Moderator:

Professor Carol Rittner, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, USA
Invited speakers:
Professor Ervin Staub, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA
Dr Ludvig Igra, Psychoanalyst, Stockholm, Sweden
Professor Andrew Rigby, Centre for the Study of Forgiveness and Reconciliation, Coventry University, UK
Ms Inez McCormack, President of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Ireland

 

In her introductory remarks, Professor Carol Rittner drew attention to the month of April, which she said is “a month of genocides” – the Armenian (1915-1918), Cambodian (1975-1979), and Rwandan (1994) genocides began in April, and the genocide of the Jews (Shoah), and of the Roma and Sinti during World War II (1939-1945) often is commemorated in April, as it was in 2002. She said that . for survivors of genocide – and there are many survivors of genocide, wars, massacres, and horrific human rights violations living in various parts of the world today – the question to be addressed in Seminar B, “Is reconciliation possible without forgiveness?” is not simply a theoretical question. It is a very real one.

Professor Rittner quoted the Korean theologian, Dr. David Kwang-sun Suh who has written, “It is often the case that the powerful ones, the victimizers, the oppressors, come to the oppressed, come to those who have been maimed and massacred . . . and say, ‘We must have a reconciliation. You begin.’ Such people never repent, never say, ‘We are sorry. We apologize for what we have done to you and your loved ones.’ They try to force reconciliation. This is nothing short of total injustice. . . . There can be no reconciliation without genuine repentance” (in E. Deane and C. Rittner, eds., Beyond Hate: Living With Our Differences, p. 46). For those who come out of a religious tradition, as David Suh does, forgiveness requires repentance before God as well as before human beings. Because so many people in the world do adhere to a religious faith tradition, the question regarding the role of religion in reconciliation is an important one.

There are people for whom forgiveness, mutual trust, and acceptance of the other and of the past is required as part of the process of reconciliation. Jan Ruff –O’Herne, a Dutch-Indonesian woman who for fifty years could not speak about her experiences as a so-called “comfort women” – a euphemism for a Japanese military sex slave during World War II – said the following during a 1997 conference in Northern Ireland around the topic, “Men, Women, and War”: “I can never forget the atrocities done to me by the Japanese during WW II . . . . I am still haunted by the past. The scars, the pain, the fear, and the shame did not stop at the end of the war. . . . [But] I came to realize that healing comes through forgiveness and reconciliation. We cannot build a better future if our hearts are filled with anger, hate, and revenge. Forgiveness must come from the side of the one who has suffered the violence” (in C. Rittner, “The Suffering of ‘Comfort Women,’” MAST, 2002).

But, she continued, the questions remain: What is forgiveness? What is reconciliation? What is repentance? Are they related? If so, how? What are the paths towards a culture of reconciliation? What does the phrase, “culture of reconciliation” mean? Can reconciliation affirm a common humanity? If so, how?

With these opening comments and questions, the panellists were briefly introduced and invited to present their views.

Professor Ervin Staub’s topic was, “Understanding the roots of genocide in healing and reconciliation processes after mass atrocities.” He began by saying that “healing, reconciliation, and forgiveness” are interrelated. People need to “heal” [from the effects of genocide, mass murder, massive psychic and physical trauma] in order to be able to move towards reconciliation. It is important, said Professor Staub, for victims to understand the roots of genocide. This is a crucial step on the way to healing and reconciliation. Understanding the roots of genocide, understanding the origins of massive violent actions that have been directed against them, understanding how they come about, eases the fear, rage, and insecurity felt by survivors [of genocide] in relation to the perpetrator of genocide. Understanding also can give survivors the hope that they can prevent such things from occurring in the future. With hope also comes the ability of the survivor to engage in life.

Forgiveness is problematic. Whom does the victim forgive? The perpetrator? The bystander? The person who may be complicit insofar as she or he did nothing to stop genocide, even though it may have been too dangerous to do so? Forgiving is difficult, even the “easiest” kind is difficult. The very idea of forgiveness may be offensive for survivors after a horrible event like the Holocaust, or the1994 genocide in Rwanda.
One cannot force forgiveness; it cannot be imposed; and, yet, forgiving is necessary and desirable. Forgiveness paves the way for reconciliation; it furthers healing, thereby making a better future possible. Research indicates that when people forgive, when they let go of their anger, rage, desire to harm the other, a psychological and spiritual burden is lifted from them. They may even experience an improvement in physical health.
Forgiveness is unreasonable to expect or to impose early on after atrocity. It may be one of the last things that happens between people, but it can develop “naturally” in the process of reconciliation. Reconciliation is reached when there is a deep genuine acceptance of the other, when genuine trust in the other is re-established, and when there is a belief in the possibility of working with “the other” on shared goals, and a common future. When this is achieved, one could say that forgiveness also has been achieved “naturally.”

 

Genocide never just happens. It always evolves. This is why learning about the starting points, or instigators, of genocide often is of great importance for survivors. This has proven to be true in a project Professor Staub directs in Rwanda, a project aimed at promoting healing and reconciliation. When victims of genocide begin to understand the origins of genocide, begin to understand something about the difficult conditions of life that have impacted on and influenced the motivation of the perpetrators of genocide, this understanding seems to “humanise” these otherwise inconceivable acts of violence. For survivors, such understanding is a “transformational” experience.

According to Professor Staub, difficult life conditions and conflict between groups are two of the instigators that frustrate the basic needs of people for security, for a positive identity, for feelings of control, and for a comprehension of reality. The result often is that the “threatened” group responds with “defensive” mechanisms, such as, for example, scapegoating others. That is, they blame others for all the problems in society, rather than also looking at themselves to see how they, too, may have contributed to their own woes. Threatened groups frequently embrace a destructive ideology in which “the other” group is devalued and dehumanised, viewed by the threatened group as standing in the way of a better life for themselves. The result often is that the threatened group comes to believe that the only way it can deal with “the other” is to eliminate all members of “the other” group.

According to Dr. Staub, there also are structural influences in a society that can make violence likely. For example, totalitarian forms of government in which dissent is repressed; educational methods and schooling that do not encourage young people to find their own voices, to express their opinions; institutionalised inequality between groups and a history of devaluating the other.

For survivors, a history of victimisation creates vulnerability to new threats in the future. Healing is a crucial instrument to prevent future conflicts.

Thus, to create a culture of peace, every element in society must be involved. Knowledge of the processes that lead to genocide helps create a culture in which genocide is less likely.

Dr Ludvig Igra spoke about “Forgiveness and reconciliation; the thin layer between cruelty and caring.” He began by saying that we have left behind a century marked by “man’s” uncanny capacity to humiliate and kill “his fellow man” for the sake of a particular ideology. Today there seems to be a kind of eagerness to deal with past atrocities committed in the name of nationalistic, ethnic, racial, or political ideologies.

When crimes such as the Nazi Holocaust of Jews, the Stalinist regime’s mass killings of political enemies, or the Turkish massacre of Armenians are not recognised, or when, in some cases, crimes of such proportions are even denied, they tend to become embedded in the nation’s structure, a systematic fault that can emerge in new forms and can lead to the repetition of crimes in new forms. A prerequisite for reconciliation, therefore, is to accept fully the reality of the past, however painful it may be to one’s idealised national self-image. Accepting reality involves pertinent questions: What have we done to the other? How have these acts affected us?

There are now other countries where national traumas will be embedded in their future historical course. Dr. Igra identified Cambodia, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia, to name a few. If denial gains an upper hand and deforms the future, ideas of revenge and a revitalised perversion of historical memory will ensue. That can become the foundation of future bloodshed: when the leaders of a state brutalise the mind, a wave of cruelty will follow.

Dr Igra stressed the urgent need to find and develop “roads to reconciliation,” but cautioned against the temptation to seek quick solutions, as reconciliation takes decades, not years. He drew attention to the need for support from influential members of the political and intellectual classes for the processes of reconciliation in the society concerned.

Reconciliation demands immense psychic work on both a cognitive and emotional level. As long as revenge and bitterness has the upper hand, such psychic work is impossible. Such feelings need to be articulated in the initial stages of trying to overcome them. Reconciliation involves the process of mourning, a process that depends heavily on having one’s suffering recognised – something that cannot take place as long as a region or country is deeply involved in denying what has occurred.

Under such circumstances, the trauma turns into an open wound that affects not only the victims but also those who need to deny what has happened. The result is mutual fear. When nations cannot acknowledge their guilt openly, the guilt secretely continues to increase in strength, making reconciliation even more difficult and stimulating further violence.

According to Dr. Igra, the deepest effect of successful reconciliation ends with a mutual acceptance, not of what has happened, but that something has happened. The suffering needs to be mutually recognised. Reconciliation is in that respect directed to the future, not the past. Without the work of reconciliation, the past persists as a menacing presence that refuses to become past.

Reconciliation on a larger scale than that of individual cases is greatly reinforced by the creation of international institutions that have the responsibility of bringing the organisers and perpetrators of ethnic cleansing and mass-murder to justice. This is of great importance. It could include such international institutions as the International Criminal Court in the Hague that can try citizens from various countries for war crimes. Reconciliation demands a great amount of psychic work on both the individual and group level. Therefore, it needs social and political structures that can support such work, contain it, and ensure that truth will be articulated and justice secured.

In Dr. Igra’s view, forgiveness, compared to reconciliation, is a weaker form of activity closer to magical thinking. It is, he said, an infantile process. “I find it useful only with children, as the relief of forgiveness has more to do with a magical gesture that wards off the threat of losing the love and respect of a person you are dependent upon for your self-respect. It involves little psychic work on the part of the perpetrator, no need to work over the painful truth of one’s action, and it evades the full acceptance of the guilt involved. The act of forgiving does not involve the psychic transformation necessary for perpetrator and victim. In this sense, forgiveness is more ceremonial than it is transformational. It does not demand anything of the perpetrator, rather it offers something to the perpetrator: relief.

Dr. Igra believes that there are human acts that are unforgivable. These are precisely the kinds of acts that need the painful process of reconciliation more than anything else. If that effort fails, only revenge remains, followed by even more violence. Dr. Igra continued by saying that the open expression of regret on the part of the perpetrator is a different matter, as it is the open acknowledgement of the wrong one has done. This is of vital importance for the victims as well as the perpetrator. However, he argues that mixing forgiveness into such a process will weaken the force of the psychic work done and tends to evade the psychic pain involved. It can silently turn into a perverse deal where the perpetrator confesses on condition that he is forgiven in return. That can turn the whole process into an empty ritual. “Real acknowledgement of guilt does not contain a reward. It is what it is.”

An important part of the process of reconciliation is accepting the painful fact that the perpetrator has human motives for his brutish actions. He is not inhuman. He is unfortunately very human in his cruel and merciless behaviour. Why? Because he is driven by motives shared by all other humans. He wants to feel secure and he wants to belong. These very basic human needs normally lead to caring for the other and stimulating the ability to respond to the suffering of others through identification, but under certain political and social conditions, these human needs can easily become perverted and result in cruelty. There is only a thin separating layer between caring and cruelty. A group or a whole society can then develop the conviction that the security and cohesion of the group can only be achieved if a defined other group is considered as a deadly threat.

Dr Igra concluded by saying that just as caring can turn into cruelty, cruelty can move into caring. A society that has been involved in murderous conflicts and massive cruelty can move from cruelty to caring in a matter of months when democratic social and political forces finally gain strength. That is a source of hope and is an indication of how much reconciliatory work needs strong legal and political institutions for it to become a reality that is the beginning of a true change of mind.

Professor Andrew Rigby discussed the topic “Forgiving the past? Pathways towards a culture of reconciliation.” He began with some personal comments about himself and his views on forgiveness, which he said he does not believe in, but which can be studied nonetheless. The theology of forgiveness focuses too much on God and the victim (“Father, forgive them . . . ). What Professor Rigby tries to do is take theology out of forgiveness.

In his view, there is today a rhetoric and theatre of reconciliation at national levels – in South Africa, for example. It is all well and good for leaders to speak about reconciliation. There is a role for leadership in this process, but the real challenge, said Professor Rigby, is to find ways to deepen such processes of reconciliation so that they touch the lives of ordinary people on the ground, people in communities and villages, in cities. These reconciliation processes have to be grounded in the lived experience of people, and for that to happen, societal conditions, structures, and cultures must change.
Some people are stuck in victimhood. Their sense of pain and hatred keeps them mired in the past. For such people trapped or imprisoned in the past, the core of their identity is as “victims.” The pain of their past experience exercises an overriding role in their lives. The challenge for such people is in how to deal with their pain in a constructive, future-oriented manner. The challenge is how to free themselves from this over-determining grip.

Dealing with this pain in a constructive, future-oriented way is what Professor Rigby understands as forgiveness. Forgiveness involves both the person and, often, his or her letting go of the past, letting go of a desire for vengeance. Achieving this is an act of liberation. The pain is not forgotten, but its over-determining influence is overcome. Forgiveness involves a process not of forgetting but of learning how to live with the past, redefining the past, creating new memories.

For the damaged and dispossessed everywhere, that which they have lost can never be fully restored. We know that as long as people hold on to their identity as victims, they will be susceptible to calls for vengeance against those deemed responsible for their past and present suffering. Without a radical weakening of the desire for retribution, there can be no new beginning, no transformation of relationships, no moving beyond “us” and “them” towards some more inclusive identity. People will remain imprisoned by their personal and collective memories, reproducing the old desires and hatreds.

Forgiveness is a creative act involving a relaxing of the grip, a “letting go” of the pains of the past and creating a new memory. Memories are the recollected past we bring with us into the present. We construct our memories. We need to learn to live with the past by redefining past experiences and creating new memories. Doing so is crucial if one is going to create and nurture a culture of reconciliation.

Forgiveness is not a one time effort. It’s a process. Just as forgiveness relates to the past, so reconciliation relates to the future. Reconciliation is a process whereby those who have been in conflict, divided come to a situation where they can begin to envision a future together. This is not easy, but it is possible.

What enables people and communities that have been divided to “come to terms” with the collective trauma of the past in a constructive, future-oriented manner? While it is difficult to generalise about such processes across cultures, certain elements seem to be conducive to forgiving the past and moving towards reconciliation: peace/security, justice, and truth.

Peace/security: To have any hope for the future, a fundamental constituent of any reconciliation process, is an end to bloodshed, violence, and abuse. In other words, a significant degree of personal and collective security.

Justice: At the heart of most common-sense notions of justice is the idea of “making things right,” by punishing the perpetrators and compensating the victims. This presumes one can make a distinction between the guilty and the innocent. In many situations of conflict where people have been divided this is not so easy.

Truth: There is regular reference to acknowledging and unveiling “the truth” about criminal acts and wrongdoing. Many advocates of truth commissions argue that they can heal the wounds of division, but truth commissions can be problematic.
These are difficult to balance. Seeking justice too actively in societies emerging from violent conflict may lead to even more bloodshed, as was the fear in the Spanish transition process, and is today the fear in Cambodia. However, truth and justice must not be forfeited out of fear of the consequences. If “the truth” is acknowledged and justice nonetheless denied, other forms of compensation and reparation are essential, even if difficult to assess.

It is of utmost importance for a culture of reconciliation that not only the elite are involved but also ordinary people in the communities and neighbourhoods. Crimes against humanity begin in the basic denial of the full humanity of “the other,” in the non-recognition of “the other” as a human being. Therefore, it is in everyday life, in homes, schools, and workplaces that the seeds of a durable reconciliation must be sown for a future culture of peace, justice, truth, and reconciliation.

Ms Inez McCormack discussed “The role of Human Rights in shaping reconciliation in Northern Ireland.” She began by saying that the perspective she brings to this discussion is that of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.