>> I'm Susan Collins, the Joan
and Sanford Weill Dean here

at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

Is this on?

Can people hear me?

>> Yeah.

>> And it's a great pleasure to welcome all
of you here on behalf of the Ford School,

the International Policy Center and our co-host,

the Center for International
and Comparative Studies.

And I'd like to extend a particularly
warm welcome to our distinguished speaker,

the International Human Rights lawyer
and professor Jose "Pepe" Zalaquett.

We're very honored to have you here.

He'll get a proper introduction in
just a few moments but I first wanted

to acknowledge the vision and the
hard work of my faculty colleague here

at the Ford School, Professor Susan Wallace.

She has been the driving
force behind today's event.

Susan herself has been extremely active

in International Human Rights
work for more than 25 years.

Early in her career, she worked as an area
expert in Human Rights Advocate to stop torture

in political imprisonment in
Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya.

She has also-- oops, she has also testified
before the US Congress on Human Rights Practices

in North Africa and testified
as an expert witness

for North African refugees
in US Immigration Court.

Susan was elected to the amnesty
International USA Board of Directors in 2010.

And here at the Ford School, she
teaches courses in foreign policy,

human rights and international poverty.

And this winter, she will
teach a 7-week graduate seminar

for us followed by a study trip to Grenada.

Thank you very much for your work in this regard

and for organizing this very
special event for us, Susan.

And with that, I'll turn things over to you.

Welcome.

[ Applause ]

>> It is a real pleasure to be able to
introduce one of my heroes to you today.

You know life, we never really know quite
where it's going to take us and what kind

of challenges it's going to put before us, what
we're going to do when the challenges arise

and what a single event might mean for us.

And I'm quite certain that 9/11 changed
the life of our speaker forever.

But it's probably not the 9/11, the
September 11 that you're thinking of.

September 11th, 1973, was the day that Chilean
military officials stormed the government

offices and removed the democratically-elected
government, the president of Chile,

Salvador Allende which I should probably add
as a very important footnote with the help

of the US Central Intelligence Agency, but that
day, at that time, our speaker was a professor

at a law school, had not really
considered himself to be a decedent,

had actually ably served in the government
of Salvador Allende in the previous years

but was a part from much
of the political activity.

And, shortly after the new junta took power,
with the blessing of the Catholic Church,

the Cardinal of Santiago, he helped organize the
legal office that began to document the abuses

and the violent-- Human Rights
Violations that were rampant in Chile

for many of the-- the next years.

Two years later, in 1976, he paid
for his good works with exile.

He was packed on a plane and sent out of the
country where he then continued his work away

from his family for the next 10 years.

And during that time in exile, he began a
career in human rights work that really took him

on the path to the topic that
he's going to talk about today.

How does a society that has been wrecked by
conflict rebuild itself, reconstruct its moral

and its political framework, so that it
can move on in time, over the last, what?

20 or 30 years, Jose Zalaquett
has traveled around the world,

invited by many different parties
to come and talk with them and look

at their own circumstances to see how truth can
be told, must be told and justice must be done.

And I'm very, very pleased to be able to
introduce Jose "Pepe" Zalaquett to you today.

And I'm very eager to hear what he has to say.

Please join me in welcoming him.

[ Applause ]

>> Is this an open forum?

Thank you.

Good afternoon, thank you Dean
Collins, thank you dear friend

and colleague, Professor Susan Wallace.

I've been asked to give this lecture on the
topic of how to reconstruct a broken society

after a return to democracy or to somehow better
government, and following a period of civil war,

dictatorship or other man-made disaster.

And this issue has been termed in English and
then borrowed from other languages as transition

of justice which I consider
to be not a felicitous style

because it somehow emphasizes the idea that
justice itself is in transition or temporary.

And also puts the accent on justice to
the detriment of acknowledgment, truth,

reparations or many other measures.

But, it's a short term.

I mean facing a traumatic past to
reconstruct a better society doesn't fit

in the cover of a book or in a headline.

So transition of justice has
become a term of convenience.

With that, having been said, we can
explain the subtitle, building just,

sustainable political system-imposed
conflict societies.

As I said, that doesn't fit in one line.

Now, this issue emerged.

There are some historical precedence.

Actually, in your country,
the precedent that didn't make

for the whole current was the civil war.

And if you remember the Gettysburg Address
that we recite in English or in Spanish

in our countries, those 250
words amazingly, eloquent.

They are so fused with the
concept of rebuilding.

For, of course 7 years ago now, our
founding fathers, now after this disaster,

we are going rededicate the
country to the values of the past,

so nations go through a period
of foundation, of troubled life

but sustainable life, terminal
crisis and rebirth.

And some nations have never managed
to, to really have a sustainable life

on the day then reborn-- being
reborn every day or every year

but for the most part, that is the case.

And, for the first three periods of
your life, of a nation or a regime,

namely foundation of time, the troubled
but sustainable normal "life" on crisis,

we have had a lot of frameworks to go to, to
resort to, but for the period of refoundation

or reconstruction, only 27, 28 years ago,
we began to fashion a whole framework

that is still debatable and in the process of
being perfected, and we will refer to that.

So the historical precedents where, in the
distant past, the civil war and these eloquent,

rededication of the government of the
people for the people and by the people,

and in more recent times, post World War
II, the first precedents were Greece,

there was rather isolated, and the downfall
of the military regime in Greece that incurred

in gross violations in '74, Spain
in '75, Portugal the following year,

but it was not until the Argentinian transition.

In 1883, that a whole seguidillas, we call it,
a whole string-- string of transitions occur,

counting together with the process of
the unfolding of the cold war structures,

more than 30 or 40 countries that have faced
these problems, what do you do with the past,

not because the past is left behind, but
it continues to, because it continues

to haunt the present and
it can mortgage the future.

So it's not just looking backwards.

It's a past that still is haunting
us and it may affect the future

if we don't deal with it properly.

So the leading case was the
Argentinian case from 1983 onward.

Before that, the only memory
of dealing with past atrocities

in the international community
was that of the post World War II,

the Nuremberg trials and
the Tokyo military tribunal.

The first one, justice by the allied,
the second one, by America in Japan.

These cases had to deal with crimes
against humanity or crime genocide,

and what was instilled in the awareness

of international community was,
you have to go and do justice.

Don't ask me how, just do it.

The problem is that Hitler was dead.

I mean that they need to
surrender unconditionally

and there were no standing
army to face the ally.

This didn't apply to Argentina.

In Argentina, they had been defeated in the
Falklands War in an island by the British.

But in the mainland, they
retained the monopoly on weapons.

Nevertheless, the international
community and particularly in the north,

Europe and America said, "Go and do justice."

I mean, we have again a situation, maybe not
quantitatively as tragic but tragic enough

of crime against humanity, perhaps akin to
genocide, it's time to do justice again,

particularly because the world is so much
now aware of the importance of human rights.

Here the situation was not the same.

For sometime, it looked as if it could work
more or less the same, but it wasn't the same

because they were not unarmed, disarmed.

They were still, they were demoralized,
they were in disarray but not disarmed.

Oops, sorry, the wrong key.

After that, about 30 other
cases have taken place

in Latin America, Europe,
Africa and the Far East.

And I will go through them
very quickly just naming them.

The Latin America, Uruguay, Brazil,
Argentine-- after the Argentina case, Chile,

later on Central America,
Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador,

Peru later on, even a few years ago.

In Europe, all the central European countries
after the downfall of the Soviet system,

that when I name these countries,
I'm not saying that they dealt

with the problem properly or rightly.

Actually, out of 30 cases, maybe 7 can
be counted as reasonably successful.

Being a human endeavor in most case, if you
have a flat car, it pretends with a facade.

This is not to-- then to despair
about it, but to be realistic.

In the, in South Africa of course, the leading
case is that of South Africa precisely,

but other cases of, in Africa, be
in Uganda, Chad, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia,

et cetera, Sierra Leone more recently.

And in the Far East, you can
count Sri Lanka, the Philippines.

In Europe, apart from the cases that
didn't make for a whole new trend

that I already mentioned prior to the
Argentina case, Greece, Spain, Portugal.

You have then the efforts of the
northern island to deal with the case.

And the whole issue has expanded,
sometimes, taken as a franchise.

Like, do you have a problem with-- throw
there a truth commission, you know.

Even for the bourgeois now, people are talking

about the Gorbon [phonetic]
massacre and so forth.

Maybe it's a right solution, maybe not.

But sometimes, their reaction
is rather automatic.

Is there a problem with the past?

Well truth commission should be the
answer or transition of justice.

We have to be a bit more careful about that.

Now, transition to democracy as I mentioned is
refoundation of time, and refoundation of times,

are just similar to the foundation of times,
just as rebirth is similar to the time of birth.

For the foundation of time, there are
different times in political ethics.

For the foundation of time, you have a period
that is half historical, half mythical.

The founding fathers are larger than life.

They can do no wrong, and the figure of
Jefferson and Madison and Washington is,

of a symbolism that far exceeds
the historical reality.

And there's a time where the constitution is
grafted, where the principles of the nation,

particularly a nation that
is dedicated to a proposition

such as America, are fashioned and so forth.

So these foundation of times
are concentrated in time.

In America, I would say from roughly 1776 to
1814, when you consolidated the institution

of vis-a-vis, they attempt for recons--
recompose from Britain and so forth.

So it's not a fixed time but
they're usually concentrated

in time of great symbolic importance.

And as I said, they set out, kind of the
moral and political software for the nation.

I know not much about softwares, but I know

that if you misplaced a semicolon,
all kind of funny things happen.

So you have to do things right when you write
a software, namely when you write the blueprint

for what your country should be all about.

You have to do things properly,
all the best you can.

Then the normal time is full of crises,
economic crisis, contentious politics,

union struggles, social division and so, so.

But then somehow, the ship doesn't sink, it's of
course made to-- what do you say [inaudible]--

where it goes to troubled waters on
through the storm but it doesn't sink.

You may use any other metaphor meanings.

This, the system is able to sustain itself.

But there are-- for that time, we have several
frameworks, constitutional law, rule of law,

civil rights, accountability and so forth.

Just like for the, foundation of time,
you have the constitutional principles,

the basic social contract theories
from the 18th century onward.

And the notion of a constitutional-- shaped
in a constitution, et cetera, et cetera.

But there are also emergency times
that may lead to the breakdown

of a society on a-- on a political system.

And for those emergency times, we also have
fashioned in the last 2 centuries principles,

like the laws of war, or internal and conflict,
it's called International Humanitarian Law,

emergency rule, and some basic
ethical principles of human rights

that always stand in the background.

In situations of war, you may apply first
the humanitarian law, the laws of war.

But where the, humanitarian law doesn't apply,
you have the subsidy or the subsided rules

or the background rules of human rights.

There's no situation of you being
kind of bereft of all protection,

as was pretended once by the Bush Government.

Like you are, you're not a regular combatant,
therefore, you don't enjoy your protection

that maybe the case of humanitarian law.

But if not, you have to enjoy
the protection of human rights,

since now that you are bereft of all protection.

So, for all these three times
in the life of a nation,

we have had since long, conceptual
normative frameworks.

A notion of what is all about,
what should be the basic rules?

Get for the time of re-foundation
or reconstruction,

we didn't have this principles really
properly in place until the Argentinian case.

And we are still somehow, sorting them out.

The reason being there is like in
geology, like a new volcano whatever,

it doesn't settle down until many decades later
or perhaps millennia in the case of the volcano.

And this thing, the issue is
still young, have been young,

still more controversial
the long settled issues.

After having said that, what are the
issues, or the transition of time?

I will be very schematic in order
to attempt to be clear about it.

Namely, I will mention first the
principles then the political restrictions,

and then the criteria to harmonize both.

It's easy to say we should be able to do this.

But now, they should, we should be able
means-- now, down in reality, how do you do it?

What are the real life situations?

And how do you harmonize in political ethics,
the 2 terms that conform the expression?

Namely, the ethics, and the politics.

Namely, the goals to be achieved,
vis-a-vis, their real life constraints.

I will begin by the political
restrictions first.

Now, the political restrictions,

you may distinguish several factors
that influence the restrictions.

The type of crises, was this a conflict
that meant a confrontation of polarization

between rival ethnic groups or
religious groups, thus more difficult

with this than ideological crises.

Because in your lifetime, you may
change ideology, you don't change ethnic

or religious allegiance, even
if you're not a practitioner.

So a conflict, say in the Balkans or, as we were
discussing with an academic colleague over lunch

in Sri Lanka, maybe more intractable than a,
than a conflict that has ideological rules.

The same can be said about Uganda or
other countries where the ethnic element

or religious element is a far stronger
component than in other places.

The type of violations where
the massive violation was--

was there a genocide, big massacres, practice
of systematic force, disappearances of people

of torture or-- the scale of the
violations and the nature of the violations.

And the type of transition, how did it come
about to be left behind the situation of crisis.

Was that through a military victory?

A complete victory?

Was that's through a halfway victory,
was it through a peace agreement?

That makes a difference.

So these are some of the elements to take into
account when it comes to political restriction.

And I will refer concerning the third one, the
type of transition-- oops sorry, here it is.

Concerning the third one, the type
of transition I would refer briefly

to certain real life situations.

First, military defeat, World War II are the
international level, complete military defeat

of the Nazi, some of the Japanese and the forces
of the Axis, Nicaragua during the few years

up to '79 before the contra war erupted,

complete defeat of the Somoza
forces by the Somonista forces.

All international level again,
before the resistance erupted again,

Afghanistan after September 11,
initially, controlled then a new,

a new rekindling of the fire so to speak.

In the situation of military defeat
of the enemy, you have in theory,

all the power you need to do things right.

But you have so much power that they
become a danger against doing things right.

So there is a contradiction
in terms, there's a paradox.

When you need to do justice and choose and
because of that, you now have all the power

because the enemy is defeated, doesn't
have any standing army or maybe hidden

or other leaders are dead and so forth.

You heave, in theory, all the rooms you need to
act, but that becomes a danger against justice

because there's no checks and balance.

And, forget about the [inaudible] betrayals for
a moment, but in France, and even in Norway,

there were retributions and
reprises that were far from fair.

Maybe they weren't corpus, maybe they were not
the collaborationist, but we will never know

because there was a rampage of
the victim's justice and revenge.

So, this tells us that when you're
dealing with this kind of issue,

there's no perfect situation, only better or
worse, because, in the ideally, conceptually,

perfect situation, in which the perpetrators

of massive atrocities are being completely
defeated, therein lies the germ or the, or the,

or the seed of injustice because
there are no checks and balance.

So you have to be wary of this problem,
the-- you need to have a lot of room to act,

but not so much that you endanger justice.

A second situation was that of the
military humiliation without loss

of control of the monopoly of force.

In Greece '74, and Argentina '82, the
ruling dictatorial forces of the military,

highly military fiasco, Greece in the
hand, by the hands of the Turks in Cyprus,

the Argentinians by the hands
of the Brits in the Falklands.

That demoralized them and produced the downfall

of the military regime, but
it didn't disarm them.

And after they recovered their morale to
some extent, they put up a resistance.

So initially, as I said, with the
Argentinian case, the leading case,

I remember from a Human Rights watcher
in other groups, in perfect bona fide,

wonderful group, saying, "Go and do justice."

Don't ask me how, then this looks like
new to me-- this stuff make me remember.

They're alive and they have
the control, they were put--

demoralized but they're not dead or disarmed.

And then when they started
putting up a resistance,

the complexities of the situation
became much more apparent.

It's not the type of a situation-- a political
defeat, not a military defeat, like in Uruguay

or in Chile, Uruguay '85, Chile
'89-1990, meaning, the government calls

to revoke the military government.

The Poles' or the dictators
never tell them the truth,

"Boss who were doing great from the Poles."

And so, they sometimes aspire to
gain both power and credibility.

And they feel cheated when they
realized that they lost the election.

That happened in Argentina and Chile.

They ran a fair election, for
the first time, they lost them.

And that produced the downfall of the
regime or confirmed that they have

to follow an itinerary to return to democracy.

But they put in place lots of
restrictions before leaving power.

And they didn't feel demoralized.

Rather, they tried to articulate an explanation.

See, we always wanted to return
to democracy, grind your teeth--

we always wanted to return to democracy
[laughter] and now we're doing that.

See, we hold to our promises.

Anyway, [laughter] that cause-- they don't lose
a settled sense of cohesiveness in the military.

They don't have a sense of military defeat
which is more grievous for the military people.

And therefore, the restrictions
are, sometimes more severe.

You have a situation of gradual political
opening where the worst violations are left

in the memory of the previous generation.

So, the living memory is attenuated because
the worst facts occurred 20 years ago,

15 years ago et cetera.

So there is a greater disposition
of moving forward.

The problem comes back to haunt them many
decades later both in Spain and Brazil,

but initially, at the moment of transition to
democracy or living behind the dictatorship,

you have a sense that, while the situation has
softened up a little, and let's move forward.

You have a situation of military
stalemate like both sides, the rebels

and the government recognize they cannot
defeat each other and they made peace.

But both sides have something
to reproach themselves.

And although there are retrogrades
all for truth and justice, in reality,

they have their finger crossed
before the, behind the back.

They're not for truth of justice
because it will rebound on them too.

So there are many other situations like
shifting alliances in an ongoing armed conflict

like the Philippines under
Corazon Aquino in the '80s.

Her husband was a murdered politician,
he was murdered, she was elected a widow,

but she had to continue to face a military
insurrection of the former allies in the left,

the radical left, and to have to
continue to fight them with the forces

that were previously with Marcos dictatorship.

So that creates a whole dilemma.

You usually don't prosecute your fighting
army while still fighting, you know.

Anyway, these are all real case-- life cases,

it collapses totalitarian
regimes in the central Europe.

I'm talking about former Czechoslovakian
Republic now, Czechoslovakia,

former East Germany, now Unified Germany,
Hungary Bulgaria, Romania, et cetera.

In those cases, the problem
is, the restriction is,

you need the former people to
continue to run the country.

The decedents are a few hundred, very heroic
people, but the policemen, the public servants,

the judges, the professors of the
schools, they're all from the former regime

that they pretended they were
all decedents, of course.

But by-- all the time, it's a normal situation.

But it's hard to go for full truth and justice

and keeping country functioning
at the same time.

So, I'm not saying that because of
that, you should yield to the temptation

of doing nothing or procrastinate, or so on.

I'm talking about real life difficulties,
is against these difficulties that you have

to attempt to move forward towards
the ethically-agreed principles.

You have situation of ethnic or religious
conflicts like in the Balkans or Uganda.

In South-- South Africa is a special
case within this larger category.

Namely, the new forces, political
forces are from a different ethnic group

than the ones that committed the atrocities.

And, just like it happened
with, Obote and Amin in Uganda,

they belong to a particular ethnic group,
most of any, they ruler into a different one.

And if you go to do justice, you're going to
be doing justice concerning the other group,

because you surrender yourself
with your loyal people,

and that means a danger of
re-igniting the conflict.

You have a situation, also of former colonial
power namely East Timor, after being submitted

as small island with-- and with
some more fraction of an island

with 600,000 people-- population.

The former Portuguese colonial power retreated,
Indonesia, stopped seeing them where there are

about 200 million people, a
powerful neighborhood-- neighbor.

Then they gained independence after
massive human rights violation,

but you still have this former colonial power
like a big presence nearby for all purposes.

And, how do you go about prosecuting the
people who have been their allies in the past?

South Africa is a case in point.

Mandela emerges from 25 years of imprisonment,
and he knows that he has to build--

unite the South Africa on the rubble of
decades of [inaudible] apartheid policies.

Now, you cannot fashion like
pseudo-states within the state like this,

South Africa did the white party of recognizing
4 states within the states of funny names

that no one would recognize but them
or their colonies in Southern Africa.

You cannot put the-- push the flag, white
people to the sea, you have to live with them,

but you cannot sleep under
their rug, the dirt either.

So, how to manage that is a real life
dilemma that Mandela attempted to address

through the means that we
would examine in a moment.

You have sometimes evolution
within the same system.

Morocco, the present king, Mohammed
VI, established a truth commission

to reveal the human rights violation

by his father rather a difficult,
the commissioner Hassan.

Of course, it's a revolution of the regime,

he is "more liberal" but
the regime is the same kind.

And that brings limitation.

So they went for reparation and
acknowledgment by lawful justice.

Anyway, so these are some
of the real life situations.

Let's go now for the principles, and
then refer on how to harmonize them both.

I admit this is a rather schematic
approach, but is, I believe,

one that helps in a short period
of time to clarify the issues.

The general goal of a policy of transition
of justice namely of facing the recent path

of truth is when you're moving away from it.

The general goal should be the democratic
construction or refoundation namely,

to build the democratic system, or to
rebuild it, build it like in South Africa

where one existed but only for 6
million people, the white people.

And now, having 1 for 44 million people, build
it or rebuild it like in Chile or Argentina

where there existed democratic institution
before they have been destroyed.

Not that you have to fashion the same
institutions, but you have the elements

to rebuild, the demolition elements that
served you to-- for the reconstruction purpose.

Now, the specific objectives concerning the
past, because the general goal means the past,

the present, and the future of course, you have
to navigate the present, and design policies,

long term policies to build
a solid democratic system.

But, the specific objective is concerning
the atrocities of the past, are to prevent

and to repair, namely, never again, how
to react in such a way that you minimize

or eradicate the possibility of
sliding back into similar kinds

of atrocities to the extent you can.

And to repair what is repairable, you
cannot return the dead back to life

but you can compensate, you can rehabilitate,
you can restitute stolen property and so forth.

So, these are the specific objectives.

And the means to achieve those objectives,
this is an overview of the means.

Some of them have been saying in truth telling.

What does it mean by truth-telling?

Truth-telling are one point in the
past was criticized because it sounded

like an Orwellian kind of approach.

A big brother tells you what to
believe, we're not talking about that.

We're not talking about how it came
about the second World War happened,

many people might say, "Well, there
are many factors, one of them,

it was too harsh of inside treaty.

And then that allowed for the
front side ground to a crazy guy

like Hitler to prosper and so forth."

Well that's an explanation, but we are
aware the not gas chambers is a fact.

We are aware they're not, you know, holocaust
measures of elimination of Jews and Gypsies

and other minorities, that's a fact.

So the truth-telling should about
facts, not about interpretation,

that's left to play writers, historian,
oral history, journalist, and so forth.

About facts that have a tremendous,
ethical transcendence like was their right

to life respected or they were
sick of crimes by the state?

That's a real fact, and which kind of facts?

Particularly the facts that, at first
grave and second, denied or concealed.

Governments never accept that they
have killed people in cold blood.

They say none of these-- this guy
resisted and they had, he attacked us,

we were better sharpshooters so, you know,
we killed them first, but they had fight,

and we kill him in a loyal fight.

Of course, that's disproven when you proved that
the person was killed point-blank, you know,

with a shot in the nape-- in the
back of the head and so forth.

But they pretend that it was--
they never acknowledged the fact.

They didn't acknowledge what is a subject
of a total international prohibition,

and this is killing a person that is not
fighting, this is political imprisonment

for reasons of a fair exercise of your rights.

They pretend that you were a terrorist that--

maybe you were, maybe you were
not, but you would never know.

These are torture, these things can never
be justified, forced disappearances,

extrajudicial killings, torture or political
imprisonment for reasons of conscience.

They may attempt to justify other measures
like exile where our laws permit exile

when there is an emergency
and we had to exile them.

Because there is no way you cannot recognize the
exiles are running around the world, you know,

for everyone to see, you
cannot deny that reality.

So you attempt to rationalize
what you cannot deny.

And to deny what you believe you
can't deny, or hope you can deny.

So truth-telling means putting
the lie from under the table,

on top of the table to use a biblical image.

It means, for everyone in good
faith to know what really happened.

Because there's a mechanism called denial, and
this mechanism of denial, the psychologists

and the psychiatrists know it well.

It's a mechanism that can happen in an
individual level and collective level.

Say you have a big conflict between an intense
loyalty with a parent or a close relative

and an atrocious act, say an abuse, you broke
the atrocious act because you cannot live

with a tension of the 2, the
loyalty versus the atrocity.

For countries, the same happen.

They-- give me the expression of S.O.B
but it's my S.O.B. So this country,

this government, saved me from communism.

But it's telling people no, no it's not true,
because if you admit the distruency, so what?

But that has to be done to save me from
communism, is to hold-- too strong to hold.

So you broke the truth, this didn't happen.

It's not true.

It's part of the propaganda.

So the efforts of the Truth Commission
that have been establish around the world

and I was a member of the one in my own
country, is to reveal the truth in a way

that no person in good faith can deny it.

There will always be the looney ones that
would deny the holocaust or whatever.

But, most people cannot really
in good faith deny it.

That's the purpose.

And for that purpose, truth
commissions have been established.

Truth commissions are not courts of law.

They are not created to deal with
the innocence or guilt of individual.

For that, they're the previously
established courts of law

because if you created ex post facto, a court
of law, it would be a kind of kangaroo court.

Truth commissions are there
to establish a historical

and morally relevant truth about what happened.

And to do that in a manner
and with rigor that everybody

in the society can accept
the truth sooner or later.

Truth commissions have been established galore.

Priscilla Jaena wrote a book about
15, 20 years ago, a comparative study

of truth commissions, there
were 21 at that time.

Now, they-- they've gone to 35 or 30 since.

And except for 7 or 8, they were largely,
either a feudal exercise or a [inaudible].

And these 7 or 8 are very important ones,
and some of them are in Latin America.

Also, the Truth Commission in South Africa has
been recognized as an important and serious one.

Second, the memory building
or preservation of the memory.

The Truth Commissions contribute to the memory,

but they are all symbolisms
of the memory preservation.

Monuments, commemorations, gestures-- symbolic
gestures try to build even museums of memory.

We would see that in a moment.

Third, acknowledgment of the truth.

These 2 friends present here in the
first row were at the conference in 1988

where the philosopher Thomas Nagel from NYU,
introduced the morally relevant distinction

between knowledge and acknowledgment.

And he put the following example
if you people would remember.

He said imagine the Court of Law in Britain
presided by a judge in the high podium

with blood robes and a white wig.

And the barristers are wearing white
wig from everyone you see is "My Lord."

And all of the sudden the wig from the judge
slips off and he will quickly puts it on back.

Everybody knows that he's wig slipped off.

He knows that everybody knows.

Everybody knows that he knows and so on, but
no one recognized, they continue "My Lord."

[Laughter] So what he says that's
it's knowledge but not acknowledgment

and acknowledgment means putting a truth in
the annals of the nation to exit in the memory

in a way that is more efficient not in
the sense Orwellian says but in the Agora,

in the Plaza Publica, in a place
where the civic rituals are conducted.

Everybody knows everything about everybody else.

We have 300 bytes of memory.

This guy, he was married
once to so and so but he--

we know everything, but it's not
necessarily recognized, acknowledged.

And the acknowledgment is very
important because then institutions

in society can rectify their doctrine.

For instance, the military that never did say so
officially, "You can kill people in cold blood

for the sake of National Security," they can say
now publicly, "This was wrong and to kill people

in cold blood when they are in your custody
is wrong and which should never be done."

So you rectify the implicit doctrine

that you somehow disseminated
when you were acting their way.

Second in page, the way for reparations
because if you acknowledge something,

then the holocaust society is
more prepared to pass a law

to provide in reparation for the victims.

The acknowledgment in Britain of the truth--

sorry, in Germany of the truth on the holocaust
provided for laws of reparations for the victims

or their descendant that still are in force.

So the acknowledgment is very important

to recover the sense of these
principles are serious.

We didn't respect them.

That's wrong, it would never happen again.

I'm not talking about the acknowledgment of
individuals which would be very important

but you cannot some-- for
someone to self-incrimination.

That will be against basic legal principles.

I'm talking about the acknowledgment mostly of
individuals if possible but mostly of the army,

political parties, or even the whole nation
as it happened with Germany at one point.

The church, by the way, has been engaged
in the Catholic Church in exercises

that many people feel the
halfway of acknowledgment,

acknowledgment for imprisoning Galileo for
believing that the earth revolved around the Sun

and not the other way around, acknowledgment
for forced evangelization and more recently,

acknowledgment initially timid and
gradually been more clear for the pedophilia.

But this acknowledgment is very important
in the sense that you say, "This is wrong."

Now, we admit that we did it
and we shouldn't have done it,

it would never happen again,
we will take the measures.

That's the sense of acknowledgment.

Then reparations, you can't
repair the irreparable.

You can't bring back the dead to life.

But reparations may be, at the
individual level, consisting restitution.

You stole the property, you expelled
faculty members because of their ideas

from the law school or the medical school,
and you return them to their position

or you return their property that was stolen
may consist on compensation namely a pension

or a sum of money, usually a
pension for life for the relatives,

for the victims over the victims themselves.

It may consist on rehabilitation namely
helping to deal with the physical

and psychology sequelae of the victimization.

There are reparations also that are collective
namely in certain towns to erect a monument

or to put a plaque in a school where they kill
the students or the professors or whatever,

collective in nature, compensation or
loans, lowing to loans, interest-free loans,

to communities that have
been victimized and so forth.

And the reparation may be also symbolic namely
monuments and acknowledgment and other measures

like declaring a holiday, the
commemoration of the massacre and so forth.

So, all these measures have to do with
the principle of preventing and repairing

which is the purpose of dealing with the
past, truth telling, memory building,

preservation, and acknowledgment reparation.

And finally, justice in the sense, not of
material justice which will be reparations

in a form of compensation, but criminal justice,
making the guilty ones pay for their crimes.

This is the most difficult aspects
of the transition of process

because when you haven't won an
outright war against the forces

which committed the atrocities, you have
to-- you have a force to be reckoned with.

If you're going to be trying to attempt to do
justice, they are going to put up a resistance

and you have to figure out how to-- how far
to go and how to go about in the first place.

First, the principles tell us that
there are certain crimes regarding

which there's no pardon, start on
limitation or amnesty acceptable.

These are the famous crimes fashion after World
War II, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

War crimes are the most grave-- the
gravest breaches of the laws of war.

The laws of war are very
detailed but they're less agree--

breaches for instance, the laws of war
tell you that a prisoner of war may write

to his or her family every 2 months.

If they don't allow a prisoner of war to
write but every 4 months, it's a transgression

of the law of war but you
wouldn't call that a war crime.

Evidently, it's not grave violation, but
torturing prisoner and killing prisoners

or forced deportation, these are grave
violation or they are called war crimes.

And crimes against humanity, finally
defined in the 1998 Statute of Rome

that created the International
Criminal Court, and you need 3 elements

to characterize a fact as
a crime against humanity.

One, there is a fact listed
in the list of transgressions.

They include murder, disappearance,
torture, rape,

forced deportation and so
forth, ethnic cleansing.

Second, that this fact is perpetrated as a
part of a systematic or generalized attack

against the civilian population, and third,
that there is knowledge of that attack.

I conclude that for someone to be
guilty of a crime against humanity

that is the gravest approach that you may
have from a legal standpoint universally.

Crime is already a felony, it's very
serious, but crime against humanity,

you need to be an active part, whether as an
architect or the mastermind or an executor

of a policy that has some intent of
extermination against a particular group.

That doesn't mean that-- it means that not
every human rights violation is a crime

against humanity, but every crime against
humanity of course is a human right violation.

Now, crimes against humanity and war
crimes can never been be forgiven.

They should be brought to
prosecution if possible.

When I say if possible, it doesn't mean that
you renounce to prosecution but you may not be

in the position to prosecute them now or
a year from now but maybe 5 years from now

because somehow, they are resisting.

Say Milosevic in Serbia, when he was in
power, he was committing a lot of crimes

against humanity, particularly systematic
ethnic cleansing, killing people

and mostly Sugubina and in other places.

But he could not be brought to justice
to the International Court of the Hague

against for crimes against
humanity in former Yugoslavia

until he lost power and eventually
was surrendered.

That's what I mean if possible.

When the guy is actively in power, someone has
to catch him at the risk of blood and treasure.

There is now a standing order of detention
against Bashir, the ruler of Sudan for crimes

against humanity committed in Darfur, but then
someone has to go and get him and they are--

exposed yourself to the bullet that comes in
the contrary side so that's why I'm saying

if possible and when it is
possible, in real life.

Now other crimes, maybe forgiven if
that is approved in a transparent way

and if they contribute, the perpetrators
to the truth-telling and they admit

that distinction will happen again.

It's not that you're asking for an open
expression of repentance but a policy

that forgives crime should never concern itself
with crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Even if you cannot do justice now maybe you
can do justice tomorrow, in a few years time,

but concerning other crimes is not
illegitimate to provide for measures of clemency

or leniency provided that there is a
disposition of the perpetrators to admit

to what they have done and contribute to truth.

Now this is a very contentious
issue in the human rights community.

Some people don't admit to the distinction and
putting forward and I should be very candid

about that but they are not here
to tell you their point of view.

Is-- what's the overall purpose of all these?

For some countries, the overall purpose,

expressly spelled out is
national reconciliation.

Actually in Chile, the Truth
Commission was called the National Truth

and Reconciliation Commission the
same name received in South Africa,

Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, and in Peru.

Now what is this idea of reconciliation
as a kind of religious connotation to it?

Unlike justice, truth-telling, acknowledgment
or reparations is not a quantifiable measure.

You may say, we produce to report
a country for 3,000 people killed.

We pass the law to make reparation
for 10,000 people.

15 people are imprisoned whatever, but you
cannot say it were 63 percent reconciled.

It-- it's not quantifiable, it's more like
in Northern Star in an aim to go towards

but what does it mean apart from the
rhetoric of the idealistic aspiration?

For some people and the-- this
is still being elaborated,

it means something of political agreement.

It's like a new social contract.

We reemphasized the principles of,
that every person has basic rights

and they should be respected or we
emphasize them for the first time.

It isn't-- means like putting
together even in a religious sense,

religious dash civic sense,
an alliance that was broken.

Like in the Old Testament, you have
the alliance with God, it was broken

and then somehow you put it together,
a new covenant as they call it.

For some other people, it means basically
that those who in the past treated each other

like enemies now treat each other like
opponents but admitting to their entitlements.

For instance in Chile, sitting
side by side, there is a senator

that orders the rest of the
next seated senators.

It's not that they're exactly exchanging
family photograph in their breaks

but they treat each other with
acceptable respect for each other's right.

In the times of acute human rights violation,
they put forward a theory and the theory is

that the enemy is less than human.

If it's less than human, you're killing or
torturing a humanoid rather than a human.

And this idea, it was put forward by both
sides, the military, these are extremists

but the radical left-wing forces,
these people are not the people.

And there are no human rights
or rights of the people.

And there no particular [inaudible] rights--

I mean rights, the rights,
the rights of the people.

And if you kill them, it means in Spanish is
[foreign language] how would you say that?

Like-- pardon?

>> Bring them to justice.

>> Right, you brought them to justice.

And if you steal their small
business, it would be expropriation.

So you have a whole language to somehow
emphasize that some people don't have rights.

And to commit wrongs against them
is not crimes from both sides.

So reconciliation would be admitting that
the other is an opponent, not an enemy.

And not subhuman and for other people from the
psychological sciences, reconciliation means

that a former victim can
relate to the former aggressor

from a position of security, of safety.

Being what it may, it's an
elusive concept stealing the--

in the making, an approach from different
angles and, but expressly formulated as a desire

of a community, not to be divided between--

a reconcile with enemies but somehow to be
brought together in some kind of civilized way.

[ Pause ]

Means, the truth-telling is conducted
mostly through truth commissions.

There are about 30 national examples,
as I said a few of them, successful.

Regarding truth-telling, it's important,
the composition, so that the members

of the truth commissions are credible people.

The mandate, what are they supposed to be doing?

The methodology, how are they going to
act publicly in a reserved way and then

to make public their findings, what are going
to be the investigative methods and so forth?

The dissemination of the results and
concerning truth commissions, as I said,

there are nearly 40 examples
and they are very varied.

Some of them have been successful and I would
name them to you, regarding the truth-telling,

not regarding the overall
transitional policies, only that aspect.

The once considered serious are,
for Latin America, Argentina,

Chile, Peru, Salvador and Guatemala.

From Africa, South Africa, second reports
or processes like the East Timor one

and even the report from Robben Island.

But a few more are considered successful really,
even from that aspect, from that standpoint.

The memory building or preservation, the truths
commissions have a role to create a memory

but it's not the only means by building memory.

There are sites, memorials, and museums.

The precedent is of course, the memorial
museums built to commemorate their holocaust.

Oral history is very important and
I will give you some examples here.

This, the most effective memory buildings
are not the ones that are rubbing

up against your face, the extraordinary
drama that cannot be really spelled out.

But that gives a sense of absence of
a mission, of disappearance, of void,

like this empty gas chamber, or these
shoes left by the victims of genocide.

And even sometimes you have unusual
methods to convey the message like mouse,

this extraordinary successful
comics of the holocaust.

If you were an editor at a publishing
house and someone came to you saying,

"I have this idea of doing
a comic on the holocaust,"

you would have thrown them
out without major ado.

But this was an incredibly successful white
and black comics, probably if you know it,

if you haven't known it, I
encourage you to find a copy.

Mouse, the Jews were mice, the
Germans were cats and, you know,

the Americans were dogs and so forth.

But the whole thing is played in a manner
that is very convincing and very respectful

and very educative, I believe, educational.

In Berlin, they-- this plaza of the holocaust.

To see the-- to get an idea of the
size, these are people, actual people.

So it's a whole plaza of labyrinthic
nature, going up and down and so forth.

This is a painting by perhaps the
most accomplished painter alive today,

Anselm Kiefer from Germany.

He has been accused of neo-fascism but
he won several prices for humanism,

contributions of humanism from Israel.

Namely, he is looking at the history of
Germany in the face with all his greatness

and all his feelings and in these kinds
of paintings, this is a field of battle

and the memory is elicit by the
mud raised by the tanks passing on.

In some, it's a general feeling
of absence of the past.

The same, the same painter,
this notion of the holocaust,

the train to the concentration
camp has gone already, right?

This is an idea of not being
over emphasizing but a sense

of deprivation, absence, hopelessness.

The same painter and now
Hitler's bunker after the bomb,

the firefighters have done their
work in putting out the fires.

This is of course the Vietnam wall in a mall
in Washington D.C. It was hotly contested

when it was being built because
it was felt there was two aspects

to do honor to the memory of the dead.

And as a compromise, they put three
realistic figures, completely realistic,

one White American, one Latino
and one Black American.

Then the women protested, and
they put two nurses in the next

but the visitors bypassed this and they go
straight to the wall that has a sense of going

down as you may see and then emerging from
the depths then going up and all the names

of 50,000 people are etched there.

And people go there and do frottage,
like they pass a pencil over the name

or they put a little message with a flower
and it has been extraordinarily successful

as invocation of the memory of the fallen.

Robben Island prison of course where
Mandela spent 27 years in prison.

This is a Peace Park that was
built in Chile in the same place

that was the headquarters of the torture center.

So that was demolished and a Peace
Park built with the name etched

in flowers and trees, erected there.

And this is also from my country, the recently
built Museum of Memory to give you also a sense

of the building, this is the size of a person.

It's a huge museum, 4-storey
high with the whole history

of the repression and the efforts to fight it.

So these are some examples of commemoration.

The acknowledgments regarding the
recent past, you have several examples

of military people admitting to atrocities.

In some other places, they seem
to refuse to admit to anything.

But concerning the distant
past, there are many examples.

Not only that of the church acknowledging
the imprisonment of Galileo or the force

of evangelization of people in America
but also German firms acknowledging

and making reparations for using slave force
in World War II or the indigenous people

from Australia, Canada, New
Zealand or America claiming

and finding some cases, forms of reparation.

There's a book by Elazar Barkan
called The Guilt of Nations

that contains 10 case studies
of long-term acknowledgment.

Barkan, B-A-R-K-A-N.

Reparations may consist as I
say of execution, compensation

or rehabilitation then maybe individual
collective material or symbolic.

And as I mentioned already,
I'm just reiterating now,

regarding injustice there's a legal
imperative concerning crimes against humanity

and war crimes and the possibility of
pardon or clemency regarding lesser crimes

if there's a contribution to
the truth and acknowledgment.

Reconciliation, questions mark.

Now there are certain ventures
between principles and restrictions.

Distinctions mean that you may not achieve
what is set out in the blueprint of principles

in the short-term or immediately
or sometimes in the medium term

because there are political conditions
that do not permit you to do so.

Vis-a-vis, this kind of situation to
just say go and do it, don't ask me how,

you are at fault, I think is simplicity.

If there maybe a will, an
honest will to advance,

but a real impossibility to move forward.

For instance, if someone asked
us during the Pinochet years,

why don't you do justice against Pinochet?

You say, "That's a bad joke.

He's in power.

He's killing people.

How are you going to do just--
" When this change occur,

they act from the assumption [inaudible],
180 degrees, maybe a 120 degrees,

a 160 degrees depending on the restrictions.

So it's not as if now, as it's
now, it's white and black.

And now we're on the white side, where in the
black side before or the other way around.

So the restrictions are real and you have to try

to reconcile the principles
and the real-life situation.

There are some ethical criteria, Max Weber's
distinction between the ethics or responsibility

versus the ethics of ultimate
ends has come to the fore.

He made the distinction in a famous lecture
of 1918 and anticipating the obscure night

of fascism in 1918, the revolutionary
winter of Germany after the First World War.

He was telling an audience of German students
mind you, Paris 1680 is a picnic compared

to Germans students in 1918,
extremely earnest about everything.

So he was telling them, if we pursue this path
of asking for the impossible but you're going

to find yourself in 10 years time, then many
of you, they are the most flamboyant speakers,

will have moved to the other side, will have
withdrawn to a private life and so forth.

He had the courage of telling that.

The important thing is to keep
an ethical blueprint in mind,

but to act taking into account the real life
considerations to maximize your possibilities,

but not to jump in the other seat if you
had flight some-- flying without flight.

That's-- that criteria has come to [inaudible]
the four new speeches by people as distance

as a Vaclav Havel in a former, Czech group--
Czechoslovakia or in Chile [inaudible].

They have evoked the distinction between ethics
of responsibility and ethics of ultimate ends.

I'm about to finish.

The corollaries of this, the order and
sequence of the public policy measures matters.

Say, in Chile after the downfall of the
military regime, they had passed an amnesty law

for themselves, covering
the period of worst crimes.

So people demanded, we need to
abrogate or repeal that law.

But you didn't have the political
votes to do that.

And if you follow the ethics of
convictions saying "I'm going to appear

as doing the right thing, I
ask for the repeal of this."

And you get into an congressional
struggle for 1 year,

you waste your honeymoon political
time and you end up with nothing.

Instead of that, with the president
dinner, it was very clever,

was to establish a truth commission that
created such a commotion in the country

by the truth it revealed that that
facilitated then the other measures

or justice and reparations.

So the order and sequencing of the measures
matters, I always like to refer to the image

of the ice-breaking ship in the Arctic or the
Antarctic, sometimes you have a frozen ocean

and an ice-breaking ship comes and with a
steel prow crushes against the frozen ocean

and somehow you make it break, it cracked
and you navigate through the crack

and you crush again, and you may
grow for yourself step by step.

So the important thing is to find the measures
that open the way for further measures.

That's easier said than done, but you
got to learn from experience about that.

At a minimum, not to condone, meaning by that,

if you are a democratically-elected
leader then have your hands half tight

and you cannot do justice now,
at least at the very least,

don't condone the situation
of impunity, conforminate.

You may not be able to do something, but
abstain from validating what is illegitimate.

It's a price to Argentina where--
because it didn't play the--

his hand right, an honest president fell
force than to condone measures of impunity.

I think I will leave it here
to allow for sufficient time

for question and answer or comments.

We have covered perhaps some more
ground that is reasonable to cover

in such a short period of
time but it was an overview.

[ Pause ]

>> Well so, why don't you fill
your own question, I think that--

>> Right, and the floor is open
for any question or comments.

Booing accepted [laughs].

Yes madam?

>> Yes, madam.

I should warn you that I'm a bit hard of
hearing and they ask me to repeat the question

but first I have to listen to it properly.

>> Okay. I will be loud and I will be clear.

>> That's fair enough.

>> You've identified that there are certain
Truth and Reconciliation Commissions

in South America that have been successful and
only one in Africa that's been successful, why--

so why has South America has been
more successful in this endeavor

than the African States [inaudible]?

>> I wish I had-- the question
for the purpose of the record

that they asked me is why it appear--
would appear that the South American Truth

and Commissions have been more numerous, the
successful ones than the South Africa one?

In South Africa, the examples are Ethiopia,
Chad, Uganda and South Africa, the ones I know.

>> And Sierra Leone.

>> Sierra Leone is more, you know, apart from
the Commission, there's a court in Sierra Leone,

International Court handled by United Nations
and part of the truce is coming or is suspected

to come from the [inaudible] of the corp
but you are right, Sierra Leone as well.

>> That's great.

They did have TRC as well.

>> Right, right.

Did they did have a TRC.

And actually a person who is a member of the--

was a member of the Truth and Commission
in South Africa was a member also,

Jasmine Suka of the Truth Commission in
Sierra Leone and now is a member of the panel

in Sri Lanka together with
Professor Randall [phonetic]

who was present here from your faculty.

I don't know the reason really, I remember--

I know personally the cases of Uganda that they
asked me to advice them but the way they went

about in Uganda was to establish a
panel that felt that they had to go

through quasi-judicial proceedings.

So they have a full hearing, listening
to a single case that went on for days.

There was no way they could finish in
a century with that kind of proceeding.

Eventually they produced a report
that was too late and too little.

And by then, they hold contradiction

within Uganda Society had re-ignited following
the first initial relatively moderate period

of Museveni had re-ignited.

In the case of Chad and Ethiopia, you will say--
what you call a window washing or whitewashing?

Anyway, an attempt to-- well,
it pretense of Truth Commission,

it was very-- it was not really reliable.

And the forces that support it respectively
in Chad, Hissene Habre in Ethiopia,

Mengistu is still where-- to be [inaudible]
that they wanted to pay for the things over.

The South African Commission was more
successful as a Truth Commission.

I'm not talking about the old policies because
in South Africa, there were some activist

that pushed for a comparison of a transnational
experiences so they call for two conferences

in 1994, both of which I
had the privilege to attend.

One before the election, the election of Mandela
as a president and went after the election

to see what they could do and what
they could learn from other countries.

In Latin America, we had many famed experiences
as well, Panama, Mexico, Paraguay and Brazil

and Uruguay never went about a full Truth
Commission but they were done good exercises

but non governmental groups usually
associated with the churches.

But the example of the Southern
Cone mainly Argentina

that was the leading example
was followed then by Chile

and theses two examples somehow
inspired United Unions

that broken the examples
of Salvador and Guatemala.

It was United Nation that set up those
commissions, really, that helped.

And Peru came in the wake of that because
of an enlightened interim government.

But there was a mixture of circumstances.

The fact is that these are generally
considered more successful but I don't think

that there is a single factor
that can be spelled out.

I had another hand.

Yes sir.

>> I am from Liberia when one of the
[inaudible] supervision happened to [inaudible].

I don't think you mentioned
anything about the [inaudible].

My question, how can I meet you
further for that discussion?

[Laughter] Because the reason why that's
important is I'm here to particularly look

about the transition of Liberia
from the [inaudible]--

>> I understand.

>> -- through democracy.

>> I must confess my relative ignorance
apart from being a general reader

of the international news
of the situation in Liberia

but I certainly argue with this position.

>> Thank you.

But that's an [inaudible].

>> Yes, yes.

[Laughter] Yes, I have several hands there.

Let me take this one and I move over there.

Yes.

>> Thank you for coming to speak here.

It's real privilege as [inaudible].

If you don't mind, I'd like to ask a little
about your personal experience of returning

in the extraordinary experience
of having been exiled

and coming back to your home country of Chile.

As a part of-- becoming a part of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission

and suddenly now you are sitting in this
room with all these people trying to decide

in the face of this very damaged nation
and populous, where do you start?

And how--

>> Where do you start?

>> -- did you come to some kind of
place and knowing where to start?

>> Well first, I was-- thank you for question.

I will give some references.

First I was a law instructor, very
young law instructor at the Law School

at the time of the coup d'etat in Chile.

But soon I became a human rights lawyer although
we didn't call each other human rights lawyer

at that time.

At one point on this international, two months
after the coup was coming to the country

and we said, [inaudible] who, we didn't
have a clue it was on this international.

But then we realized that they were very
serious and after they return from their mission

to Chile, they send us the draft.

There was no e-mail at that time but they
sent us the draft by means of a courier,

personal courier of their report
for us to check any mistakes.

And there were some minor mistakes, law and
such and such and so forth and we realized

that there was a serious human
rights community out there.

And-- well then they-- we developed the
more human rights language and so fort.

But this church-protected institution, although
we were not-- I'm not a religious person,

I was raised a Catholic but I'm agnostic.

Anyway, they accepted everyone who wanted to
work for human rights under that umbrella.

Now where the church acted in
Latin America, something happened

where they [inaudible] nothing happened
because the rest of the civil society

or the institutions were destroyed.

The Congress was closed, political
parties outlawed, union disbanded,

federation of students disbanded, et cetera.

The only organization that stood up was the
church because they had given even the coup

in the name of Western Christian values,
so they have this rhetoric and they had

to respect the church although they
consider some of them red priest and so forth

but be gradually, they had to respect that.

When the church didn't act
at the level of the hierarchy

like in Argentina, on Uruguay, you had nothing.

What it did act, nothing but the courageous
activity of individuals who are relatives

of victims like Emilio Mignone or other people.

In Brazil, you had the church acting in
the main Archdiocese that were powerful,

one of the largest Catholic
Archdiocese of the world

because they have like 20 million believers.

And the Cardinal was active
so that gave him protection.

If you move to Central America, in El Salvador
the Archbishop was established some protection.

He was killed while he was
in a mass, Archbishop Romero.

In Guatemala the church was reluctant
nothing happened, really, for some time,

so this has a lot to do with that.

And in Chile, we had because the
church acted from the very beginning,

some key people in the church, not everyone.

We had a record-- contemporary record
of the repression and the killings

from the time it occurred that
was a very reliable record.

Now when the Truth Commission came some of
us that have been active in changed roles

and the president established a
commission of eight people, not seven.

It's not cabalistic number seven or eight,

but if you establish seven,
they say, "Ah yeah, yeah.

You have the majority, four out of three.

If it's a free vote, you can win."

By establishing eight, he put four people that
had been supporters of the military regime,

not of the human rights violation.

But that failed that in the
divisive situation of the country,

it was justified to have a true
agenda not to kill people and so fort.

Of course, we disagree [inaudible]
on those issues but we agreed

to concentrate on killing, some torture.

And the eight people came to unanimous
conclusion that gave a lot of credibility

to the report because people
could identify with these four

as [inaudible] big shot from
the right wing and so on.

So if all these eight people say something,

it must be some situate that
gave a lot of credibility.

And how it was, first we
gather all the information

from the church activity during the 17
years of military rule that men hiring

or buying 20 photocopy equipment
and having people work

around the clock photocopying
the files and then incrementing

that with all the new denunciations.

Among the new denunciations there were like
a thousand completely grounded denunciation

because victims don't lie, but a
lot of people lie to become victims.

It's reality.

So many of this people wherein bona
fide were acting like they said,

"my husband died because of the Junta.

When did he die?

In 1980. When he was detained?

1973? How long he was in prison?

One week. But he never recovered.

His heart was weak, what-- do you understand,
you consoled but you can not consider

that a case of human right violation, you know.

Anyway we had about the thousand cases that
were groundless but 3, 300 case that were solid.

And we had to consider everyone
with the evidence,

because the government was now a constitutional
government and they give the order,

the executive order for every branch of
the government to collaborate with us.

We got all the Cornell's reports, all the
international police report about travel,

the ID report, the driver license
report and do you have someone that--

do you have a witness that
the person was taken away?

He was a family, head of family,
than there's than-- [Laughter]

>> I must say, you keep [inaudible]
for a long time.

>> I'm carried away, I'm carried away.

>> [Inaudible] and thank you, guys.

[ Applause ]

[Inaudible Remark]

>> It's fine.

[ Applause ]