 respecting local culture and behaviors here on Transitional Justice on Tink Tech. I'm Jay Fiedel, and the handsome young man is Buricio Del Arujo, who is a Brazilian working in Alasababa, Ethiopia, who joins us right now from Ethiopia. And it's really early in the morning. Welcome to the show, Buricio. Hello, and Aloha for you, Jay, and for everyone that are watching us now. Oh, great to have you on. So let's first figure out how you got from Brazil to Alasababa. How did that work, and why? So I'm working now as a senior lawyer in investigation for a PHA. And we came to Alasababa, Ethiopia, to help the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission to deliver training and to mentoring them. And to do the best we can to help them to in human rights violation investigation and all the case that we have so far. So what does Project Expedite Justice do in Ethiopia? We're supporting not only the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, but another other CSOs that basically not only training and preparing and capacity building here, but also to mentoring and to be with them in the investigations about any human rights violations that they may have here. And as a senior lawyer, what do you do in Alasababa for Project Expedite Justice on these issues? At this time, I'm working straight with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission to build their capacity and to delivery very comprehensive training in human rights investigations due to the needs they have so far. OK, now let's get into it. What kinds of cases is Project Expedite Justice doing, investigating, and examining, and prosecuting as necessary in Alasababa, in Ethiopia? Unfortunately, they're passing through a very bad time now to a very serious conflict. And we have all kinds of crimes against our humanity. We have some war crimes. We have some serious violations in terms of human rights violations. So that's it. Basically, we have the whole package, I would say. Yeah. And you investigate this for purposes of prosecuting where? In what courts? In what venues? Here, we try to assist them to bring the cases to the local justice system. Once they are not signed, they are not partners of the Roman Institute. So we do this job for the local justice to take care of it. OK, so a lot of this depends on the definition of war crimes and atrocities and violations of human rights. Where do you get those definitions? We get from the international framework, of course. All the protocols and institutes that they rule the international justice. So the same definitions would apply to whatever is going on in Ukraine, right? Yeah, since the international criminal law nowadays is growing, is coming. It's a process of growing for the last 20 years. And yeah, we have the very same names and the very same framework for that. What differs is the kind of court or the kind of justice system that is going to be used to try and to bring these people to justice. So if I tell you that the Russians are focusing on destroying residences and other civilian buildings and structures and killing people and women and children in the process, and if I tell you that I have video of this happening real time, and if I tell you that some Russians are admitting it, including generals, is that adequate proof of war crimes in the international arena? For sure. For sure. It's more than proof because we don't have to go to the beyond the reasonable doubt in terms of when we're talking about international criminal justice. But at the same time, you have to keep in mind that the international criminal justice is still a process that depends on the binding of the countries with some treaties, some protocols. So this could be a puzzle at this time, I would say. Yeah, but ultimately it will get ironed out. Do you think people like you, like Project Expedite Justice, will go there and will get that video and get that proof and get statements of whatever you need to get in order to prove those cases? Sure, if we have the opportunity, sorry, if we have the opportunities, of course, we need, we must go there. We must do our job no matter what the result at this time. Talking about criminal justice is more a matter to reach the justice and to wait for the reparation and for the eventually criminal trials and so on. But the most important is to do the job and not to expect the results at this time, I would say. OK. So I guess the big question is evidence because you can't get to first base without evidence. And in the case of Ukraine, there seems to be a plethora of evidence from all sides and always all provable, all authenticatable, and so forth. But that's not always the case. It's not always the case we have people who are willing to come forward and testify and tell you and authenticate what is happening. And I guess the concern that Project Expedite Justice and you as counsel for them would always be concerned with is proving it up in a way so that a court that is hearing the evidence will agree that the evidence proves the case. So other issues about that elsewhere, we know that in Ukraine, it's pretty easy to prove it up. It's all around us every day on the television. But what about Ethiopia? What about other places in East Africa? How easy or hard is it to get the necessary evidence to prove the case? I would say that actually nowadays it's even easier to get any kind of proof of this nature since with the technology, unfortunately, the technology is used for the good and for the not so good things. And people all the time, they are filming. They are recording. They are doing a lot with their smartphones. And even trust is today, they can be seen by the perpetrators or anyone that is watching their trusty as something that would be good to post on social media or something like that. So it's not that difficult to get these proofs today. What I think the tricky job is to investigate the crimes that happened in the very past. So it's more difficult to get the witnesses, to get some kind of recording, some kind of more substantial proofs. But nowadays, unfortunately, it's being very easy to do that. So it's a question of when this happened and whether that technology was available at the time it happened. Yeah, of course. We need to check. We need to evaluate these kind of proofs. But at the same time, unfortunately, they do films. They produce a lot of material that easily can be not easily. But in an easier way, it would be very useful for the courts. I'm thinking of a movie that was made called Winter of Fire. And it was about the protests in Kiev and Ukraine in 2013 and 2014. And the Russians were there shooting people in the street. And the people were not armed. They were peaceful protesters. And there were snipers on top of the building, Russian snipers, just shooting them dead. And the protesters had little cameras, Sony cameras, for example, fit in the palm of your hand or use cell phones. And they took pictures of all of this. Does that happen in East Africa, too, where people take pictures with their cell phones over small cameras and turn them over to you and say, here, here is proof? Unfortunately, we do. They are part of cases that are still on investigation. And I had the access to some movies with this nature with very bad atrocities are happening. But at the same time, we need to be very cautious in the whole process. Because after all, the transition of justice and the international criminal justice has a lot of politics on it. It's involved because of the sovereign of the countries because a lot of international relations. So we need to be aware of that as well. Of course, this cannot be a blockage for our work. But we have to take in consideration as well, unfortunately. Well, I want to drill down on that. Because that applies in every circumstance, every venue. It's not just getting the evidence. And it sounds like these days, you can get the evidence more easily than in the past. But it's presenting the evidence to a tribunal that will listen. And more than that, we must have the political willingness to do something about it. This is something that don't belongs to the human rights practitioners in a way. It belongs to the governments. I understand. So if the government is really not inclined to do anything, to put it in court, to refer it for a trial or a tribunal, then nothing happens. You can have all the evidence you want. Yeah, I wouldn't say that they don't, in general. By the way, I'm talking in a general manner, OK? I'm not talking about specifically here in Ethiopia. But in a general manner with the governments, it's not they don't want to do anything. But the fact that the government, the host government, is allowing to have some human rights investigation or some kind of transitional justice process, doesn't mean that this is going to be smoother or easier for us to work. That's it. Well, we spoke in the title of the program that it was necessary to examine and appreciate local culture and local behavior. If you're going to do the investigation and prosecution of war crimes and atrocities. And what I get from what you're saying, this issue could come up in, well, not once you've investigated, then the question is whether the government, you know, the governmental institutions, structures, the political institutions and structures are going to do anything about it, whether they're going to refer it to a trial or tribunal or court. How the judges in that court are going to react to it. What kind of penalties the judges in that court are going to award once they do find somebody guilty? And I suppose whether that will stick so that the individual who is sentenced to a particular sentence will actually serve the sentence rather than be let out at the next political interval. Am I right? And can you tell me how the local culture, local behavior in a given place, whatever place it is, affects that? Yeah, that's the good link about what we've been talking so far and the importance of the, to respect the local culture, local behaviors and so on, that I'm really like to talk about it because this is something that I lived, that I experienced in all kinds of work I've been done so far. And this is a kind of simple thing, but at the same time, it's very important for the success of the transitional process as a whole. As we told, the transitional justice is a process, takes time, any process takes some time. And as long as we can, what we can achieve, what we want, our objectives with the transitional justice is to bring some level of justice for the victims and also to make it possible to have some peace, some reconciliation in a place that we have a conflict or a post-conflict situation. So, but in order to do that, I would make a parallel with some place that you are visiting. For example, if you visit me to come to your place and I'll be very glad to help you because you're needing something, so you ask me to do that. Or for any reason, I make you believe that you really need me at your place. So I go, when I arrive at your home, it's very rude for me to say, hey, Jay, nice place here, but it's very hot, huh? Or no, no, no. This house doesn't have any kind of warming system. So I don't like your table. And, you know, I don't like the way you put the water in the fridge or something like that. After two minutes with me, even if you ask me to come or even if I have a very great reputation to be a very personal, stylish organizer to your place, even I say, okay, get out of here because this is my home and you are not respecting me in any kind of any aspect. So this is something that unfortunately I've seen happening many times when we talk about transitional system, traditional justice systems and missions and any kind of situation that one organization is called to come to a country and to act in their country. Doesn't matter if the place is passing through a conflict or not. Doesn't matter how poor the country is. Doesn't matter how, what's their level of culture. And again, when you talk about culture we are always comparing to our culture. When your standard of culture may be very similar to mine because we live in the same continent and we have mostly the culture very similar but for others can be totally different. And that's something that almost nobody takes in consideration and should. And I'm talking about when you, I have two points to stress here to highlight. First of them five plus five is equal to 10, right? But three plus seven is also equal to 10. So first thing you have to keep in mind that you may have different ways to reach the same objective. The second thing is very important to taking consideration, to bear in mind is that business are made B2B. This is what they say in the business world. So your company is making business with my company. Your organization is making business with my country but at the end the relationships are made P2P. So people to people. If you, if we don't understand that we can jeopardize the whole process but normally we don't take this in mind, in consideration and most of the people, unfortunately, unfortunately most of the people that I've worked with they didn't have that in their minds. So it's really important to not to waste time but to spend our time, to invest our time before we start any kind of transitional justice process to send one, two people. It's not many people, it's not expensive. You don't need to spend their whole year but you need to have someone that goes to the place. I mean, goes on the field, doesn't work if you just research on Wikipedia or something like that. We must go, we must be in the streets with these people. We must leave a little bit among them. But you can say, but there are lots of places that's impossible to go in the middle of the conflict. Okay, but the countries, they're there since ever or since a long time. So it doesn't mean that we need to go during the conflict. I don't need to put you on fire in any place but as long as you take these details that you know their behaviors, that you know their way of life and so on it would be much easier the approach because the approach is as important as the process as itself. As I just gave the example that me going to your place and I would give another example that I think is very suitable here. When a friend of yours asks for your help being economically or psychologically, if you take a stance like a superior stance like, okay, I'm here to help to save your life and I'm gonna give you this money so use because I'm your saver, I'm the great guy, I'm the good guy, even if he needs this money desperately he will take this money regretting already because people when they need help, they feel shame. Nobody likes anyone coming from outside to do something that you're supposed to do and you didn't do for by any reason, by corruption, by competence, by any kind of reason or even because you really don't know how to do that. So if your friend is needing you psychologically it's even worse because if you come to him and say, oh, you know, I know that you are not able to live without me, so I'm here to try to save your soul. This is something, this is a human being's brain. There's a immediately blockage in our brain that you don't want to listen anymore, you don't want to talk to me anymore, you don't want to stand me anymore. So that's exactly what happens when we are, when any organization arrive to a place and take this kind of stance, oh, I'm from any part of the world and I'm here, you are my trainee, you're the guy that, you know, I have to, I will help you with all my wisdom, all my knowledge, all my know-how. Now, this is not this way that work. If you do that, you'll have this blockage on their minds. It's gonna be much difficult. And I've seen, I've experienced missions that supposed to last like two years, three years if they did in a good way, lasting more than 10 years. And that's it. Yeah, so I have many questions that come out of that. Please, please. So if you, and you answered one just now, I mean, if you don't do it right, if you don't understand, really truly understand the local culture, the people and their reaction to your effort to help them, what's the risk? Of course it's delay. It's harder for you to do your work, but is it that they don't want to talk to you? Is it that they don't want to testify? Is it that they don't want to tell you what happened? They don't want to claim, make a claim in the first place or express the details of how they've been victimized? What happens in the worst case analysis? Yeah, when we talk about to extend a mission or something we're talking about spending more money. This is the last, the least of the consequence. But I'm gonna give you an actual example that happens to me. I won't say the country and the people because the situation here is much more general than local. That's why we don't need to talk about countries and peoples, but they came to me in a mission that I was back in 2000, 2000 something. And the local guy, I had a very good relationship with him and he came to me, he was my counterpart in the country. And he said, you know, mister, you're doing a lot here, but by the time you leave, things are gonna be our way. It's gonna be really, really bad. And I said, why? Because there was a situation that they wrongly, they divided two different groups from the time of the guerrilla, the time of they were trying to defend their lands. They were divided in different groups, but these groups, they came together to fight for the cause, but doesn't mean that they like each other. They just were partners at the time, just for a common objective. But right after the conflict gone, they become enemies again, but this time from different forces and different forces with very heavy guns at the time, because we went there and we helped them with our civilization and they have now very heavy guns. So what happened after that? Of course I took this information for my superiors, but the whole process is very complex. It's not easy to change. Well, you could make it worse. You could make things worse. Yeah, yeah. But what happened just after? At that time, there comes a time that the mission was very weak at the place because they were withdrawing the mission. And when they realized that were not people enough to stop the problem, they have a huge fight and most of them died in this fight just because they were waiting for us to leave the place. So that's my point. If you don't interest yourself by what they think, what they do, how they work, how they function, you take a very serious risk to failure or to have a great bad situation. Is it risk to you personally as well? I take some risks, but I would say that they're very controlled. Like if you walk on the streets without any protection or bodyguards or inside cars or something, you take the risk to be pickpocket, to be annoyed by them or something like that. But at the same time, human beings are human beings everywhere. So you have the good people that they're just like, maybe you can cause some interest on them as I can do this example from here now. When I walk on the streets, it's kind of amusing because everybody wants to take pictures with you. They try to disguise and then when I realized they're taking pictures of me or something like that, or they even approached me and asked me for a picture. I was in the National Museum last weekend and I had my cell phone because I was taking pictures of Lucy, our ancestors are all in these museums, amazing. And then one guy came and said, hey, sir, would you mind to take a picture? And I said, of course. So I took his camera to take his picture. And he said, no, no, no, I want to take a picture with you. And I said, okay, let's do a selfie then. But that's the risk. I think, Jake, when you believe in your work and when you're prepared to do a field job, it's just like that. You take the normal risk of any people walking the streets. The great difference is that I'm having great experience that normally people that works with, the general staff that works with traditional justice, they come, they have drivers, they have vehicles, they go from the office building to the hotel or something like that. And this is why I'm calling the attention to the human rights practitioners, not the organizations. The organizations they have all done, they have all set, but for the practitioners to have this special attention on the local people, that's what I'm talking about. So do they know you? Do they know Project Expedite Justice? Is it a question of the credibility of your organization or is it nearly a question of the way you conduct yourself in dealing with people individually? Of course, the reputation of the organization comes first, always, and we have several very serious organizations, not several, but many serious organizations that they have the willingness to do. They really can do something. They have a very political power, they have money, they have everything, and the organizations in a general manner, they're very well respected, especially here, PHA is very well respected. But again, if you don't do your personal job in terms of respecting and relating to them and showing interest for their culture and so on, it's gonna be much more difficult. I have another good example for you. Here, they normally eat with their hands, and I was eating with them, and then my counterpart here, my local buddy, he's amazing and he's teaching me a lot, and he came and said, hey Mauricio, you're eating like a baby. And I say, how come? I'm eating like a baby. I'm eating like you with their hands. And he said just like that, ah, but you know, you take with three fingers, just babies do that. You must take with the five fingers. And I said, oh, okay, I learned another one. So this is the rich part of the experience that I regret when I see some colleague of mine coming on a mission or in a situation like that and saying, ah, I don't wanna know. Ah, I don't like these people here. Ah, I can't stand anymore. I don't know what I'm doing here. So man, if you think like that, you're not tailored for the job. That's why I'm calling the people, I'm calling the practitioners to think about this. Yeah. So what about language? I mean, I don't think, they don't speak a lot of Portuguese in Ethiopia, but they probably speak some Italian. They probably speak some English, maybe what Swahili, what do they speak in Ethiopia? It's amazing because of course they don't speak Portuguese, of course, but they speak some, there's an interesting thing here that I just learned. When they go to the high school, the high school is done in English. To make them practice, to make them learn a foreign language in a forced way because they, all the subjects are in English in the high school. So most of them, they speak some English, and which is very interesting because their language, the Amharic, it's a millennial language, but it's very difficult. So far I got a phrase book from Lonely Planet and I'm dealing to say something like, thank you, I'm Sagnalo or something like that, but I'm learning, I can do that, I can do that. What about the buddy you talked about? I was gonna ask you about that. I mean, wouldn't it be helpful if you went into this family's house, for example, with someone else who was familiar with their language, their customs, their way of interacting? Wouldn't that be a better approach? Totally, this is all about, I'm saying about we have this research work before we come. Here's my counterpart here, he is from PHA. So PHA, it's very concerned about having local staff and this is gold because as long as you have local people here, I have him and I have my other partner, she works with me at the office. So both of them, they are PHA staff and they are teaching me a lot. But again, I have to, when I arrived, I... How long ago was that, Mauricio? It was, that's my fourth week here. I'm gonna be here for the next five months. So, yeah, it's been one month almost and before I arrived, I was making contact with them and asking for tips for any kind of information they could give me. I put myself totally at their disposal because that's our job. I'm not here to serve me, to serve myself or to serve even PHA. I'm here to serve them. I'm here to serve their people, their country. That I think is the mindset we should have. Without learning that mindset, learning the cultural interactions seems to me, it goes beyond Addis Ababa, it goes to every place in Africa. In fact, every place in the developing world, for that matter. And so, theoretically anyway, PEJ Project Expedite Justice and organizations like it should pay very close attention to this because this is always, it always gives them a benefit in terms of engaging with people and getting evidence. Yeah, sure. That's why we're everywhere I go or every place I have the opportunity to work or every organization. I try to bring these ideas to focus because this again, it's so obvious for the organization. For example, if my memory serves me, there's a report from the general secretary general from 2004, I guess. And he talks about transitional justice and rule of law in areas of conflict and post-conflict societies. So in this section six, it's written there by this UN report, it's written there that we should assess the local political and the local capacity building. So which means that it's totally for the organizations is very clear that we must approach them and to work with them within their culture, then their way of life. But for the people, the practitioner, the people that goes on field is not like that. I can feel that it's not everyone that thinks in this sense. They, we have very good technicians, we very good because in transitional, transitional justice is holistic. So you'll have judge, prosecutors, lawyers, police officers, you'll have everyone. And depending on their mind or their background, their experience, they go straight for the technical part. And of course it's important if you have people killing people in some place, of course you want to stop that at any cost. But at the same time, when you forget these things that we discussed so far, the process could be very difficult. Yeah. Much more. So you said that this is a few months posting for you and then you'll go somewhere else, maybe somewhere else in Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Africa, what have you. Will you have to relearn, will you have to learn new culture, new customs, new behaviors in order to deal there? All the time. Yeah. All the time. Interesting. Because for example, in Asia, we need to be very careful when we, when we deal with other cultures. Not careful, but aware that, yeah, they are different. We are different. Your culture that's very similar to mine, we have different habits, different behaviors. It's simple like that. If you go and you cannot assume that what is right for you may be right for me, that's the point. For example, if you go to Asia, let's use Thailand as an example. If you go to Thailand and you tap a kid's head, this is maybe Brazil. It's very common to do that. We, when we see a beautiful child, we say, oh, you're so beautiful and like this, this is nothing for us. For them, you're cursing the kid to have a very bad future. You really have to know that. You have to know that. You know, so that's very, it's a simple thing. That's simple for us, not for them. So this is the thing that you need to be aware, because when you show them that you, at least you're trying learning this, that at least you're trying to respect as much as you can, because of course you're gonna make mistakes because we are from different cultures. We're gonna do some things sometimes that is not so polite or not so good for them. But as long as you show this, that they really matter to you, you have a totally different experience. Well, I get out of all of this, is that you have to be, aside from being a lawyer, a prosecutor, an investigator, you have to be a diplomat at the ground level. You have to be a diplomat with the people individually in their homes, on the streets, wherever you deal with them. And every single thing. Yeah, if you allow me, I would say not a diplomat, but we have to say human. We have to say human beings that understand the other human beings are our brothers, our sisters, and we just need to respect them the very same way we want to be respected. It's very simple. Well, thank you, Mauricio. We're at a time, but I really have enjoyed this discussion with you. It's been very nutritious. Mauricio, do the araujo, araujo? Araujo, araujo. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. I have to say you are such a great person. I don't know you personally, but it's a really pleasure to have this chat with you because you are a very pleasable person. Thank you very much, Mauricio. May I say the same for you? I have enjoyed this conversation. I hope we can do it again. Me too. Thanks a lot for everyone that's watching us and ma lahu, ma halo. Ma halo, aloha.