Human rights investigation and dialogue.(Shattered Voices: Language, Violence, and the Work of Truth Commissions)(International Citizens' Tribunals: Mobilizing Public Opinion to Advance Human Rights)(Book review)

Shattered Voices: Language, Violence, and the Work of Truth Commissions by Teresa Godwin Phelps. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. 180pp.

International Citizens' Tribunals: Mobilizing Public Opinion to Advance Human Rights by Arthur Jay Klinghofer and Judith Apter Klinghofer. New York, NY: Palgrave, 2002. 272pp.

When students of international politics want to illustrate the folly of idealism, they commonly invoke a passage of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War known as "The Melian Dialogue." In the passage, a delegation from Athens tries to persuade the leaders of Melos to become a subject colony of the Empire. As the two parties debate the question of whether or not Melos should submit to Athens, it becomes clear that the more urgent question is whether the words of the Melians, as weak islanders confronting a powerful empire, have any significance at all. The exchange involves persuasion and deliberation, yet simultaneously undermines the very idea that dialogue is possible in a world of violent conflict and inequality. The Melians offer a range of arguments for their independence, citing the importance of honor and pride, and warning the Athenians that it is in their long term interest to support common norms of justice. The Athenians make it clear that if they do not submit willingly, Melos will be forced into submission. "[T]he strong do what they have the power to do," they argue, "and the weak accept what they have to accept." (Thucydides: 402). At the conclusion of the scene, the adult males of Melos are put to death, and the women and children are enslaved.

The slaughter of the Melians will not appear as the unimaginable barbarism of an ancient era to anyone who is familiar with twentieth century atrocities. This is one reason the passage remains so compelling to contemporary readers. A central aspiration of the human rights movement, to prevent such slaughters and to punish leaders who order them, still appears as a distant dream. Nevertheless, human rights advocates claim to have developed alternative routes to influence and in recent decades, institutions and organizations dedicated to investigating human rights abuses have proliferated rapidly. Were the altercation between the Athenians and the Melians to occur today, it is likely that a commission of inquiry would be assembled to investigate the potential for violence. A truth commission might be established to investigate the incident, take testimony from survivors, and perhaps encourage reconciliation amongst them.

When it is not politically or practically feasible to enforce international law, human rights advocates have continued to develop tools and institutions designed to investigate political violence. Human rights organizations have refined their expertise in information gathering and analysis, incorporating tools of forensic anthropology, DNA matching, oral history, and statistics. The proliferation of informal tribunals and truth commissions has changed the ways that scholars and activists alike view the role of human rights investigations. It is now widely argued that investigating atrocities may have a powerful impact on the character of a state whether or not an effective legal response is available. Those who champion informal human rights investigations tend to share the view that the process of investigation is as important as the findings or results. Even where investigations do not contribute to the prosecution of responsible parties, it is hoped that the process of examining abuse, repression, or atrocity may allow victims the chance to speak about their experiences, generate consensus in favor of human rights, and embarrass leaders into changing their ways.

As scholars and activists devote more attention to the process of investigating political violence, new debates have taken shape over the question of how such investigations ought to be designed. Some adopt what might be termed a procedural perspective, which holds that investigations are most effective when they are dispassionate and scientific, conducted in accordance with neutral procedures. This is the view adopted by Arthur and Judith Klinghofer in their fascinating book, International Citizens' Tribunals: Mobilizing Public Opinion to Advance Human Rights. Others contend that investigations should be designed in ways that respond to the emotions surrounding political violence by facilitating a therapeutic processing of painful memories, or by developing a narrative response to traumatic conflict. Teresa Godwin Phelps makes a novel argument in support of such an approach in her book, Shattered Voices: Language, Violence, and the Work of Truth Commissions. These books provide an opportunity to examine some of the complex problems associated with human rights investigations and to assess diverging views on how they ought to be conducted. Together, the two books raise a difficult set of questions about how investigations of political violence are used to promote dialogue in times of repression or in the aftermath of violent conflict, and how the goal of dialogue relates to the goal of judgment in human rights advocacy.

Citizens' Tribunals

In April of 1937, the pragmatist philosopher, John Dewey boarded a train to Mexico City. There, in Frida Kahlo's famous Blue House, the seventy-eight year old philosopher would spend the next several days interviewing the exiled Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, in a series of hearings designed to investigate Trotsky's response to the Moscow show trials. Trotsky had been accused of conspiring with Germany and Japan to foment a terrorist campaign within the Soviet Union. In a trial that would inaugurate what is known as the Great Purge, fifteen defendants publicly confessed to their involvement in the alleged plot and were immediately executed. Trotsky was not actually charged in absentia, but presented as the mastermind of their activities and he hoped that an international commission of inquiry could investigate the Moscow Trial and clear his name. In International Citizens' Tribunals, the Klinghofers quote Trotsky's plea for a parallel investigation, "With what conviction can the democratic countries develop a common front with Soviet Russia against reaction," he asked, "if she descends to the methods of barbarism of the Fascist world?" (56).

The Joint Commission of Inquiry, better known as the Dewey Commission, that formed in response to Trotsky's request, was inspired by an earlier "countertrial" that had investigated the 1933 Reichstag fire. The Nazis had proclaimed that the February Reichstag fire was part of a Communist plot and used it as a pretext for suspending civil liberties, rounding up Communists, and, after winning the March elections, giving Hitler's government the absolute power to make laws. Although a young Dutchman named Martinus van der Lubbe took credit for the fire and insisted that he had acted alone, four Communists, a German and three Bulgarians, were accused of participating in the newly defined crime of "revolutionary arson." A countertrial was organized by the Comintern, which hoped to establish that the Nazis had set the fire themselves as a pretext to seize power. The countertrial took place in London a week prior to the actual trial in Leipzig.

Although both trials were initiated with the goal of legitimating ideological positions, the Klinghofers maintain that the real impact of the countertrial had to do with a commitment to procedure and impartiality on the part of its major backers. Despite the origins of the informal Commission of Inquiry, none of its members were Communist and all were lawyers (Klinghofer and Klinghofer: 23). The chair of the Commission, Denis Nowell Pritt, responded harshly to evidence of prior bias on the part of the other commissioners, and emphasized that "evidence should precede a decision" (Klinghofer and Klinghofer: 24). In reaching their conclusions, the commissioners did not invoke the major political pamphlets circulating at the time, the "Brown Book" and the "Oberfohren memorandum," which aimed to establish the fire as a Nazi plot. The conclusions, based entirely on evidence presented before the commission, were "more temperate than polemical" in suggesting that the Nazis had started the fire. The focus on establishing facts through the presentation of evidence contributed to a positive response to the countertrial on the part of the foreign media. As a result, they argue, the Nazis were "placed on the defensive in their own court ... so the emphasis was more on exonerating themselves than convicting the Communists" (Klinghofer and Klinghofer: 31). The Nazi court opted against in camera hearings and opened the courtroom to the foreign press. They did not interfere with the defense's right to present its own witnesses and they analyzed evidence that had been addressed in the countertrial.

It was their sensitivity to world opinion that compelled the judges overseeing the Reichstag fire trial to acquit the four defendants at a time when the Nazi regime was consolidating power and abandoning any semblance of rule of law (Klinghofer and Klinghofer: 35). It was the dispassionate analysis of the legal team running the informal Commission, they argue further, which persuaded the foreign press to take their conclusions seriously at a time when many leaders around the world remained skeptical about the validity of an unofficial ex parte proceeding. Arthur Garfield Hays, an American Jew who served as a kind of mediator between the countertrial and the Leipzig trial, exemplifies …