Truth Commissions

Though it is less crucial to bring justice those who were carrying out orders, the movement rejects the view that one’s place in a military hierarchy or state bureaucracy relieves him of individual responsibility for great crimes. Those that suffer from trauma, as well as the inflictors themselves, refuse to recall the incidents because they are too painful or disturbing. But the firing resumed the next day, and when Haris went up there again he found a stash of AK-47 assault rifles under the bed. Truth commissions also face difficulties in obtaining the motives and justifications behind these systematic violences. However in the case of Bosnia and Rwanda, where motives of ethnic cleansing were blatantly announced, only a process to secure justice seemed suitable as a means to secure accountability. He identified a window in the center of town, near the parliament building, where the fire seemed to originate. “A person who has been wounded tends to block out the memory so as not to renew the pain; the person who has inflicted the wound pushes the memory deep down, to rid of it, to alleviate the feeling of guilt. Seen from within, however, the policy of containment was about the spread and intensification, over a period of years, of the divisions that destroyed Bosnian society.

A great potential of the truth commissions is in their ability determine accountability for severe crimes committed against mankind. In addition to disclosure, human rights advocated also seek acknowledgement. 154) “Of such estrangement was the decomposition of Bosnia made. 158) In addition to government propaganda, in a city such as Sarajevo, where Bosnians, Serbs, and the Muslims had been living side by side peacefully for a very long time, it was often an insurmountable task to simply determine who was to blame.