 I'll think that makes my day. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Think Tech Hawaii. More specifically, this is Transitional Justice and we are talking about Truth Commissions with Cecilia Kusterman and she is a member of Project Expedite Justice out of Kono, Hawaii. Great to see you Cecilia. Great to see you too. Well let's talk about Truth Commissions. You know, I mean we had sort of an entry to the subject and examining various countries in Africa, I guess mostly East Africa, Central Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, where horrible atrocities and war crimes and things along those lines had taken place and I think they need one right now in South Africa as well by the way. It's like, you know, exploding all over Africa to find out what really happened and there have been Truth Commissions in Africa. It was a Truth Commission in Southeast Asia, you know, for a while. I think this is actually still going on years later. And you have various atrocities, war crimes and the like that have been revealed most recently including in your own Canada and in the United States and we need to get to the bottom of it. One thing that struck me about your write-up of the subject to Cecilia is you said that there were arguments on both sides of the question to have Truth Commissions. So I can understand why it's important to have Truth Commissions but you pointed out there are some negatives to having Truth Commissions. Can you talk about that? Yeah, I mean for sure. I think as with most transitional justice mechanisms you shouldn't pursue just one or the other. The thing with Truth Commissions is they really focus on, as they say, the truth, fact-finding, giving victims a chance to speak out. It's much broader also in like evidence collection and kind of what you can talk about. But I think a lot of the critique or a lot of critique that I think is warranted is that often they're done very rushed and so victims will only have like two minutes to speak and that can also be very triggering for victims, bringing up a lot of trauma. So that's one of the kind of downsides and when they're not done in like conjunction with something else like let's say prosecutions then it's really just victims speaking about their experience and it's not holding any perpetrators to account which I think is difficult on the victims and then also obviously you have this like side of kind of recording in history what has gone on and all of that and in a way saying okay we'll do better but there is something to be said for kind of actually going along the lines of a criminal prosecution again as well especially for the perpetrators. Yeah I totally agree but you know isn't you know isn't the magic in in the detail I mean for example if I just have a chain of witnesses come up and testify about their bad horrible experiences and all that it's like unformed it's like unstructured in a way and what you really need is you mentioned prosecutor but you know you can have an investigation pretty much along the same lines where there's an investigator who calls them up and he specifies which ones he wants to talk to and he asks them questions and he forms up you know the facts that are brought out now you can say that's more structured than people just walking in but on the other hand if you're after the truth then you really need some kind of rules so if I if I told you that a commission was organized where there would be an investigator in the nature of a prosecutor and he would decide who the witnesses and the documents were and he would decide what questions to ask wouldn't that be better wouldn't that deal with some at least some of your concerns. For sure but I think a lot of the truth commissions especially the more recent ones they do have a lot of structure to them and they're conducted in a way that is very kind of straightforward and there's a procedure and it's very like rigorous I just think what is also important is the whole point of truth commissions is right like come forward speak the truth not just victims but also perpetrators like that they feel like they're not going to get prosecuted for whatever they're offering because a lot of the times when you have mass atrocities there's just so many question marks so many open ends people are looking for their family people are looking for their loved ones and while I think that's really important especially to answer all of those open-ended questions I think there should still be just separate from a truth commission really investigation or some kind of prosecution followed that holds perpetrators of mass atrocities to account. Well okay but let me let me add this thought and see what you say it's a lot harder to prosecute somebody bring in evidence the patient evidence whatever the standard may be convict them and send them to jail and then publicize it in such a way so that it has an effect on you know the possible repetition of what happened it's harder to prosecute isn't it? Yeah 100% I mean first of all evidence collection is just in prosecutions so much harder because the amount of evidence you can even get in is so much narrower compared to the kind of evidence that is brought before truth commissions so for sure it's much more difficult but I think there's just still in in the international community there's much more weight given to a prosecution than to a truth commission so it's truth commissions are often seen kind of as a more soft approach and let's say you have whatever something like what happened in South Africa or anywhere and you're only doing a truth commission then perpetrators would be like okay well if that's my only repercussion then I'm just going to keep going what's to stop them if they're never held to account whether they're jailed or not is a way different question who knows how much time we need for that but it's more just the fact that they will be investigated by some kind of more legit not more legitimate some kind of stricter body that could hold them to account in the sense of jailing because truth can't do that. So project expedite justice has followed truth commissions and as I'm sure at some level it's encouraged them because we all want to know what happened and we want to you know bring that out of the sunlight on the other hand let me ask you this over the past few years to the extent you've followed it would you say that there are more truth commissions that they're more probative or that there are fewer of them and possibly less probative and the people who would be the targets on these truth commissions so what it was who have you know conducted the atrocities if you will have watched and learn how to beat it they've learned how to avoid accountability in the course of these truth commissions and so the truth commissions you know don't have the same kind of authority if you will or power if they used to have is there a trend what I'm really asking is what's the dynamic in Africa and elsewhere on how these you know commissions are doing I wouldn't really say that there's a trend that let's say X number of years ago they were doing better than they are doing now I do think that I don't know that it might have to do with like my environment and my background and where I come from but I do want to take a moment and tell us what that is oh well so I'm from I'm from Vancouver well I'm from Germany and Canada I was born in Germany and I lived in Canada in Vancouver for 10 years and I did my undergraduate law degree at SOAS in London so that's kind of where my interest in truth commission started because SOAS takes a very in my opinion amazing approach to the way that they teach us and so we focused on different legal systems in Asian Africa during our law degree which is not really that common if you go to like a standard law degree in Australia or Canada and there I first heard about kind of the truth and reconciliation commissions that were conducted in South Africa and also in Rwanda and Rwanda really interested me because they did the what's called the gachacha courts which was effectively just like it was led by different leaders of different tribes and it was really just about like getting the community to come together and to talk about everything and for them that worked really well and I think the important thing or the thing that distinguishes truth commissions is kind of how you take them and adapt them to your community and to your circumstances because if you're just going to take an approach that worked for one country and for one mass atrocity that doesn't necessarily mean you can apply that to another country with a different mass atrocity and I think it's yeah I think it's interesting because as I was coming up with this topic and being like okay what can I talk about feel comfortable about I for example I am Canadian and I didn't know that we had a truth and reconciliation commission for kind of everything that's happened and happened with the indigenous people in Canada I didn't know that which to me I don't know maybe it's just because what's happened in Canada isn't that at the forefront of of the international world or like it just hasn't fit into my studies but it's also weird that I never or strange that I never heard about it as a Canadian I think but okay so if you have that if you have that background if you will thank you for that what's the dynamic is the world more interested or the same or less interested in creating and abiding by the facts that are found in truth commissions I don't know if it's really something that gets abided by I think it's it's as as I've said mainly about the victims and giving them a chance to speak and giving them a chance to tell their side of what the events that happened the scourging conduct of the same kind in the future somehow yes exactly but truth commissions often just end in in reports so that's what happened in Canada they concluded their truth commission in 2015 and there was a report published and often and this is kind of one of the difficulties often if you have evidence presented in a truth commission that evidence can actually be used in other proceedings so it's about finding that balance right so if you have a truth commission and also a prosecution what evidence do you use for which and where do you put that witness because you don't want to compromise it yeah it's a difficult area you say that if you reduce evidence in a truth commission you can or cannot use it in a criminal proceeding it depends there's no like rule of thumb I just know that there are concerns about that because you have to for a criminal proceeding you have to collect evidence in a very specific way you need to know where it started you have to have some kind of right chain of evidence collection and all of that so that you know it's a hundred percent or as close to legitimate as you can get versus in a truth commission it's about victims telling their truth and their experience and that's subjective in and of itself and nobody's out there probing whether or not that really happened because that's the point you're supposed to have a platform to speak about what happened to you without anybody scrutinizing you or criticizing you or saying I don't think that's true doesn't this all reflect or bear on or bring into the conversation the efficacy of the press and of course that will differ from country to country from you know the location of one atrocity or another and it's just how good the press is to start with but then you know one has to ask why didn't the press cover this in the first place that same question has been raised about our January 6th insurrection you know we don't have a commission not an operating commission it's been seven let me think eight months almost in August it'll be eight months which is a very generous possibly the worst thing that's ever happened to the american government barring no other event and and so as the press done the job could the press have done the job the press tried surely did but you know there were things I think that stood in the way for example there were people who discouraged the press there were people who criticized the press who called them the enemy of the people there were people who set up false news and had the effect of undermining the press and that's still happening so one would expect where it's a clear atrocity or crime that the press would get right in there roll up its sleeves right away and tell us all what's happening now part of that is the fault of the press I suppose but the other part is that maybe people don't have an expectation that the press will tell them everything maybe they don't trust the press um maybe maybe are you ready for this Cecilia maybe they don't care they don't care they don't care about atrocities and war crimes and so they're they're not demanding a depressed roll up its sleeves they get in there and tell them but what I suggest to you and I would like your your comment on is shouldn't the press be doing more to reveal the atrocity before we have to go through the delay and if you will the bureaucracy of a full built group commission that takes years to conduct I think that's a very interesting point but I think they do two completely different things as you say the press is supposed to be on the ground reporting while the events are unfolding and whatever is going on versus truth commissions they're often set up by newly formed governments or governments that are transitioning because they want to show okay we're going to make a change or we're going to move forward from this um truth commissions often come about after some event has already happened versus the press is supposed to be there at least in my opinion while it's happening but doesn't mean there's no place for the press afterwards but I I personally rely on the press to be reporting to me as something is occurring um because that's the way that I find out what's going on in other countries um and I don't think it's that I mean if we're talking about the international sphere sure maybe some people just don't care that is I think there's a lot of truth to that but I think the press faces a lot of its own challenges I mean either things are reported but then they're censored or they're blocked by a government from reporting something or I mean like you could go on and on with all the difficulties that the press faces but I think that the press and um truth commissions to do two very different things now it has to be a kind of a perfect scorn for commission to be created and to um you know be effective uh you mentioned that a lot of these commissions maybe all of them are generated out of um out of a transition of some kind um what's the name of our show a transitional justice it's all about transition so if I give you the same environment the same set of circumstances the same government leaders that existed while the atrocity was going on they're not going to be too interested in having a truth commission about their own conduct it takes a transition it takes somebody to say wait wait wait wait we can't we can't make a proper transition here without finding out what happened before it legitimizes our transition it enforces encourages you know gives us uh it gives us a space for a transition and therefore on the flip side of that is if there is no transition or if the transition is imperfect or involves the same actors then a they're not going to want a commission and b they're not going to want the press to cover it either exactly I think you speak a lot of truth there and I think there are instances I can't name them off of the top of my head but I I do believe for example Canada they didn't have a transition in government but um they did set up a truth commission but this is where my critique is coming from and maybe I feel like I can say this because I am Canadian um but they concluded their truth commission in 2015 and now we're in 2000 we're in 2021 and there are um unmarked graves and mass graves being uncovered related exactly to what those truth commissions were set up to kind of reconcile and help people move past and that's kind of the I think the issue with the issue that truth commissions face is how do you conclude something if all of the evidence isn't there yet if things are still being covered up and the reason I think Canada is such a good example for what you're saying is because they never transitioned in government and I think there is a tendency to want to say all right it happened okay we made this truth commission we've given reparations to the indigenous people now let's move on let's forget about it and then but when these like mass graves are uncovered or unmarked graves all of a sudden you're in this predicament because you're as a government how are you going to say wow this never happened and brush it under the rug if you have 700 unmarked graves it's a bit difficult in my opinion well a truth commission is always going to hold these events up against or through the lens of the more than the quality ethical environment at the time the commission is is sitting so for example I'm not sure it would have been effective in the United States to have a maybe there was something along these lines but I never heard about it a truth commission after the civil war what really happened there and we have a lot of art and entertainment we have documentaries and the like examining that today but he was that's 150 years ago and none of the people are alive and we you know we're not going to get to the bottom of it very well about exactly what happened on those slavery print plantations we have some literature but it's not nearly a truth commission and so I think if you don't do it this is my proposition if you don't do it pretty quickly after the event you never really learn what happened and if you find for example there's there were atrocities in Oklahoma in the 20s in the 1920s also as a matter of fact and you don't really examine them for a hundred years it's very hard to get your hand on what happened if there had been a truth commission right after the Oklahoma event which was atrocious it would have been different than a truth commission today because the times were different and the racism perhaps was greater or more tolerated than that it would be today is that whole thing about the you know the timing is everything and so I'm lost about whether the truth commission right here at the event is as effective as a truth commission a hundred years later or even 50 and whether a truth commission 50 years later can really understand the nature of the community the environment around the event after 50 years have gone by so what do you think about timing how important is it that we do this right after and is it is there a benefit in waiting I think it's timing is definitely very important I think it's very important to do them relatively to set up a truth commission relatively close to the time of a mass atrocity or whatever event we're trying to investigate because as you say like times change and if we do something a hundred years later it's going to be a completely different circumstance than when it actually happened and also because truth commissions are very victim centered you want to give those victims a chance to speak and 50 years a hundred years later those victims might not still be around or they also might have just wanted to move on with their lives or have repressed trauma I mean there's lots of different factors that come in there and yeah I think timing is definitely important I think if you're conducting a truth commission 50 to 100 years later it's there's a completely different point to it at that point I think it's not so much about about reparation and closure for victims it's not so much about a new government or a body or people saying okay this was bad and we're going to move past this it's more about as you say not knowing what really went on and it's much more of like an investigation or like a fact finding mission of what went on at that time and what can we kind of collect and gather and get together now 50 or 100 years later whether that's the news clippings or kind of evidence collection or examination of witnesses and victims way after the fact but yeah I think that those kind of truth commissions come about more because either it wasn't possible to create a truth commission after the fact or it wasn't something that was even considered and then later people are like okay well I would love to know what what went on here and if there's any anything more that we can find out but I do think that and most most truth commissions get established pretty soon after after the event because that is that is the importance there well there there you take me to what what we needed what we do need to discuss and that's the commission on january 6th okay it's it's it's been to august already just about that's she was that's eight months and we haven't had a commission and there are people who resist the commission there are powerful people and forces and political parties although that I use that term loosely when I refer to the GOP who oppose a truth commission and who have taken you know huge steps to avoid one stop one undermine one what are your thoughts about this we're talking about a commission that would look into the most traumatic thing our democracy our government has ever experienced even worse than you know the taking the sacking of the capital in 1812 by the british they're the same guys who established Canada by the way put that on the table oh the british so you know one of your thoughts you must think about that you must see the same breast that I see so what's what's going on here why do we need a commission why we need a commission and why are we not having one and what would a commission do for us after that particularly egregious event I think that's a very I mean not that the things that truth commissions have tackled up until now weren't very very difficult questions but I think I think that's a very interesting because the January 6th commission right it passed in the house but it was struck down by the Senate and I think it's a very big step that it was even introduced and it got that far because the thing about the U.S. is they're so on opposite sides when it comes to these things right some people say like let's look at this we need to overturn this this can never happen again and some people say you know what that was just civilians doing civilian things because they felt threatened and we're going to protect our our civilians or whatever and then we leave it I think it's very interesting when I think back to January 6th and when I was sitting in I was sitting in Germany at the time watching it all unfold I thought I was in some alternate universe like I didn't think that was real life I was like no way I felt like I was in a movie the capital is being stormed and then it kind of just went away you know like once Biden then became president it just kind of faded and I think yeah I think it's very interesting I do think that there would be great benefits to having a commission but then also it's like what really are you going to investigate there's people that like we know what happened it was documented it was put live on every streaming platform out there basically and I don't know if the people that were actually in the capital that were affected would want to speak out about it I'm not sure that they all would I definitely think some would and I definitely think it was traumatizing for a lot of people but it's just such a surreal situation I wouldn't even I would love to have a truth commission but I wouldn't even know how it would unfold yeah no that's true it would unfold like a circus and and to mark my word that's that's what could happen because the people who oppose it don't want to examine these things and what are these things it's not so much what we saw on television you know the as you referred to earlier the immediacy of the press coverage it's what forces led to this what does this mean what does this mean in the country the sociological or psycho sociological forces the economic forces you know things have changed we should know about them because they had real context they had they had real reality as we all saw on January 6th and we you know I guess there you know there are a lot of reasons to know about that so you know where the country is going and who was involved who created it it's sort of like a one of those truth commissions in Africa you need to know who did it because right now you know a we don't know really and b there are people who want to prevent us from knowing all the more reason that we want to know so you know that that's coming up this is you know this is a very relevant very timely discussion between you and me but let me take you on a trip I think we should go on a trip this is going this is a global trip we're going to take you know because right now and maybe it's just me but the world is burning you know we have we have riots and we have protests going on in so many places we have claims of government mis mis mis behavior authoritarian governments are moving to the right you know there there seem to be everywhere these days and the same kind of psychosociological events that took place that are taking place in the united states are arguably taking place elsewhere governments are changing moving to the right authoritarians are emerging and and doing things that are atrocities that war crimes sorry things that we need to know about so that's it that you and I are going to take Cecilia is let's say we have the power to establish truth commissions you and me where would we go what parts of the world you know require our services what parts of the world require truth commissions what comes to mind you know we know there are places in transitional justice in Africa you know East Africa Central Africa happening right now and and that is probably the focus point for a lot of truth commissions but she wins you know what about Ukraine what about South America what what comes to mind for you what comes to mind for me honestly just from what we spoke about I would set up so many truth commissions in the United States and then I would hope for massive upheaval and just a reinvention of everything we know that would be awesome in my opinion I think you can have truth commissions honestly like anywhere the places that are in the most need would be I mean the US and then I know that for example South Sudan is currently in the process of setting up a truth commission and I mean if we're thinking South America there's so many different countries Cambodia Venezuela but it also it has to come from within the country itself right it has to come from the the government itself or some large kind of consensus that this is what they need otherwise it won't be effective it can never be some third party coming in and being like I think you should have a truth commission now because then it won't be able to do its do its job but yeah I mean Turkey Ukraine definitely and it's always these places where something flares up right and comes to the forefront and is it all over the media and then just as quickly the coverage dies down and everybody seems to almost forget about it and I wonder all the time I'm like well what's going on there because I'm sure their problems didn't just go away because they're not in mainstream media anymore but yeah this is like playing the all powerful where will I set up my truth commissions I'm reminded of what I thought was a turning point and namely in Rwanda which was really a mess which is probably still a mess with the United Nations had some observer type troops there try to keep the lid on things and it struck me that the United Nations had gotten to a place where it was completely ineffectual in keeping a lid on things just ineffectual and if you think about it from the time of the creation of the United Nations what 1945 or six until then and now until now the United Nations is really not effective in terms of dealing with truth commissions and what you said is with people around the world say you know it's it's delicate if we have some kind of issue in Uganda we don't want anybody you know coming in and telling us what to do and indeed the United Nations doesn't have the willpower the support the money you know or the or the or the the respect if you will of these countries that we could identify to come in and say you will no you will we really mean it you will have a truth commission but let me ask you my last question wouldn't it be better if the United Nations or a body like the United Nations had that power and said look we smell a we smell a rat here we smell an atrocity we have enough media information to make us think that something really awful is going on and we are going to establish a truth commission get out of the way wouldn't that be better i think that's such a difficult question because in some ways yes definitely if the UN had some kind of enforcement behind it some kind of enforcement body just like if the ICC had some kind of enforcement body behind it it would be much more effective but then there's always this danger of institutions organizations countries whatever is overstepping and not minding their own business and getting too involved and I am a huge believer in just going from the ground up and really giving wherever it is whether it's the government or the people themselves or whatever the tools to do that themselves and to set up their own truth commissions or to go about their own prosecutions and I know like I know that that doesn't always happen and most of the time it doesn't happen but if we're always going to say some third party or some organization is going to come in and dictate that for you I mean you see it you see it with the way that the UN unfolded or the ICC unfolded there's so much pushback coming from all sides that at the end of the day it's really just everyone saying no to each other and a lot of bureaucracy and not everything getting done that everybody wanted to initially get done so I think it's very difficult I think in a lot of instances it has to come from the country itself and then I think there are of course those instances where you say okay the government is never going to do this itself it's not going to come about itself and we really need we need this to happen like Germany Germany could have really used a truth commission I really could have that would have been good but I think we figured it out in a good way without without them or maybe that's just because I'm German and I've been learning German history since I can read because that's part of our curriculum but but yeah I think there's a lot that that brings up a lot of contentious points that's what we do here on Think Tech we as you know well it's like anything you think about anything in the international community and you're like okay how are we gonna do this and then it doesn't work or it does work it's a when is China you know going to invite a truth commission into Xinjiang and the Uyghurs I don't think anytime soon I don't think so either exactly and then it's even if somebody says we're gonna set up a truth commission China's gonna say no you're not you're not coming in here and then that's not we need a better mechanism I'll tell you okay we're out of we're out of times to see I really appreciate this discussion with you it's really been very refreshing and important and I hope we can talk again in the meantime I just want to say that it's it's really nice to know a Canadian living in Vancouver these days because especially a lawyer because maybe depending on what happens in the presidential election in 2024 you can help me apply for Canadian citizenship and then we can have these discussions in person definitely we will keep in touch I hope that doesn't happen that you have to run away but of course sure thank you so much I had a lovely time the same Cecilia Kesterman thank you so much for joining us today aloha thank you