminal prosecutions is not only for punishment, but also to say that, you know, to end impunity. Because if we do not end impunity, it raises another issue of revenge, right? Like anybody can say, hey, okay, my family was killed and the person killed, my family is still alive and no accountability, then I can easily revenge. And so we will never end that circle of violence, right? And abuses. And so that's why accountability is important. Then we have reparations or address for the victims, right? Because again, the crimes and human rights violations are so grave. And for that, it is necessary to remedy the victims, right? That's like another whole subject. But again, remedy is one key element. And then the most important thing is institutional reforms. And that would be relevant here in America as well. Yes, a lot of those are relevant in America right now. Right. And so because most of the atrocities, let's say in the case of Sudan, were committed by the state, right? Not only by militia or paramilitary groups by the state, which means that there is an institutional problem. And that institutional problem needs to be addressed, right? And it is part of this transitional justice to address that institutional problems. Just one thing to say to conclude this point is that transitional justice is not meant to address all the issues in the society. Not at all. It is just one step to deal with the past so that we can move forward towards a prosperous future. You mentioned reconciliation. And I think I would like to know where that fits in this continuum of the corrective steps that a given country needs to take, that Sudan needs to take to have a decent quality of personal and political life and safety and security. But the reconciliation, does that come at the end after you've done all these other things, including reform, to come throughout? As I mentioned that a lot of these issues are present right now at the end of the Trump administration. A lot of people say, well, we want retribution. We own punishment. Accountability means punishment. And other people say, no, no, no. Let's reconcile. Let's turn the other cheek. Let's move on and not engage in retribution and punishment. How does that compare with the continuum that you're describing in Sudan with respect to transitional justice? So all of these elements can go hand in hand. But I think number one thing is you need to set a fact-finding mission, like a truth commission. That's first and foremost. But in terms of where reconciliation fits, reconciliation as a term is more of, is the victim-centered approach. Because if victim said, hey, we would like to have punishment instead of amnesty, then that's what happens, right? Because the most important thing is to satisfy victims. The transitional justice is like a victim-centered mechanism. And so if that reconciliation means punishment, then it would be punishment. If it means amnesty, then it will be amnesty. But at the end of the day, when we look at a number of examples, right, for instance in Rwanda, it really doesn't have to be either punishment or amnesty. It could be something in between. And so an example of Rwanda is really, you know, it is incredible because after horrific atrocities that were committed on Rwanda, Rwanda is now moving forwards, right? They actually establish community tribunals, as they call it, Gochacha tribunals. These are meant to aid, satisfy victims to see that how trials are conducted. And that's how the healing began. And so reconciliation and punishment and all of those things are mainly victim-centered. Very interesting. When you get to the end of the continuum, I guess it comes to time when somebody says, okay, we have achieved what we wanted here. We have, you know, had reform, reconciliation, and where appropriate punishment and all that. Is it a certainty that this all won't happen again? Because you do need a government and a people who are part of the government and who are heard by the government. You have to have a rule of law where dictators are not permitted to take power and so forth. Can we be sure that when you get to the end of the transition, so to speak, that it all won't happen again? No, we cannot be sure, unfortunately. But that's part of the reason why we have institutional reforms, right? Because generally speaking, democracies and governments are, you know, sort of fragile institutions. And those institutions need to be sort of strengthened regularly, need to be protected regularly. And part of that protection is to, you know, to do law reforms, right? And for, and law reforms is not something, you know, it's not a static thing, right? Like, you know, human rights are evolving, right? Like nobody thought 100 years ago that there's a good right to development for an instance, right? Now it became a right. And so we have to keep adopting ourselves as we go along. And that's why the institutional reforms is an essential element in the transitional justice. Again, we will never make sure that, you know, that those atrocities or crimes will not be committed again. But once again, if we have strong institutions, strong, you know, laws that do not prosecute or discriminate against people, then we have bigger chances to live in peace. You know, one of the things you said, you talked about the truth commissions, I find that very interesting. Because we, you know, we've had trouble with truth in our government over the past administration. And everybody is very concerned about that. And then, you know, you read all the commentary and it suggests that if you don't have truth in government, if you don't have public truth, you wind up in a dictatorship. It's a slippery slope when you start telling lies to people. And especially when you tell a lot of lies or big lies. And that really touches me to hear about truth commissions. But query, you know, how do you prevent falsehoods from entering into the conversation later? Do you need to reform on that as well? Where there's a rule somewhere that says, no, you may not tell lies if you are in power or aspiring to power? Now that's the most difficult parts. Because on one hand, we do not want to have, you know, people in charge of our government to lie, because in the end, the consequence will be, you know, the events as we saw in Washington DC last week, right? And that's, that's terrible. But on the other hand, it raises another issue of freedom of speech, right? Like, how do we balance, you know, between these two compelling arguments? That's really a difficult thing to do. But at the end of the day, in the context of transitional justice, you know, when we say truth commission, we primarily mean to document the event, like to discover what happened, right? Like for people to know, right? Like, if how many people were killed, right? Why were they killed? What were the root causes and how can we prevent those are the reasons why we, but in terms of, but what we see in America today, that's really a very difficult conversation. Because again, you have, you know, you know, freedom of speech on one hand, this is one of the bedrock of this country, right? That's what makes America unique on one hand. But on the other, you know, we don't want to continue to see the events as we saw in Washington DC. And by the way, the events we saw in Washington DC, those were not the first time to see such events, right? Like America has a very long history of such events as, you know, going back to slavery to lynching period, 1982 to 1968 and all of those, those are horrific events, right? And we continue to see that. And so it is really, that's a really difficult conversation for Americans to have. But again, I think the most important part here is that we have to have, you know, serious conversation here speaking of an America, right? Sometimes such conversation might be uncomfortable, but we've got to speak about that so that we can move to a more, to a safer society. Yeah. Well, every country that wants to have democracy, that pretends to have democracy, has to be engaged in a public conversation, a true public conversation where people are informed and educated. And I think that's one of the problems in the U.S., but it's probably a problem in many countries around the world. You describe a sequence of events, a sequence of steps that are in aid of going to democracy, of enhancing democracy, of building democracy in Sudan. But don't you need for that a certain public information system, an educational system where people know what the right is and they know what their rights are and they know what a war crime is and what is a violation of their rights and how the government should work. It seems to me that one critical piece in Sudan, in the United States and everywhere, if you want to have a democracy, people have to be educated about what it means that the relationship of the public and the government, it has to be understood. So what is happening in Sudan about that? Right. So because Sudan is not yet in the process of, I would say in the beginning of transitional justice, we're far away from providing such information for people to be aware of their rights, of human rights violations, on all of those stuff. But in the end, you eloquently elaborated on that, like giving information to a public is an important thing to do. And that has to be, you know, because in the end, even if we make a lot of forms, so the institutional reforms, if not translated into information for public to know, then we still did not do much. And so for that reason, distributing accurate information and for public to have access to information is the key towards better society. So here you are, you're a lawyer, you're from Sudan. You're with Project Expedite Justice. You understand and advance the notion of democracy and human rights, and you you want to stop violations of human rights and atrocities and war crimes. What are you doing in that regard? What steps are you taking and why? And maybe you could tell us a little about how you were a victim back in Sudan. Right. So one of the things I am doing is by working for and with incredible people at the Project Expedite Justice. This is one of the things that we make. That's how I think I can make a change. You know, I left Darfur when I was 16. My family is still in internally displaced persons camp. Now it's 18 years, right? I've seen the events in Darfur. And that's how I'm driven, right? The reason what actually, you know, I studied geology before becoming a lawyer, and I had to shift my specialty because of the pain that the people in Darfur and across Sudan are enduring. And I am really committed to do whatever I can to support people back. And I am incredibly, you know, grateful to find people who share with me this mission. And those people are my colleagues at Project Expedite Justice. Of course, we have our hands are not very long, right? We cannot reach everywhere, but we are determined and committed to making our world a better place. So can you talk about the interests of the world in Sudan these days, and in the mission of Project Expedite Justice? I mean, for example, do you get help from other agencies around the world, other countries? Do you get help from NGOs? Do you get help from the the International Court of Criminal Justice? Do other countries step in and try to help you achieve these goals? Or is it all internal in Sudan, you know, with help from organizations limited to organizations like Project Expedite Justice? Thankfully, you know, in the last two years, after the overthrow of the former president, Omar al-Bashir, you know, a lot of people in an international community sort of really extended their hands and to support the Sudanese people to move towards, you know, peace and instability. And there are many international organizations, there are many grassroots organizations that are involved in this. But because the needs, the needs are so high, right? Like there's so much that the country needs, the country was almost, you know, the country vanished, right? And so there is much need to be done. You know, the International Criminal Court is now, you know, prosecuting a case of mass atrocities and war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. There are a lot of challenges. But that's a good thing for the victims to know, hey, there is a, there's prosecution going on and that's a good step. It really instills hope in the hearts of the victims. But not only victims in Darfur, but across the world, right? Like the crimes against humanity, you know, cannot go without, you know, without accountability. perpetrators must be held accountable. That's a good thing. At Project Expedite Justice, we do our part in terms of training local lawyers to document, to investigate and prosecute human rights violations, to train lawyers to how to navigate through different mechanisms, right? Like we know that there are domestic mechanisms, if possible. If not, then we have regional mechanisms or international mechanisms, such as International Criminal Court. And so this is one of the things that we do. And, you know, we communicate on a databases with our, you know, with our partners in Sudan to just think of what would be the best way to help them, you know, participate in the transition. Must be interesting in a case pending in Darfur, or anywhere in Sudan, to make a case for war crimes and violation of human rights and all. Who is going to oppose that case? Who would step forward and take the other side of it? Oppose your attempts, the Project Expedite Justice attempts to prosecute. And how hard is it to deal with those people who would oppose you? And the moment, you know, we're not litigating case in Sudan, except one case that is and hopefully will come up to litigate more cases. But we have only one case at the moment, which is the French Bank, BMP, Bariba Bank. That's one case, which is a huge case. And I hope that one or more cases will come. But to your question, of course, there are a lot of people, you know, who just as is not in the best of their interest. Among them, the perpetrators, these are people who will definitely oppose prosecutions and accountability. The remnants of the former regime that will oppose the prosecution, particularly when we speak of international prosecutions. I'd also like to say that maybe there are some people in the current government, because we have a very complex government. It's like a joint government between civilian leaders and military generals. And those military generals were part, all of them were part of the Bashir regime. And so, you know, prosecution for the crimes committed in Darfur might not be in their interest. And so we personally expect some opposition there. But in the end, the crimes committed in Darfur will be prosecuted. And perpetrators will be held accountable. And victims will be remitted with rest for the grievances that they endured. Good. And there are a lot of people in this country and other countries who want to see that happen because they believe that war crimes are crimes not only against the individual victims or individual countries, but they're crimes against humanity everywhere. And they cannot be permitted to exist and be committed, you know, by any moral authority in the world among humanity. And so I do want to ask you about the United States. The United States has been isolationist over the past four years, query whether the United States has been helpful in dealing with these moral issues in trying to suppress crimes against humanity. And I'd also like to know what you would hope from the Biden administration going forward in that same regard. What do you think, Mutasi? Number one thing I think is the United States and the Biden administration must reverse the damage caused by the Trump administration. I don't know if you're aware of this, but the Trump administration actually imposed sanctions on the ICC personnel, the ICC prosecutor. And that's real trouble in addition to many other human rights bodies. And so number one thing is for the Biden administration to, you know, to correct the damage that, you know, made by the Trump administration. And number two is to, I really hope, I don't know if this is likely to happen, but to join the ICC Rome Statute, right? Rome Statute is the governing status of the International Criminal Court. And I hope that the United States will join that, especially after witnessing, you know, the atrocities in the last and the crimes that are committed, not only in America, but across the world in the last four years. And I think this is one of the things that will be a key in the Biden administration. Of course, now we're dealing with new circumstances, COVID-19. And that sort of created another issue, right? Like there were many other human rights violations as a result of COVID-19. And that's sort of, it requires a special consideration. But at the end of the day, I think, you know, Biden administration needs to be committed, not to human rights issues, but not only committed, but also to support the organizations that do incredible work to protect and preserve human rights. Yeah, it's an obligation on all of us. Some of us do more. You do more. And we should appreciate you and think about you every day doing what you do. And I know I'll be watching the inauguration on Wednesday, and I know you will, too. And while I watch Mutasim, I'll be thinking of you. Thank you. I appreciate you're coming down today. Thank you. I hope we get to talk again soon. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Aloha. Take care. Bye-bye.