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PLANET Forests: a hot deal for a cooler world

CONNEXIONS International radio makes new waves

IN T ERV IEW Wangari Muta Maathai, Kenya’s green militant

PEOPLE AND PLACES Circus flashbacks

Me m o ry : making peace with a violent pas t

December 1999

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I MPRIMÉ EN FRANCE (Printed in F rance) DÉPOT LÉGAL : C1 - NOVE MBER 1999 COMMISSION PARITAIRE N° 71844 - Diffusé par les N.M.P.P. The UNES CO Courier (USPS 016686) is published monthly in Paris by UNES CO. Printed in France. Periodicals postage paid at Champlain NY and additional mailing offices. Photocomposition et photogravure: Le Courrier de l’UNESCO. Impression: Maulde & Renou ISSN 0041-5278 No. 12-1999-OPI 99-587 A

C o n t e n t s December 1999

PEOPLE AND PLACES

3 Circus flashbacks Photos by Massimo Siragusa; Text by Tonino Guerra

EDITORIAL

9 Into action Ko ï c h i ro Matsuura

PLANET

10 Forests: a hot deal for a cooler world Sophie Boukhari 13 Toyota makes trees Yoshinori Takahashi

WORLD OF LEARNING

14 Spare the rod, save the child E t h i rajan Anbara s a n

ETHICS

37 Police against racism Asbel López

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

40 The year 2000: who�s coming to the part y ? Jasmina Sopova

CONNEXIONS

43 International radio makes new wave s Cynthia Guttman

TALKING TO�

46 Wangari Muta Maathai, Ke n y a�s green militant

1 7 Focus Me m o ry: making peace with a v i o l e n t p as t

The second half of this century has been stained by crimes against humanity. For the victims, the path of reconciliation winds between re m e m b rance and f o rg e t t i n g . The complexities of this process are i l l u s t rated by stories on South Africa, Chile, Guatemala, Russia, Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia.

Detailed table of contents on page 17.

C over: Mi Lay massacre memorial, Da Nang, Viet Nam; © J.M. H u ron/Editing, Pa r i s

December 1999 - The UNE SCO Courier 3

P EO P LE A N D P LA CES

Under the big top of Italy’s Embell Riva Circus, an equestrian act prepares to go through its paces. The circus, owned by the Bellucci family, tours mainly in southern Italy.

CIRCUS FLASHBACK S ◗ Photos by Massimo Siragusa; text by Tonino Guerra

Massimo Siragusa’s circus photos conjures up a world of happy memories for Italian poet Tonino Guerra, the scriptwriter of Federico Fellini’s 1974 film Amarcord (‘I Remember’)

■ W hen au tu m n b egan an d leave s from the chestnut trees covered the road between the station and the

square, a m om ent would com e when I would open the window overlooking our vegetable garden and see with delight the tent of the little circus which had been pitched on the village green overnight.

When I opened the sam e window in springtim e, my surprise cam e from the cher ry tree, bursting with white blossom s. I was a sm all boy then, full of excitem ent at discovering the big top which had gone up in front of our house.T he evening air

was filled with the sounds of trum pets and the rum ble of drum s.

It was usually the sam e circus that Federico F ellini had applauded before m e in Rim ini, the chief town of the Adriatic R i v i e r a , n ear the village where I wa s b o r n —Sa n ta rcan ge lo d i R om agn a . I rem em ber how F ellini and I often talked about it during the shooting of Ama rcord, the film in which he rem em bered his youth in Rim ini.

By then, both of us had been living in Rom e for m any year s. O n Sunday m or- nings, Fellini would often drive m e to

C inecittà1. H e just loved to be there when it was deserted and quiet. H e would ask for the keys to Set no. 5 and we would m ake our way to that dank, em pty place.

Let the show begin! As soon as we arrived, he would say in

a voice charged with em otion: “Let the show begin!” and would start to switch on the lights one by one. We watched the

1.T he centre of the Italian film industry, founded 62 years ago on the Via T uscolana just outside Rom e.

4 The UNE SCO Courier - December 1999

P EO P LE A N D P LA CES

This lanky giraffe is one of many performing animals in the Moira Orfei Circus. The Orfeis are a famous Italian circus family.

A lonesome clown looks into a mirror before going into the ring.

December 1999 - The UNE SCO Courier 5

P EO P LE A N D P LA CES

The spotlight picks out spinning hoops and silhouettes a high-stepping dancer during a Rome performance of the Togni family’s three-ring American Circus.

A tightrope walker with the Roncalli Circus treads the high wire in Vienna (Austria). The Roncalli is a German circus, but most of its performers are Italian.

6 The UNE SCO Courier - December 1999

P EO P LE A N D P LA CES

Acrobats caught by the camera in mid-air during a performance by Livio Togni’s Circus in Palermo.

An elephant arrayed in a fluorescent costume.Flying trapeze artists of the American Circus.

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 7

P EO P LE A N D P LA CES

P OET, S TOR Y-T EL L ER A ND SCRIP TW RI T ER

The Italian poet Tonino Guerra, who was bornin Santarcangelo di Romagna in 1923, gra- duated in education studies from the University of Urbina and is a world-famous scriptw r i t e r. He has written over 100 screenplays, which have been made into films by directors including Michelangelo Antonioni (with whom he has just written L’ Aq u i l o n e, an illustrated story for the third millennium, published by Editoriale Delfi, Cassina, Milan), Andrei Tarkovsky, the Ta v i a n i brothers, Federico Fellini, Francesco Rosi and Vittorio de Sica.

Some of his poems and short stories have been translated into English, French, German, Dutch and Spanish. Of one poem, H o n e y, the great Italian writer Italo Calvino has said: “To n i n o G u e r ra turns everything into fiction and poetry — via the spoken word, writing or film, in Italian or in the Emilio-Romagna dialect. We should all learn his dialect so we can read these wonderful stories in their original language.” ■

To contact Tonino Guerra, write by e-mail to <[email protected]>

fuzzy glow from the dusty bulbs dotted all arou nd the hu ge d rab area, an d the sounds and im ages of shows we had seen as children cam e flooding back.

O n days when the circus was in town, even m y m other P enelope joined in the fun. Every m orning, she would ask the keeper of the African anim als for the droppings of the giraffes and the old lion, and would use them to work wonders on the flowers she grew in old saucepans.

T he beau tifu l p hotos by M assim o Siragusa which illustrate this scrapbook of golden m em ories take m e back to those childhood days as well as m y long visits with the prodigious F ellini to Set no. 5 (one of 16) at C inecittà. For him this set was the real Via Veneto, the Via Veneto of La Dolce Vita . Set no. 5 served as the back- drop when the coffin with the great direc- tor’s body was displayed to the public for the last tim e on N ovem ber 1, 1993.

T hese m em ories also take m e back to Russia, one of the countries I’ve loved m ost, and bring to m ind the tim e when I worked for th e d ir ect or A n d r e i K hr yanovsky. A few years ago, I gave him the script of a cartoon story called The Grey-Bea rded Lion. A film was recently m ade of it which tells the story of a little circus whose m ain attraction is an unu - sual lion called Am edeo, or Teo to his friends. As the years go by and he gets older, divisions grow am ong the sm all fam ily of circus folk.

The great Popov I also rem em ber, like so m any colou -

red bubbles, the tim es when I m et the gr e at R u ssian clow n s , e s p e c i a l l y K arandash, who was so short that when he stood behind a table, he seem ed to be sitting at it.

And P opov, the great P opov who per - form ed his finest routine one day when he was in Am sterdam . H e entered the ring and prepared to eat a m eal in a sm all spotlight which lit up part of the ground. When he finished, he gathered up the light with his hands, as if it were bread - crum bs, a trick he’d worked out with the lighting technician. Just as he was leaving the ring, he put the light in a shopping bag. H e received so m uch applause that he stopped and threw the bag towards the audience, which was then flooded with light.

I can’t forget either the statues that Ilario F ioravanti, an old sculptor from C esena, shaped with hesitant child-like hands. In P ennabilli (the village in the M arches region of Italy between P esaro and U rbina where I’ve lived for the past

d e c a d e ) , he assem bled all the stat u e s which rem inded him of the circus and cir- cus life.T hey are still in the room s of an old palazzo in the heart of the ancient vil- lage, the Bargello. In cells which once held prisoners, F ioravanti’s statues now stand as if waiting for a round of applau- se that m ight break out at any m om ent, applause suspended in m id-air .

T here’s som ething irresistible about this world that floods m y m em ory with joy but also fills m e with m elancholy—the last notes of the m usic we heard in the vil- lage as the circus caravans prepared to leave and then went on their way. T he sounds trailed away in the fog and beca- m e a kind of poignant lam ent that, stan- ding on the tips of our toes, we strained to hear until the very last note.

Afterwards, we would gather on the patch of ground where the circus ring had been. Som etim es we’d plant candles and create a ring of light around us. ■

8 The UN ESCO Courier - December 1999

P EO P LE A N D P LA C ES

An elephant of the Embell Riva Circus gives its trainer a ride.

The ringmaster of the Moira Orfei Circus.

ED I TO R I A L

December 1999 - The UN ESCO Courier 9

■ U N ESC O is a factor of hope,because it is the one international organization which, through all its progr a m m e s , respects an d defends what is of unive rsal wo rth and dign ity in the m at e r ial and spir itu al her itage of all cu ltu res, an d thereby, the absolu te

dignity of all hum an beings. . . .

G l o b a l i z ation is acceleratin g with d ram atic speed, presen tin g a global challenge which dem an d s a global an swe r.Yet the respon se m ust be m ad e with all d ue respect for cu ltural d i ve rsity and id entity, for that priceless individual componen t that m akes up the true d ignity of our m any peoples.

But U N ESC O can only go on providing the world with such hope, and such defence, if it proves itself to be an adequate world in stru m e n t . U N E S C O is not an en d in itself. U N E S C O is a world service,a tool which is at once delicate,highly com plex, and precious. H um a- n ity may all the better avail itself of such a tool if all the wo r l d ’s states—an d peop les—agr e e once again to m ake proper use of it, and so contribute to its efficiency and universality. U N ESC O m ust once m ore represent the whole world, with no exceptions. I pledge to do m y best,in the course of m y stewardship, to persuade those who stand outside to retur n or to join.

But criticism s,not all of them unfair,have been leveled against this great instrum ent: and failings,where verified,m ust be m ade good.T he purpose of sound m anagem ent is, a g a i n , not an en d in itself, but a d uty to en sure that ou r institu tion fully d isch arges its gr e at task as a tru e world serv i c e , responsib le an d accou n table to th e world—and to the wo r l d ’s taxpayers.

O ur resources are therefore not unlim ited,nor should we spread ourselves too thin. I propose that we streamline ou r activities within the limits of ou r bu d g e t s , and closely focu s u pon those programm es which are ou r true m and ate—n ot for the sake of fashion able au s- t e ri t y, but in ord er to make a real im pact where best we m ay, and where tru ly we mu st, p r o- vide our needed service: in our ongoing war against poverty, through education and the nurturing of hum an resources.

I su ggest pu rsuit of our m ost practically conceived progr a m m e s , in co-operation with leading institutions, scientists and scholars around the world, in term s of our four great directives, on behalf of education,science,culture,and com m unication.

U N E S C O is a challen ging parad ox . It cann ot lapse into a m ere clu b for in tellectuals, bu t it m ust ser ve as a forum for international intellectual exchange.It cannot pretend to be a research institution but m ust keep abreast of and stim ulate research.It is not an opera- tional agency, yet it m ust see that global ethics for peace, justice and solidarity, through international co-operation in education, science, culture and com m unication, are both m orally observed an d tan gibly applied. F i n a l l y, U N E S C O is not a fund in g agen cy, a l t h o u g h it m ust provide catalytic funds to generate further funding: in order to dem onstrate that ideals only take shape through action. . . .

In the whirl of this changing age, let us stand firm and faithful to our enduring pur- pose: building peace in the m inds of m en. ■

(Extracts from an address gi ven by M r Koïchiro M atsuura in Pa ris on 15 N ove m b e r , on the occa-

sion of his investiture as D irector-G eneral of U N ESC O.)

IN TO ACT ION

Koïchiro Matsuura

Koïchiro Matsuura, who was born in Tokyo in 19 37 , studied law at the University of Tokyo and economics at Haverford College ( Pennsylvania, U.S.A.). In 19 59, he began his career at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he has s e rved as Director-G e n e ral of the Economic Co-opera t i o n Bureau (19 8 8 - 19 9 0 ) ; D i r e c t o r -G e n e ral of the North American Affairs Bureau (19 9 0 - 1992); Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs ( 19 9 2 - 1994), in which post he oversaw Japan’s hosting of the First Tokyo International Conference on Africa n Development; and since 19 9 4 as Ambassador to Fra n c e , A n d o r ra and Djibouti. He also served for one year, until November 1999, as chairperson of UNESCO’ s World Heritage Committee. On November 12, UNESCO’ s supreme ruling body, the G e n e ral Conference grouping 188 Member Sta t e s , c o n firmed the choice made by the Executive Board on 12 November and appointed Mr M a t s u u ra to the post of D i r e c t o r -G e n e ral of UNESCO.

10 The UN ESCO Courier - December 1999

P LA N ET

F ORESTS: A HOT DEAL F OR A COOL ER WORL D ◗ Sophie Boukhari

Forests can play a key role in combating the greenhouse effect but current proposals for using them raise a thicket of thorny issues

◗ UNESCO Courier journalist

Many reforestation projects are underway in Brazil, but deforestation is still gaining ground. According to Greenpeace, 80 per cent of the felling is illegal.

■ Why are industrialists so keen on trees these days? After the Japanese vehicle-m aker Toyota (see page 13)

and others, the F rench car fir m P eugeot launched a huge reforestation project in late 1999. T he result will be 10 m illion trees growing on 12,000 deforested hec- t ares in the hear t of t he Brazilian Am azon.

T he aim of the $10 m illion project, says P eugeot chief Jean-M artin F olz, is to “m ake the idea of a carbon sink a reality.” In other words, to show that reducing consum ption of fossil fuels—gas, oil and coal—is not the only way to fight global warm ing. By using the ability of vegeta- tion to absorb and store carbon dioxide ( C O 2) , the m ain green hou se gas, t h e am ount of C O 2 in the atm osphere can be reduced.

Tropical forests: a controversial role

T hrough the process of photosynthe- sis a growing tree gives off oxygen and absorbs water, light and C O2, which is why expanding forests are what is known as “carbon sinks”. F ull-grown forests on the other hand cease to be carbon sinks and becom e carbon reservoir s. T hey store huge am ounts of carbon above and below ground and play a neutral role in the C O 2 equation. T he carbon dioxide given off when old trees decom pose can be offset by that which is absorbed when young trees gr ow in th eir place. And when forests burn, they give off C O 2 and beco- m e sources of carbon.T hat is the theor y. In practice, however, very little is known about the global carbon cycle and the role of forests in it.

It is also unclear how forests will react to global warm ing. “T here are uncertain - ties regarding the im plications of increa- sed C O 2 concentration in the atm osphere for photosynthesis, forest growth rates

and changes in carbon stocks in forests,” says Indian scientist N .H . Ravindranath, one of the three co-ordinators of a special r e p o r t on for ests p rod u ced b y th e I n t e r g ove r n m e n tal P an e l on C lim at e C hange (IP C C ). Today’s carbon sink can becom e a source of C O2 tom orrow.

According to currently available data, the world’s m ain forest carbon sinks are in the countries of the N orth (the U nited S t at e s , C a n a d a , Eu rope an d Ru ssia). After centuries of deforestation,m ainly to create farm land, these regions have been gaining trees again in the past 100 years or so. As a result of the revolution in intensive agr iculture, less land is needed for farm ing.

O n the other hand, large-scale defo- restation is still taking place in tropical countries where land hunger is constantly increasing (see box opposite page). T his contributes to the increased concentra- tion of greenhouse gases in the atm osphe- re. T he role of tropical forests in this context is highly controversial. In theor y,

as m ature forests they should absorb as m uch C O 2 as they give out. But recent studies suggest they actually absorb m ore C O 2 than was thought. In fact, says Youba Sokona, deputy director of Enda T iers M o n d e , a n on -gove r n m ental organ iza- tion,“we have no clear idea of the state of forest resources or the way they behave in developing countries.” Forest sur veys are very expensive, and not m any have been done in the countries of the South. T he estim ates of the F ood and Agriculture O r g a n i z ation of the U n ited N at i o n s (FAO ) have som etim es been questioned.

Carbon credits

D espite all these unknown factors, the notion of carbon sinks has becom e highly topical—for political rather than scientific reasons. It cam e of age in 1997, when it was introduced into articles 3.3 and 3.4 of th e Kyot o P rotocol on C lim at e C hange.

U nd er the protocol, which was the

Article 3.3 says that “direct hum an-indu - ced land use change and forestry activi- ties, lim ited to afforestation, reforestation and deforestation since 1990” can be used by states parties to m eet their com - m itm ents. For exam ple, a com pany m ay fund a reforestation project in its own c o u n t r y, or else a cou n tr y like T h e N eth erlan d s,say, could sponsor tree plan - t ation s in Po l a n d . In 200 8-2012 , t h e am ount of C O 2 these trees have absorbed or “sequestrated” will be calculated and

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 11

P LA N ET

Women carry seedlings into a wooded area as part of a forest rehabilitation project in Tanzania.

resu lt of tou gh negotiation s in the wake of the 19 92 U n ited N ations F ram ewo r k C o nven tion on C lim ate C h an ge, t h e i n d u s t rialized cou ntries prom ised to redu - ce their ann u al net em ission s of gr e e n h o u- se gases by an average 5 per cen t a ye a r u ntil 2008-2012, usin g the 1990 level as a b a s e . To do this, som e coun tri e s , n o t a b l y th e U n ited Stat e s , in sisted on the esta- b lishm en t of three “ flexibility m ech a- n i s m s ” .

T he fi rst in volves setting up a m arket where the rich countries will bargain with each other to buy and sell em ission per- m its. T he second is a “joint im plem enta- tion” (JI) arrangem ent under which they will earn carbon credits in exchange for funding reduction of em issions in form er- ly com m unist eastern Europe through, for exam ple, industrial cleanup projects. T he third is a “clean developm ent m echa- nism ” (C D M ), which is like JI but ope- rates between industrialized and develo- ping countries. M any environm entalists have sharply criticized this “international trading in hot air” and accuse the coun- tries that are the worst polluters of see- king to shirk their obligation to thorough- ly revam p their own energy consum ption practices.

Including the carbon sin k idea in the Kyoto Protocol is another way of m akin g the Protocol’s application m ore “ fle x ible”.

counted as part of such countries’ reduc- tion in their own greenhouse gases.

Article 3.4 adds, without going into specifics, that other hum an activities rela - ting to carbon sources and sinks can be taken into account. “T hese articles are last-m inute com prom ises,” says M ichel Raquet of G reenpeace Europe. “T hey were drafted without m uch idea of their im plications or whether ever yone agreed on the m eaning of the term s used. In fact, they vary from one institute or country to

DEF ORES TAT ION GAT HERS SPEED

Over the last 150 years, says the Wo r l dResources Institute (WRI), deforestation and changes in land use have been responsible for 30 per cent of the increase in greenhouse gas emis- sions into the atmosphere.

At present, according to FAO, CO2 emissions from these sources, especially in the tropics, represent a fifth of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions resulting from human activity. Forest clearance to create farmland or pasture is a big part of this. In the 1990s, Brazil emitted 27 times more CO2 because of deforestation than from fossil fuel combustion, according to Biomass Users Network, a non-governmental organiza- tion.

“Wood is usually burned on the spot because it’s not worth keeping it,” says French forestry expert Arthur Riedacker. “It’s also too expensive to move. In Congo, it costs $130 a cubic metre to bring timber out of the forest to the coast, while pine wood or spruce only fetches $50 a cubic metre in France.”

The WRI says that if nothing is done, deforesta- tion could account for 15 per cent of the CO2 in the atmosphere by 20 50, with the rest mainly due to industrial pollution. Most of it will come from the Amazon region. After 20 50, deforestation will decline b e cause there will not be many forests left. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ca l c u- lates that 73 per cent of the world’s tropical forests

12 The UNE SCO Courier - December 1999

P LA N ET

Villagers water seedlings at a tree nursery in India.

another.” F uture negotiations will sort this out.

T hese talks will also try to decide— this will be a far-reaching debate—whe- ther or not to include carbon sinks in the C D M . If they are included, rich countries will be able to fund afforestation or anti- deforestation projects in poor countries as a way of obtaining carbon credits, instead of carrying out often m ore costly schem es at hom e to curb em issions from industr y or transport.

T h e In tergove r n m en t al Pa n el on C lim ate C hange (IP C C ), the scientific organ of the 1992 C onvention,thinks that carbon sinks can play an im portant role. As the FAO report notes,“IP C C has esti- m ated, with a m edium level of confiden- c e , t h at globally, carbon sequ estrat i o n from reduced deforestation, forest rege- neration and increased developm ent of p l a n t ation s a nd agr o - f o r e s t r y b etwe e n 1995 and 2050 could am ount to 12 to 15 per cent of fossil fuel carbon em issions over the sam e period.”

Arthur Riedacker, a F rench expert involved in the IP C C ’s work, also points out that such schem es produce biom ass an d tim b er , so red u c in g fossil fu el c o n s u m p t i o n . Biom ass is a ren ewa b l e energy source. Wood can replace plastic or con crete, whose m anu factu re u ses hydrocarbons. But Ashley M attoon of the Worldwatch Institute says the trade-off in

carbon sinks m ay be “a m ajor loophole [in the P rotocol] which adm its vast quan - tities of fossil carbon into the skies” and “encourages types of forestry that aren’t very good for forests.”

Questionable gains

To head off these dangers, everyone agrees the carbon sink idea should be very closely exam ined and tightly regulated. T he IP C C , which will report back in 2000, will have to be m ore precise about the m eaning of the term s “afforestation”, “ r e f o r e s t at i o n ” an d “ d e f o r e s t at i o n ” i n article 3.3 so as to prevent abusive prac- tices developing. For exam ple, the text currently says a country can chop down an old forest and replace it by one of fast- growing trees, notes G reenpeace exper t Bill H are.T he felling would not be coun- ted in the country’s em issions but the reforestation would earn carbon credits. So the country involved would gain, but not the atm osphere or the environm ent, because an old forest and its soil contain m ore carbon, which would be released by the felling, than a m anaged forest ever will. Biodiversity would also suffer.

Another problem would arise if Japan, say, were to fund a forest protection pro- ject in M alaysia. In return, it would ask for carbon credits equal to the em issions which the felling of the forest would have

produced. But how can we be sure that the protection project is actually respon- sible for preventing the forest from being destroyed? And what is the point of pro- tecting, say, a stretch of African sa vannah if the local population can sim ply chop down trees further a way?

F or the m om ent, the world is roughly divided into three cam ps about the issue of carbon sinks. O ne consists of several rich countries (including the U .S., N ew Zealand and Australia) that want a broad definition and flexible use of carbon cre- d i t s. In som e cou n t ri e s , like N ew Zealand, carbon sequestration from tree plantations covers a very high percentage of their greenhouse gas em issions. If they are unrestrictedly taken into account in 2008-2015, they will allow such countries to m eet the ir com m it m e n ts withou t taking any steps in areas such as industry, transport and hum an settlem ents.

In the U .S., which has pledged to cut its em issions by 7 per cent over the next 10 years, the carbon sink m echanism is being used to persuade C ongress to drop its refusal to ratify the Kyoto P rotocol, says M attoon. T he C linton adm inistra- tion argues that the sinks “could com pri- se a significant portion of the country’s total required em issions reductions .”

A recent article in N ew Scientist m aga- zine said Washington is even pressing for article 3.4 to be am ended to include

December 1999 - The UNE SCO Courier 13

P LA N ET

TOYOTA MAKES TREES ◗ Yoshinori Takahashi

waste from wood products in the defini- tion of a carbon sink. It is certainly better to bury paper and wood waste in the ground than to burn it and release m ore C O 2 into the atm osphere. But how far is this going to go? “T he spirit of Kyoto dem ands that we should focus on things t h at prod uce fewer greenhou se gases, which m eans encouraging energy-saving, transport reform and im proved industrial processes an d hou sin g, with im prove- m ents in forestry practices as an extra,” says Riedacker.

Conflicting interests

A second group includes European countries which take a cautious stand and are waiting for the IP C C report before m aking up their m inds. T he third group is m ostly m ade up of poor countries, which ar e d ivid ed on th e issu e, s ay s R av i n d r a n at h . “ T h e y ’r e in ter ested in developm ent, not so m uch in carbon,” says EN D A’s Sokona, who is a m em ber of the IP C C working party.

E ve r yon e has d ifferen t wishes an d constraints as far as developm ent goes. India, C hina and the countries of sou- t heast A s i a , wh ich have com p etitive industries, seem opposed to introducing forestry projects into the C D M . T hey would prefer the rich countries to in vest in them via industrial projects, which would include m ore technology transfer s. But som e Latin Am erican countries,such as C osta Rica, are basing their develop- m ent on eco-tourism , so they have an interest in im proving their forests.

Africa, where half of all greenhouse gas em issions are caused by deforestation, is hesitating because in a continent where food secu rity is still the top p ri o ri t y, people fear farm land will be lost if trees are planted. But Africa’s weak industrial base m eans it will probably not benefit m uch from the C D M if forestry projects are not included in it. So som e experts are in favour of it under certain conditions.

“P rotected parks don’t interest us,” says Sokona. “T hey m ean m oving people off land without giving them anything in return. It’s too easy for rich countries to com e and plant trees in our countries,put a fence round them and earn carbon cre- dits. H owever, I’m in favour of agrofores- tr y, which m eets our needs .”

Few countries have taken a clear stand so far. O thers are still m aking their calcu - lations and trying to work out their posi- tion. T he real battle over the world’s forests will com e after M ay 2000, when the IP C C will m ake its report. ■

Industrialists can no longer ignore the effects oftheir activity on the environment. In a world which is more and more polluted and threate- ned by global warming, their reputation and future depend on doing something about it.

The Japanese vehicle-maker Toyota has understood this since the end of the 1980s. It launched its “Toyota Forest” programme in 1992, the year of the Rio Earth Summit, with the goal of using biotechnology to turn trees into anti-pollution agents.

Today Toyota is proud of its experimental forests, including Foresta Hills, half an hour by car from the company’s headquarters. The fir m is trying to revive s a t oy a m a, which are ancient protected hills on the edge of populated areas. They are a source of wood and prized items like m a t s u t a ke mushrooms and u r u s h i, Japanese l a c q u e r.

“In this forest, we’re developing the same activities our ancestors did in the 19th century , ” says Yasuhiko Komatsu, the project’s chief. “We want to create s a t oy a m a for the 21st century. ” The giant company’s engineers say they are t rying to reduce vehicle emissions but cannot get rid of them completely. So other solutions have to be found—by using trees.

At Foresta Hills, the effect of different kinds of trees on the level of carbon dioxide in the air ca n be measured. In some places it is 10 to 20 times l ower than in others. The most “effective” trees are those which grow quickly, stand up to diffi- cult surroundings and resist diseases and insects, so these are the ones biologists want to

learn how to cultivate. Increasing the number of chromosomes of some trees has boosted their a b i l i ty to absorb toxic gases by a third.

Toyota is also researching into how to speed up the growth of trees in very acidic soil with a v i ew to the reforestation of southeast As i a , which has been devastated by deforestation. Recently, the company began organizing refo- restation activities outside Japan, and in August 1998 joined with paper manufacturers to set up the firm of Australian Afforestation Pty. Over the next decade, 5,000 fast-growing, drought-resis- tant eucalyptus trees will be planted in Austra l i a , later to be chopped down and made into paper.

Toyota’s work has drawn criticism how e v e r. Environmentalists are worried about the effects on the environment of genetica l l y - m o d i fied spe- cies. Others argue that the main priority in fig h- ting the greenhouse effect is to reduce emissions of pollutants and cut back on motor tra f fic .

“The car-makers are planting trees to give themselves a nice green image while hoping their vehicle sales don’t drop,” says Michel Raquet of Greenpeace Europe. “What will they get in return? Carbon credits, even though there is no scientific guarantee that their forestry pro- jects will have any effect on the atmosphere.”

“One of these days,” says Ashley Mattoon of Worldwatch Institute, “we will have to ask our- selves how much more time, energy and money should be spent on tinkering with nature and s a t i s fying our dependence on fossil fuels.” ■

◗ Tokyo-based journalist

Right, a tree seedling whose chromosomes have been doubled. It will grow into a tree with greater efficiency at absorbing toxic gases than the ordinary specimen, left, of the same species.

en cou rage violen ce an d r even ge as solu - tions to problem s,experts sa y.

M o r e ove r , child rights activists con ten d that corporal punishm ent goes against the 1989 U nited N ation s C onven tion on the Rights of th e C hild , which affir m s the chil- d ’s n eed for care an d protection. A rticle 19 of the convention, which has been ratified by 1 91 cou n tries in clu d in g K enya , s p e c i- fies that states m ust take appropriate m ea- sures to protect child ren from “all for m s of p hysical or mental violen ce, i n j u ry or abu s e , n eglect or n egligen t treat m e n t , m a l t r e at- m ent or exploitation.”

T he H RW rep or t , ba sed on a fie l d study, including scores of interviews with s t u d e n t s , t e a c h e rs , p ar en ts an d offic i a l s , says that K en yan children are often puni-

shed for petty offences like com ing late to school or wearing a torn uniform .

T he problem has dire im plications for basic education.A recent study shows that t he en rolm ent rate in p r i m a r y sch ools is fast d eclin in g an d on ly 42 per cent of those enr olled in first grad e com plete the pri- m ary school cycle.T he decline is, am ong other reasons,due to po verty and a hostile learning environm ent,say analysts.

“Som e students told us that they drop - ped ou t of school becau se of severe beat i n g by their teachers. T his is in clear violation of children’s right to education,” says T hon- den.

“So far no teacher has been convicted for these d eat h s ,” s ays Jem imah M wa k i s h a , a journalist who has written extensively on the subject in K enya’s leading newspaper

14 The UNE SCO Courier - December 1999

W O RLD O F LEA R N I N G

■ When Ju stu s O m anga, a fou rth gr a d e stu d e n t at M ob am b a S econ d ar y School in Kenya ’s Kisii d istri c t ,r e p e a-

tedly denied allegations that he had brought a girl in to the school com pou n d on e n igh t last A u g u s t , his teachers becam e fur i o u s.

F ou r of the teachers kicked, hit and beat O m anga so hard with a huge stick that the b oy fell u n con sciou s. A m on th later he d ied in hospital as a result of severe dam age to h is kid n eys an d oth er in ter n al in jur i e s , according to fam ily m em ber s.

O m a n g a ’s case is n ot isolat e d . A c c o r- d in g to th e Kenyan m ed ia corp oral pu nish- m en t has led to the d eaths of at least six stu d en ts in the last fou r ye a rs. While can in g is a regu la r featu re in schools, som e stu - dents have suffered serious injuries which in clu de “ b ru ises and cu ts, broken bones, knocked-out teeth and internal bleeding,” s ays a recen t rep or t from the N ew Yo r k - b ased n on -gove r n m en ta l organ izat i o n H um an Rights Watch (H RW) titled Spa re the C hild: C o rp o ra l Punishment in Kenya n Schools.

An incentive to violence and revenge

K e n ya is n ot the on ly cou n tr y in the world that still p ractises corporal pun ish- m e n t .I n d e e d , only 7 0 cou ntri e s ,b e gi n n i n g with Sweden in 1 979 , h ave b an n ed the p r a c t i c e . Bu t exper ts say K enya is on e of the worst offenders when it com es to vio- lence stemm ing from corporal pu nishm en t. “ In K en ya cor poral pu n ishm en t again st ch ild ren in schools has rea ch ed d an ge- rously high levels,” says Yodon T honden, a T ibetan-Am erican who led the five-m em - b er research team which p rep ared the H RW report.

A p a r t from the br utality which is often , in K enya at least,associated with the prac- t i c e , c o r p oral p u nish m en t in itself can p r ovoke an ger in its victim s, lea din g to resen tm en t an d low-self esteem. It can also

◗ UNESCO Courier journalist

SPA RE THE ROD, SAVE THE CHIL D ◗ Ethirajan Anbarasan

The widespread use of corporal punishment in Kenyan schools has led to increasing dropout rates and in a few cases, to death

Da ily N a tion. N eith er ar e teach ers com m on ly sen -

ten ced for inflictin g seriou s in ju ri e s. V i c- tim s often com e from ru ral areas, w h e r e people d on ’t h ave the fin an ces to hire a l aw yer an d wh ere legal aid is poor. In som e instances where teachers have been taken to c o u rt , they have gone u npu n ished, as it has been difficu lt to prove a motive in the killing as required under the crim inal la w, M wa- kisha says.

Parents scared to speak out

E x c e s s i vely har sh corporal pu nishm en t ten d s to b e par ticu larly com m on in the countryside.“In rural areas,parents don’t f o r m ally ob ject to their children bein g bea- ten for fear they [the ch ild ren ] m ight be victim ized further,” says M wakisha.

In pu blic, K e nyan ed u cation m in istry o f ficials have stron gly denied the H RW alle- g at i o n s ,s t atin g that som e isolated incid ents in r u ral schools h ave b een exaggerat e d . H owe ve r , in p ri vat e , a sen ior ed u cat i o n m inistry official adm its that the report was “m ore or less cor r e c t .” H e says tea cher s “ b r u tally beat ch ild ren in m an y schools without any proper reason.T his is a prac - tice that can only be stopped by abolishing corporal punishm ent altogether.”

N evertheless the recent deaths and the r e p o r t have triggered a debate in Ken ya on ban n in g corp or al p u nish m en t, as oth er A f rican cou ntries in clud ing N am ibia, B u r- kina F aso, South Africa and Ethiopia have done in recent year s.

According to go vernm ent regulations, c o rporal pu n ishm ent m ay be in flicted on ly in cases of con tin u ed or gr ave neglect of work, lying, bullying and gross insubordi- nation.T he beating, with a cane no m ore than half an inch thick, can be gi ven on ly by or in the presence of a head teacher. Regu- lations state that boys should be hit on the backside an d girls on the palm of the hand . Stud ents are not supposed to get m ore than six strokes as p u n ish m en t an d a wri t t e n

‘Some students told us that they dropped out of school b e cause of severe beating by their teachers. This is in clear violation of children’s right to e d u ca t i o n ’

record of all the pr oceed in gs shou ld be kept.

“ T h e r u les ar e h ard ly followe d . Te a- c h e r s use clu bs, bam boo canes, s o m e t i m e s even a rubber whip to beat the students,” says T honden.

For many teachers, a tool to cope with big classes

A stron g con stituen cy of K enyan tea- c h e rs is in favou r of retain in g corp o r a l p u n i s h m e n t , e ven though they con ced e m ore restriction s are requ ired. A few ye a rs ago when the D irector of Ed ucation tried to m ake the practice illegal, the teachers ’u n i o n said it wou ld n ot recognize such a ban.

M any teachers argue that without cor- poral punishm ent the schools would des- cend into chaos an d that child ren wo u l d becom e even m ore u n ru ly by th e tim e they r eached high school. In fa c t , they believe that in the long run corporal punishm ent m ean s less rather th an m ore violen ce. “ We s t e r n cou n tries gi ve excessive freed om to their children. Look at the violent inci- d en ts in m any sch ools in th e U n ited S t at e s ,” s ays Lawren ce Kah in d i M ajali, Assistant Secretary G eneral of the K enya

pu nishm en t by citin g K en ya ’s lon g trad i- t i o n . “When we wer e un d er British r u l e , those who refu sed to pay taxes or those who d id n ot obey the rules were caned in pu blic. T he use of the cane was a sym bol of au tho- rity an d the legacy continu es,” s ays M ajali.

M a ny teacher s ad m it that they often c a rry out corporal pun ishmen t withou t the presence of the headm aster. In violation of the rules,the students are som etim es bea- ten all over the body, and often records of c o r poral pu n ish m en t are n ot kep t in schools.

Stephen P, a fifth grade student in M oi p ri m a r y sch ool in N airobi, s ays teachers can e him or slap him regu larly. H is offences in clu d e com in g late to school an d n ot p aying school fees on tim e. E lizabeth Z , who is in the fou rth stand ard, s ays teachers slap her an d p in ch her on the ch eeks for not doing hom ework.

“M y children were not treated well by the teach ers after I com p la in ed a bout can in g by their class teacher,” s ays D eborah N ,a m other of two living in N airobi.

Teachers are also afraid.T hey quote a growing num ber of instances in which tea- c h e rs have been attacked by stu den ts. I n

N ational U nion of Teachers (K N U T ). M a ny K en yan tea chers also con ten d

that corporal punishm ent is one of the few d i s c i p l i n a ry tools available gi ven large class s i z e s. Accord in g to a gove rn m en t repor t there are 5,718,700 students and 192,000 t e a c h e rs at p ri m a r y school leve l , giving a teacher-pu pil ratio of 1:31. In many schools classes of 50-60 students are com m on.

T h e bu rd en is h eaviest in r u ral areas where r etired an d tran sferr ed teach ers ’ p osts ar e often left va c a n t . As a resu lt, a u t h o rities frequen tly comb in e two or three schools in a regi o n , pu ttin g add itional pres- sure on the existing teaching staff.

Te a c h e r s also tr y to ju stify corp o r a l

December 1999 - The UNE SCO Courier 15

W O R LD O F LEA R N I N G

“The best method of teaching mathematics?” A cartoon published in Daily Nation, a leading Kenya newspaper.

‘When we were under British rule, those who refused to pay taxes or those who did not obey the rules were caned in public. The use of the cane was a symbol of authority and the l e g a cy continues’

16 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

W O RLD O F LEA R N I N G

HE AVY HANDED TRE AT MEN T

one extrem e case,a class prefect was killed by stu d ents in the town of N ye ri , n ear N ai- r o b i , early this year for bein g too strict with them .

T he fact th at cor poral p u n ish m en t leads so often to brutality m ay be sym pto- m atic of the pressures facin g the wh ole tea- ching profession . Te a c h e rs ’ s a l a ri e s — r a n- ging from 4,000 K enyan shillings ($60) to abou t 15,000 ($ 200) a month—are am ong the lowest in the civil serv i c e . Te a c h e rs seem to take their frustrations out on their stu- d e n t s , s ay exp er t s. “ L ow salaries red u ce teacher m orale, an d m an y of the lowe s t - paid teachers are forced to find housing in slum areas,” says the H RW report.

Mounting tension E d u c ation m in istr y officials say gu i-

d an ce cou n sellors in secon d ar y sch ools en cou rage tea ch er s to ad opt m eth od s to d eal with d epressed or problem stu d ents an d thu s avoid tension s lead in g to corp o r a l punishm ent.

T he cou n sellor d iscu sses wit h the concerned student why he or she com m it-

ted an offence and tries to find solutions. Bu t officials ad m it that th ere a re n ot en ough coun sellors in schools du e to fin a n- cial con straints an d even t hose who have been posted as cou n sellors un d er take other responsibilities due to shortage of staff.

Te a c h e rs in favou r of red u cing corp o r a l pu n ishm en t feel that the best p la ce for in trod u cin g altern at i ve d iscip lin ar y m ethod s is th e Teach er T rain in g P ro- gr a m m e s. At presen t teachers say that they hardly spend m ore than four to five hours on classroom managem en t durin g their in i- tial two - year tr ain ing period for p ri m a r y school.

Realizin g th e gr avity of the problem , m a ny n on -gove r n m en tal organ izat i o n s h ave n ow join ed the cam paign to abolish

c o rporal pu n ishment an d have started wo r- kin g with teachers to m inim ize its u se u n til the law is changed.

“U ntil a legal sanction is obtained, we d ecid ed it would be better to work with the teachers,” says Jacqueline Anam -M ogeni, child r ights ad viser at the N eth erlan d s D evelopm ent O rganization (N D O ).

T h e N airobi-b ased N D O orga n izes wor kshops a n d train in g program m es to help teachers to get to gr ips with their pro- blem s an d en cou rage them to u se cou nsel- ling m ethod s an d other form s of p un ish- m ent,such as m anual work.

Alternative solutions

N D O selects a grou p of teachers an d vo l u n t e e rs from oth er n on -gove rn m e n t a l o r g a n i z ation s from a p articu lar regi o n where corporal pun ishm en t in cid ents are h i g h , an d or gan izes workshops exposin g them to hu m an r ights an d ch ild ri g h t s issues. After a week’s training, the teachers go back to their schools an d retur n for eva- luation every three m onths.

“We first ask the participants how they t r e at their own children at home. O nce they realize there is a problem they them selves com e up with altern at i ve solu tions,” s ay s M ogeni.

T he first session attracted 24 part i c i- pants from different parts of K enya.Som e t e a c h e rs say their attitud e toward s child ren has ch an ged after p ar t i c i p atin g in the course.

“ Before I wen t for the child rights trai- n i n g, I always viewed the p u n ishm en t as p a rt of the learn in g process. N ow I wo r k with the pu pils alm ost at a level of part- n e rs h i p,” s ays Esther N yakio N gu gi , a tea- ch er at K ir i giti G irls A p p r oved sch ool in K i a m bu .

Teachers who participated in the pro- gram m e say th ey have rea lized th at they were basically driving away students from schools due to constant beatings.

“ T h is is on ly a b egi n n i n g . We n eed m ore gove r nm en t an d pu blic su pport till we fin ally abolish corporal pun ishm en t,” says M ogeni. ■

Co r p o ral punishment is legal not only in Ke n y a ,but also in a number of other east Africa n countries, including Tanzania, Sudan and Somalia. Governments complain that there are not enough resources and trained personnel to reduce the size of big classes, which some teachers find difficult to manage without corporal punishment.

In Tanzania, a few students have reportedly died after severe corporal punishment in schools. Many teachers do not like using this form of punishment but they “think it is the easiest way to manage big classes,” says Dale Chandler, Executive Director of Kuleana, a Centre for Children’s Rights based in Tanzania.

Kuleana works with other NGOs in the region to raise awareness among teachers and parents of the negative aspects of corporal punishment. Chandler says the campaign aims to drive home the point that if you mistreat children they tend to disobey rules when they become adults.

A legal ban on corporal punishment in schools has not improved matters in Ethiopia. “Students continue to be beaten by teachers despite the ban enforced in 1988,” says Tibebu Bogaie, progra m m e co-ordinator of “Swedish Save the Children”, an NGO based in Addis Ababa. The organization, which published a report on corporal punishment in Ethiopia early this year, is campaigning against the practice in schools as well as in homes.

In Sudan, teachers say schools run by

missionaries in the south organize guidance and counselling programmes for students to identify rea- sons for their misbehaviour. But they warn that ever growing classes might force them to switch to corporal punishment to deal with indiscipline.

However, experts disagree with the view that indiscipline can be tackled only by corporal punish- ment. Peter Newell, co-ordinator of EP O CH - Wo r l d- wide, an NGO campaigning against corpora l punishment, says that in countries where the pra c- tice was banned decades ago “schools are not fal- ling apart due to indiscipline. Beating can’t be an excuse for lack of resources. It is a fundamental breach of human rights.” ■

+ �

Useful websites http://www.unicef.org http://www.stophitting.com http://www.freethechildren.org

For more information on child rights and corporal punishment EPOCH-Worldwide 77, Holloway Road, London N7 8JZ Telephone: 00-44-171-700 0627 Fax: 00-44-171-700 1105 E-mail: [email protected]

‘Before I went for the child rights training, I always v i ewed the punishment as part of the learning process. Now I work with the pupils almost at a level of p a r t n e r s h i p ’

‘ Low salaries reduce teacher morale, and many of the lowest-paid teachers are forced to find housing in slum areas’

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 17

FOCUS

Me m o ry: making p e a c e with a violent pas t C o n te n ts 1 8 The evil that men do�

Tz vetan To d o rov

2 0 Building blocks of international justice

2 1 Guatemala: �We can�t forg i ve until we have justice� I n t e rview with Rosalina Tuyuc by Maite Rico

2 2 South Africa: �Quandaries of compro m i s e Njabulo S. Ndebele

2 4 �The price of truth Max du Pre e z

2 5 C h i l e : �Doing a deal with memory Oscar Goday Arc a y a

2 6 �An unwritten page of history Fabiola Letelier del Solar and Victor Espinoza Cueva s

28 Russia: an unfinished job Alexis Bere l ow i t c h

3 0 Cambodia: a wound that will not heal Rithy Pa n h

3 3 Rw a n d a�s collective amnesia Benjamin Sehene

3 5 Bosnia and Herze g ovina: an impossible re c o n c i l i a t i o n ? James Lyo n

3 0 Can we pre vent crimes against humanity? I n t e rview with Louise Arbour by Martine Jacot

A s much of the world has its eyes fixed, at the turn of the millennium, on the future, this Focus section, in contrast,

looks back at the past. How, it asks, have nations that endured atrocities in the second half of this century come to terms with their ordeal? What obstacles have lain in their path? Between remembrance and forgetting, how can they make peace with the past and build the foundations for a better future?

In a scene-setting article, Tzvetan Todorov explains why we ought to remember the past but not endlessly rake over it. Rosalina Tuyuc from Guatemala develops this idea and insists that the first step to reconciliation involves knowing who to forgive.

The ways in which societies react to terrible experiences are shaped by their history, the forces that propel them forward or hold them back. Post-apartheid South Africa made a new departure, as Njabulo Ndebele points out, when it brokered a deal offering amnesty in return for truth. But although this may have helped to ease the reconciliation process, some victims protest that freedom should not be bought by confessing to a crime. In Chile, Oscar Godoy notes that amnesty for crimes committed under the dictatorship has smoothed the transition to democracy, but, say Fabiola Letelier and Victor Espinoza, it has not softened grim memories.

In Russia, the work of memory is incomplete. In Cambodia it is to a large extent blocked, laments film-maker Rithy Panh, and in Rwanda it is impossible, according to Benjamin Sehene. A similar situation exists in Bosnia.

Finally, Canadian jurist Louise Arbour hopes that the increasingly long arm of international law, by establishing irrefutable facts, can at least prevent the past from being mythologized and may even prevent crimes against humanity.

18 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

The evil that men do. . . ◗ Tz vetan To d o rov

The collective memory must be free to come to terms with grief and shape a better future

◗ Mr Todorov, who was born in Bulgaria and has lived in France since 1963, is a director of studies at the F rench National Scientific Research Institute (CNRS). His books translated into English include Morals of History (University of Minnesota Press, 1995), French Tragedy: Scenes of Civil War, Summer 1944 (Dartmouth College Press, 1996) and Convergences: Inventories of the Present (Harvard University Press, 1993).

‘We mu st draw a veil over all the horr o rsof the past,” said Win ston Ch urchill notlong after the end of the Second Wo r l d Wa r. Aroun d the sam e tim e, the A m e rican philoso- pher George Santayan a issu ed a wa rn i n g, o f t e n r e p e ated since, to the effect that “th ose who forget the past are con d em ned to repeat it.” F or those of us who have exper ienced the painfu l histor y of the 20th centu ry, which of th ese two inju n ctions is the m ost u seful? W h at shou ld we d o—forget or r e m e m b e r ?

T he two operations are con tra dictor y in appearance only. Rem em bering is always, by defi- nition, an interaction between forgetting (erasu- re) and com plete preservation of the past—som e- thing that is virtually im possible. T he Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges creates a character in his s h o r t stor y F unes el memori o s o (F unes the M emorious) who rem em bers every detail of his life. It is a ter r ifying experience.

M em ory selects from the past what seem s im portant for the individual or for the com m uni- ty. It organizes this selection and im prints its values on it. Peoples prefer to rem em ber the glo- rious pages of their history rather than sham eful episodes, and individuals often try unsuccessfully to free them selves from the m em ory of a traum a- tic event.

How to live with painful memories Why do we need to rem em ber? Because the

past is the very core of our individual or collecti- ve identity. If we do not have a sense of our own identity and the confirm ation of our existence that it provides, we feel threatened and paralyzed. T he need for an identity is thus quite legitim ate. We have to know who we are and what group we belong to. But people, like groups, live am ong other people and other groups. And so it is not enough sim ply to say that everyone has the right to exist. We also have to consider how our exerci - se of this right affects the existence of others. In the public arena, not all rem inders of the past are worthy ones, and those that encourage revenge are always suspect.

T he victim s of evil m ay, in their personal lives, be tem pted to try to forget the experience com - pletely, blotting out painful or hum iliating m em o- ri e s. To a wom an who h as been raped, f o r exam ple, or a child who has been the victim of incest, m ight it not be better to act as if these traum atic events never happened? We know from people’s reactions that this is unwise, because such a blanket refusal to rem em ber is dangerous.

Repressed m em ories rem ain m ore alive than ever and give rise to severe neuroses. It is better to accept a distressing past than to deny or repress it. T he im portant thing is not to go to the other extrem e and endlessly brood over it, but to gra- dually distance oneself from it and neutralize it— in a sense to tam e it.

T his is how m ourning functions in our lives. F irst we refuse to accept the loss we have expe- r ienced and we suffer ter ribly from the sudden absence of a loved one. Later,while never ceasing to love them , we give them a special status—they are neither absent nor present as they were befo- re. A distancing process develops, and eases the pain.

An act of faith in the future C om m unities are rarely tem pted to try to for -

get com pletely evil events that have befallen them .Afro-Am ericans today do not seek to forget the traum a of slavery their ancestors suffered.T he descendants of the people who were shot and burned to death in O radour-sur-G lane1 in 1944, do not want the crim e to be forgotten.In fact they want to preserve the ruins of the village left by the event.

H ere too, as in the case of individuals, it m ight be hoped that the barren alternatives of totally erasing the past or endlessly poring over it could be a voided.T he suffering should be inscribed in the collective m em or y, but only so that it can increase our capacity to face the future. T his is what pardons and am nesties are for. T hey are jus- tified when crim es have been publicly adm itted, not to m ake sure they are forgotten but to let bygones be bygones and give the present a new chance. Were Israelis and P alestinians not right when they m et in Brussels in M arch 1998 and noted tha t “just to start talking to each other, we have to leave the past in the past”?

When C hurchill called for for a veil to be drawn over past horrors, he was right in a sense, but his injunction m ust be qualified by all kinds of conditions. N o one should prevent m em or y from being regained. Before we turn the page, said future Bulgarian president Jeliu Jelev after the fall of com m unism , we should fir st read it. And forgetting m eans very different things to evil- doers and to their victim s. For the latter, it is an act of generosity and faith in the future; for the

1.A F rench village where the SS m assacred 642 persons as a reprisal for attacks by the Resistance.

It seems unjust to ask victims to pro t e c t those who tormented them ye s t e rd a y, and yet this is the responsibility they must now shoulder.

B e r n a rd Ko u c h n e r, United Nations Sp e c i a l

Re p re s e n t a t i ve for Ko s ovo

A person or a com m unity m ay need to appro- priate the m em ory of a past hero or—m ore sur- prisingly—a victim as a way of asserting their r ight to exist.T his ser ves their interests, but does not m ake them any m ore virtuous. It can in fact blind them to injustices they are responsible for in the present.

T he lim its of this kind of rem em bering, which em phasizes the roles of the hero and the victim , were illustrated during the cerem onies held in 1995 to m ark the 50th anniversary of the bom - bing of H iroshim a and N agasaki. In the U nited States,people were only interested in recalling the heroic role of the U .S. in defeating Japanese m ili- tarism . In Japan, attention focused on the victim s of the atom ic bom bs .

But there is a lot to be said for rising above one’s own suffering and that of one’s relatives and opening up to the suffering of others, and not claim ing an exclusive right to the status of form er victim . By the sam e token, accepting the wrongs we have done ourselves—even if they were not as serious as the wrongs done to us—can change us for the better.

T he past has no rights of its own. It m ust ser ve the present, just as the duty to rem em ber m ust ser ve the cause of justice. ■

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 19

Me m o ry: making p e a c e with a violent pas t

form er it results from cowardice and refusal to accept responsibility.

Yet is rem em berin g the past enou gh to preve n t it from repeatin g itself, as Santayan a seem s to say ? Far from it. In fa c t , the opposite usu ally happens. To d ay ’s aggressor fin ds ju stific ation for his action s in a past in which he was a victim . Serb nat i o n a l i s t s h ave sought ju stific ation by looking ve r y fa r back—to their militar y d efeat by the Turks in K o s ovo in the 14th cen tury.

T he F ren ch justified their belligerence in 1914 by referrin g to the in justice they had su ffered in 1 8 7 1 . H itler found reasons in the hu miliat i n g T r e aty of Ve rsailles at th e en d of the F ir st Wo r l d War to convin ce G er man s to em bark on the S e c o n d . An d after the Second World Wa r , the fa c t t h at the F ren ch had been victim s of N azi bru t a l i t y did not preven t them—in m any cases the sam e people who had joined the ar my after fighting in the resistan ce—from attacking an d tort u rin g civi- lian s in In dochina an d A l g e ri a . T hose who do n ot forget the past also run th e risk of repeating it by r e ve rsing their role: there is nothin g to stop a vic- tim from later becom ing an aggr e s s o r. T he mem o- ry of the genocide which the Jews su ffered is vivid in Israel, yet the Palestin ians have in turn been vic- tim s of in ju stice.

Remember to forg e t ! Immanuel Ka n t ,

German philosopher ( 17 2 4 - 1 8 0 4 )

Portraits of people who disappeared under the Pinochet regime look out from a wall in Santiago de Chile�s Humachuco Renca neighbourhood.

20 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

T h e re, at Auschwitz, something happened that could not p reviously have been imagined. T h e re people touched the p rofound layer of solidarity between all those who have a human face, the essence of the relationship betwe e n man and man. . . . A u s c h w i t z t ransformed the conditions of permanence in relations betwe e n human beings.

J � rgen Habermas, German sociologist (1929- )

Crimes against humanity

T he fi rst definition of these crim es was given in the C h ar ter of the In ter n ational M ilitar y T ribunal set up by the Allies to prosecute the m ajor N azi wa r crim in als (th e N u rem b erg T ribunal) in 1945. It runs as follows: “m urder, e x t e rm i n at i o n , e n s l ave m e n t , d e p o rt at i o n , a n d other inhum ane acts com m itted against any civi- lian population, before or during the war, or per - secutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crim e within the jurisdiction of the T ribunal,whether or not in violation of the dom estic law of the coun- try where perpetrated.”

T he U nited N ations C onvention on the N on- Applicability of Stat u t o ry Lim itations to Wa r C rim es and C rim es Against H um anity of 1968 added the following provision:“eviction by arm ed attack or occupation and inhum an acts resulting from the policy of apartheid, and the crim e of genocide.”

Genocide T his term coin ed by Rap hael Lem kin , a

Polish-bor n Am erican scholar, com es from the G reek word genos (race or tribe) and the Latin suffix cide (from ca edere, to kill).

Regarded as the m ost serious crim e against h u m a n i t y, it was legally d efin ed b y t he C onvention for the P revention and P unishm ent of the C rim e of G enocide, which was unani- m ously adopted by the U nited N ations G eneral Assem bly on D ecem ber 9, 1948, entered into force in 1951, and has so far been ratified by 130 states. T hree m ajor conditions for the identifica- tion of genocide (article 2) are: 1) T he victim s m ust belong to a national, ethni- cal, racial or religious group, as such. Political, econom ic or cultural groups (e.g. the victim s of the K h m er Rou ge in C am b od ia) a re th u s excluded. 2) T he m em bers of this group are killed or perse- cuted because of their m em bership of the group. 3) G enocide is a planned collective crim e com - m itted by those who hold state power, on their behalf or with their express or tacit consent.

Article 3 defines as punishable acts: genocide; conspiracy to com m it genocide;direct and public incitem ent to com m it genocide; an attem pt to

com m it genocide; and com plicity in genocide. Article 4 stipulates that all persons com m it-

ting genocide shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.

The International Criminal Court (ICC)

T he notion of an international penal tribunal is m entioned in the 1948 G enocide C onvention. But it was not until 1998 that 120 countries (out of 160 participants) m eeting in Rom e adopted a statute for a perm anent International C rim inal C ourt (IC C ) to sit in T he H ague (N etherlands). T he C ourt will be created when 60 states have ratified the treaty on its statutes, a process which should take two or three year s.

T he IC C will have (non-retroactive) jurisdic- tion over war crim es, crim es against hum anity, an d gen ocid e , u n d er cer t ain con d ition s. Signatories have the opportunity not to recognize its jurisdiction o ver war crim es.

Ad hoc War Crimes Tribunals

T he War C rim es Tr ibunal for the form er Yugoslavia was set up by a resolution of the U N Security C ouncil in M ay 1993. Based in T he H ague, it is em powered to prosecute those char- ged with serious violations of international law on the territory of the form er Yugoslavia, including war crim es, crim es against hum anity, and genoci- de.

So far 91 persons have been charged (inclu- ding Yugoslav P resident Slobodan M ilosevic), 31 of whom are in custody. Sentences ranging from seven days to 20 years have been handed down to eight defendants. F our trials are currently being held.

T he T ribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania, was set up by the U N Security C ouncil in N ovem ber 1994. It has jurisdiction over the sam e crim es as the above, com m itted in Rwanda or neighbouring countries between January and D ecem ber 1994.

So far, 48 persons have been charged, 38 of whom are in custody. F ive defendants ha ve been sentenced, including three to life im prisonm ent for genocide. T hree trials are currently being held. ■

B u i l d i n g b l o c k s of international justice War crimes presuppose combat between nations. Genocide and crimes against humanity, on the other hand, may be committed during conflicts within states. An international criminal c o u rt to try these offences is in the works.

�We can�t forg i ve until we have j u s t i c e� I n t e rview with Rosalina Tu y u c

December 1999 - The UN ESCO Courier 21

Me m o ry: making p e a c e with a violent pas t

R osa lina Tuyuc has spent the past 17 ye a rs wa i t i n g. O ne night in J une 1982, the G ua temala n a rmy ca me a nd took her father away.“ F rancisco Tuyuc is

d e a d ,” she was later told by the military, who never return e d his body. Another night, in May 1985, they took away her h u s b a n d , a peasant leader.

But Rosa lina , a 43-yea r-old Ka kchiquel M a ya n I n d i a n , wa s not deter red a nd in 1988 she founded the N ationa l A s s o c i ation of Guatema la n W i d ows ( Conav i- g u a ) , whose 15,000 members are today fighting to ensure the victims of the country ’s civil wa r are not fo r go t t e n .I n 1 9 9 5 , Rosalina was elected to parliament as a deputy for the coa lition of left-wing part i e s.

Can time ease the pain for those who have lost a loved one?

N o, you never find peace from that. M y children still ask m e what’s happened to their father and if he’s com ing hom e. We relatives of people who’ve disappeared are looking for our loved ones, and we don’t find them ,either dead or alive.N ow that the state has adm itted that abuses occurred,it has a m oral duty to tell us where our dead are buried. M any of them were executed at m ilitary bases. In the nam e of reconciliation, the ar m y m ust say where they are. M ost people just want to give their spouses or children a C hristian burial.

Have the aims of Conavigua changed since the peace agreement was signed in 1996 and the Historical Clarification Commission�s report was published in February 1999?

T he report confirmed we ’d been right about the extent of the repression. N ow we ’re fighting to get the peace accords applied an d for In dian rights to be recogn i- z e d . But we’ll con tin ue to seek com pen sation for vic- tims of the wa r , to be told where the mass gr aves are and to bring impu nity to an en d.

What kind of compensation? T he gove r n m en t has lau nched a plan to com pen - s ate com m un ities—by in trod u cin g electr i fic at i o n a nd bu ild in g schools, road s an d b ri d g e s — bu t it’s forgotte n th e wid ow s. We wan t d irect in d ivid u al c o m p e n s ation for the wom en themselve s ,i n c l u d i n g a psych ological su p port progr a m m e , s c h o l a rs h i p s for their children and help in recovering their rela- tives’bodies from unm arked graves.

Can anything more be done to fight impunity? K eep on trying those responsible. We don’t want revenge, we want justice.We’d like to take m atters to an international court because it’s very hard in G uatem ala to obtain justice.T he trials are costly, they drag on for years and the results are not very credible. But we’re going to bring to court at least a few of the 80,000 cases we’ve listed.

How do you balance the demands of the vic- tims�families and political reality, which

involves making concessions to safeguard the transition process?

Forgiving doesn’t m ean forgetting. F irst we need to know who to forgive. M any fam ilies don’t know who killed their relatives. And if we don’t m anage to establish who was responsible, history m ay repeat itself. T here’s always the fear of a backlash from certain sectors but we can’t forgive until we have justice.

Do the peace accords take the victims into account?

T he agreem ents led to a “ r e c o n c i l i ation law ”w h i c h we regard as an amnesty. It d oesn ’t apply to acts of g e n o c i d e , kid n apping an d tort u r e . We voted again st this law and we will oppose any oth er amn esty.T h e a r my and the guerrillas share responsibility for the wa r , though in d ifferent m easure. I t ’s norm al that their leaders have m ad e peace with one another, bu t in the villages, fam ilies are not even speaking to each other. T h e r e , r e c o n c i l i ation will take a lon g t i m e . ■

I n t e rview by Maite Rico, Guatemalan journalist

Ti m e l i n e 1 95 4: The CIA ove rt h rows the left-wing government of President Jacobo Arbenz, ushering in a series of military coups and upheavals. 1962: The first guerrilla groups appear. 1 9 8 1 - 8 3: The height of the civil war. The four rebel groups combine to form the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (URNG). 1986: Election of the first civilian president for 16 years, Vinicio Cerezo. 1991: Start of peace negotiations between the URNG and the government. 1 9 9 6: Signature of peace agreements on “the rights and identity of indigenous peoples”, in December under UN auspices. 1 9 9 9: The Historical Clarification Commission publishes, in Fe b r u a r y, a re p o rt called “ Remembering silence”. It estimates that more than 200,000 people disappeared or were killed between 1962 and 1996, and blames the army for 93% of the 626 mas- sacres it says took place. ■

Many things a re torn away that I wished to keep for eve r, and the tearing will, I know, bring m i s f o rtune, gre a t e r than the span of a human life.

Franz Kafka, Cze c h writer (1883-1924)

22 The UN ESCO Courier - December 1999

South Africa: quandaries of c o m p ro m i s e ◗ Njabulo S. Ndebele

South Africa�s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up to offer amnesty in exc h a n g e for disclosure of events in the apartheid years. How successful has it been?

◗ Former Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of the North in South Africa and author of South African Literature and Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary and Fools and Other Stories.

I n his book Tomorrow is Another Countr y, South African journalist Allister Sparks describes how N elson M an d ela’s A f rican N ation al C on gr e s s

( A N C ) , and the aparth eid gove r n m ent of Sou th A f rica were forced to recognize the need for a n ego- t i ated settlem ent. In a cr ucial m eetin g between th e AN C an d the right-win g generals of the South A f ri- can arm ed forces,M andela declared:

“ ‘If you wan t to go to wa r , I m u st b e hon est and adm it that we cannot stand up to you on the battlefield.We don’t have the resources. It will be a long and bitter struggle, m any people will die and the cou n try m ay be redu ced to ashes. Bu t you m u st rem em ber two things. You cannot win because of ou r n u mbers : you cann ot kill us all. And you can not win because of the international com m unity. T hey will rally to ou r su pport and they will stan d with us.’ G eneral Viljoen was forced to agree.T he two m en looked at each other . . . [and] faced the truth of their m utual dependency.”

T his d eclarat i o n , and its acceptan ce by eve r yo n e at that m eeting, i l l u s t r ates one of the major fa c t o rs that led to the found ation of the T ruth and Recon ciliat i o n Com mission (T RC) in 1995 (see box ) . T he basis of a ny comprom ise is that contend ing parties display a willingness to gi ve up irreconcilable goals, an d then en ter in to an agreem en t that yields su bstan tial bene- fits to all part i e s.T he apartheid gove rnm en t of South A f rica d esired to contin ue to hold on to the reins of p owe r , but was willing to allow for increased political p a rt i c i p ation by blacks.T he liberation move m e n t ,o n the other hand, desired the com plete removal of white p owe r. N either of these goals seem ed achieva b l e withou t an all-out wa r. It seem ed in the best interest of all to avoid such a situat i o n .

O n e of the d em an ds of the beleaguered apar- theid gove rn m ent was that in exchange for loss of p ower th ere should be a blan ket am nesty for all the agen ts of apar t h e i d ,p a r ticu larly the police and the a rmed forces. But while such an ou tcom e wou ld be b e n e ficial to whites, it would not enjoy the su pport of those who were victim s of apart h e i d . T h ey wo u l d rightly feel that the ben efic i a ries an d en forcers of a p a rtheid were gettin g away too easily. T he wo rs t outcom e of su ch a solu tion would be that black Sou th A f ri c a n s , victim s of apar t h e i d , wou ld lose c o n fid ence in an y of their leaders who could accept such a solution.

T he flaw in this equ ation is that it does not offer

a substantial benefit for both sides, and therefore d oes n ot in sp ire u n ive r sal con fid e n c e .W h at wa s fin ally agr eed u p on was con d ition al am n esty. F i rs t l y, th e victim s of apar theid shou ld h ave the o p p o rtu nity to tell what h appened to them , an d for their su ffer in gs to b e p u blicly ackn ow l e d g e d . S e c o n d l y, the perp e t r at o rs of political crimes shou ld accou n t for their d eed s by m akin g fu ll an d tru t h f u l d isclosu re of th eir action s. L a s t l y, r e p a r at i o n s should be m ade to the victim s.

An important aspect of the amnesty process is the s t i p u l ation that the life of th e T RC b e prescri b e d , on the groun ds that a time fram e wou ld provid e an i n c e n t i ve for perp e t r at o rs wishin g to come forwa r d a n d , after m akin g fu ll disclosu re, to b e am n istied. F ailure to take ad vantage of the process within the p r e s c ribed tim e wou ld open perp e t r at o rs to prose- cu tion in the ordinary courts of law.

The shame of public exposure D u rin g the hearings held by the T R C , h a rr o-

win g stor ies of su ffer in g and cru elty were hear d. D id the process result in reconciliation?

O ne strong criticism of the am nesty process is that it frustrates justice and the desire for punish- m ent.T his does not take into account the fact that m a ny of the recipien ts of am nesty experien ce a kind of pu nishm en t they n ever anticipat e d : th e sham e of bein g pu blicly exp osed. T h e exposu re of their p a rt i c i p ation in d espicable acts of cru elty h as in som e cases resulted in broken fam ilies,disorienta- tion an d loss of self-esteem —a form of pun ishm en t t h at can arguably be far m ore d eva s t ating than that exacted by an ordinary jail sentence. Equally, the contrition leading to a plea for forgiveness,as part of a qu est for reacceptance in society, can be fa r m ore restorative than the hoped-for rehabilitative effects of an ordinary prison term .T he cure in the m ethod of the T RC is located within social practice rather than in the artificiality of punitive isolation. T his experience raises legitim ate questions about traditional m ethods of retributive justice.

It can be said that as a resu lt of the T R C ,S o u t h A f rica has become a more sen sitive and a m ore com- p lex society. Sou t h A f rican s h ave b een forced t o con fron t the com plex con trad iction s of the hu m an c o n d i t i o n , an d the n eed to devise ad equ ate social a r ran gem en ts to deal with them . T h e h ealin g that r esu lt s will n ot b e in stan t . It will c om e from t he

I was chained as yo u we re chained. I was f reed, and you have been freed. So if I can p a rdon my o p p ressors, you can t o o.

Nelson Mandela, former President

of South Africa (1918- )

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 23

Le sida d�ferle: a l e rte z l es jeunes !Me m o ry: making p e a c e with a violent pas t

Ti m e l i n e 1 9 4 8 - 1 95 1: The National Pa rty comes to power in 1948 and strengthens segre g a t i o- nist laws against Blacks (76% of the population) adopted since 1911 and builds apar- theid (segregation between “Whites, Coloureds and Africans”) into a system. 1 959 - 1 9 6 4: Mounting protest. The regime takes a harder line. African National Congress (ANC) leaders, including Nelson Mandela, are imprisoned for life in 1964. 1976: Soweto riots: 575 killed, mostly young people. 1989-1993: Prime Minister Frederik de Klerk negotiates with the ANC. Nelson Man- dela is freed in 1990; the last three apartheid laws are abolished in 1991. 1994: Nelson Mandela is elected president in the first multiracial elections, held in April. 1995: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) headed by Archbishop Des- mond Tutu is set up to investigate human rights violations committed between 1960 and 1994 and grant reparation to victims. It has no legal powers except to amnesty the authors of violations who so wish, on condition of “full disclosure of all re l e va n t facts relating to acts associated with a political objective”. 1 9 9 8: The T RC ’s final re p o rt lists 21,000 victims, 2,400 of whom have testified in public hearings. Of some 7,000 requests for amnesty, most are granted, but decisions on several cases are still pending. 1 9 9 9: Thabo Mbeki (ANC) is elected president in June, succeeding Nelson Mandela. ■

n ew ten d en cy for Sou th A f r ican s to b e willin g to n e g o t i ate their way throu gh social, i n t e l l e c t u a l ,r e l i- gi o u s , political an d cu ltural d ive rs i t y. In sum , it will com e from the progr e s s i ve accu m u lation of ethical and m oral insights.

C e rt a i n l y, som e objectives have been achieve d . N o South A f ri c a n ,p a rticularly white Sou th A f ri c a n s , can ever claim ign orance of how apartheid d isru p t e d and destroyed the lives of m illions of black peop le in the n am e of the white electorat e . All South A f ri c a n s can n ow claim to have a comm on base of kn ow l e d g e ab ou t where they have com e from, p a rticu larly in the last 50 ye a rs , an d this is an essential fou n dat i o n for the em ergence of a n ew n ational value system. P ublic acknowledgm en t of South A f ri c a ’s history of racism represents a for m of reconciliat i o n .

Moving towards social justice T he T RC has not by any m eans been a sm ooth

process. M any whites, particularly am ong Afrika - ners, felt that the T RC was a punitive witch-hunt, targeting them as a com m unity. T his criticism did n ot take in to accou n t the fact that the T RC also addressed gross hum an rights violations perpetra- ted by the liberation m ovem ents them selves. T he even-handedness of the T RC in this regard is very clear in its report,and could itself be regarded as a significant contribution to reconciliation.

T here are people who are n ot happ y with th e am nesty m echan ism and strongly feel that justice has been comprom ised (see next page). Fo rt u n at e l y, a n e g o t i ated transition ensured there were function in g institutions in place for citizen s to exercise their ri g h t s.

R e c o n c i l i ation is not a sin gle eve n t . It is a process. T he T RC was a m echanism to deal with en orm o u s hum an ten sion s which cou ld have explod ed with

d e va s t ating consequences. It enabled South A f ri c a n s to nav i g ate successfully through ve r y rough seas. T h e question is whether after its secon d democratic elec- tion s South A f rica has the will and resourcefulness to take full advan tage of the found ation it has inheri t e d . Con tin uing disparities in we a l t h ,h o u s i n g, e d u c at i o n , and health between blacks and whites indicate that the process of reconciliation m ust move to a second stage: the achievem ent of social justice. In this regard, t h e d e fin i t i ve test of a new democratic society is underway. But the d isin tegr ation of the Sou th A f rican stat e th rough racial conflict is un likely in the foreseeable f u t u r e .T his outcom e is a highly significant m easure of

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairperson of South Africa�s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at the first hearings of the T RC in Cape Town on April 30, 1996. Some 2,400 victims testified before the Commission over a thre e - year period.

And we forg e t because we must And not because we w i l l .

Matthew Arnold, English poet (182 2 - 1 8 8 8 )

24 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

The price of t r u t h ◗ Max du Pre e z

Amnesty applications have shed light on unsolved murders in South Africa, but for some families knowing the truth is not enough

W hy should victim s of apartheid accept that the South A f rican Truth and Reconciliation C om- mission (T RC) gave amnesty to assassins and

mass killers of the former apar theid regim e? T his is just one of the qu estions asked by critics of the T R C process inside the countr y. At the heart of all cri t i c i s m is the legal power gi ven to the com m ission to gr a n t a m n e s t y, under certain conditions to people who com- mitted politically motivated crim es between 1960 and 1 9 9 4 . Am nesty means a p erson can never be cri m i- nally charged with that cri m e , n or can he be sued in a civil cour t for d amages resu lting from that act.

M ore than 7,00 0 p eople applied for am nesty, in clu d in g two for m er cabin et m in ist er s of P r i m e M in ister P. W. B o t h a ’s gove r n m en t an d several of his police gen erals. M ost have been granted amnesty, although several cases are still u nder con siderat i o n .

Ve r y often, the families of the victims m urd ered by former policem en and soldiers , and in a few cases by members of the two liberation arm i e s ,h ave rejected the entire n otion of am n esty. T he m ost p rom inen t in clud e the wid ow and son of Black C onsciousn ess leader Steve Biko, who was beaten to d eath in a cell by policemen, an d the family of Gri f fiths M xe n g e , a black law yer whose throat was cut by three policemen becau se he represented anti-apartheid activists.

T hey argu e that the provision for am n esty robs them of any sense of justice. In their view, m u r d e r e rs shou ld face a crim inal trial an d be jailed—failing to do so cheapens the lives of their victims. Sim ply confes- sing to these brutal acts should not be en ough to bu y

the perp e t r at o rs com plete freedom, they argu e.T h e y are also again st the provision that no civil claims m ay be made against the killers once they receive amnesty, argu ing that it cuts ou t the chan ce of obtaining com- p e n s ation for the death of a breadwinner to their fa m i- lies as well as for pain and sufferi n g .

T he cou n ter-argu m en t, s t ated m an y tim es by C om m ission chair p e rson D esm ond T u t u , is that it would n ot be in the interest of national recon ciliat i o n to send hun d reds of form er policemen , s o l d i e rs and e ven politicians to jail. N o n e t h e l e s s ,t wo of the wo rs t k i l l e rs in the apartheid police force, Eugene de Kock (whose request for amnesty is pending) and Ferdi Bar- n ard (who d id n ot ask for it), were prosecu ted an d gi ven life sen ten ces. Wou ter Basson, the head of the f o rmer gove rn m e n t ’s C hemical an d Biological Wa r- fare progr a m m e , is currently on tri a l .T here is n o evi- d en ce to su ggest that th ese cases u n d erm in ed the r e c o n c i l i ation process in any way.

An other argument often pu t forward in favour of amnesty is that m uch, if n ot most, of the inform at i o n the T RC obtained about the evils com mitted by the a p a rtheid gove rnments was disclosed to them through the amnesty applications of perp e t r at o rs of gross human rights violat i o n s. If it were not for these stat e m e n t s ,t h e t ruth about a large number of unexplained events and u n s o l ved m urders would not have com e out. And for the nation as a whole, if there had to be a tradeoff, t ru t h was con sidered more important than justice.

New heroes T h e am n esty application s of Phila N d wa n d we ’s

m u r d e r e rs is a case in point. T h e youn g mother of a baby boy and a unit commander of the A f rican N at i o- n al C on gress arm y, N d wa n d we was station ed with her unit in neighbourin g Swaziland when she crossed the border one d ay, n e ver to be seen again. For many ye a rs the ru m o u rs dogged her fam ily that she could possibly have been a collab orator of th e apar t h e i d g ove rn m e n t . T hen the story came out in the am nesty a p p l i c ation of four policemen.T hey had lured her ove r the border with a false message, and then kept her in a d e s o l ate hou se.T here they assaulted and tortured her in an effort to get her to join the apartheid p olice or tell them her unit’s secrets. According to the police- m e n ’s stat e m e n t s , she told them she would prefer to d i e .T hey shot her in the head and bu ried her.

P h ila N d wa n d we ’s rem ain s wer e d u g u p an d r e bu ried at a hu ge pu blic fun eral, where her nin e- year-old son received a m edal for exceptional bra- very on behalf of his dead m other. Instead of P hila N d wa n d we bein g remem bered as an ap artheid col- laborator,South Africa gained a new hero. ■

What is true of individuals is true of nations. One cannot f o rg i ve too much. The weak can neve r f o rg i ve. Fo rg i ve n e s s is the attribute of the s t ro n g .

Mahatma Ga n d h i , Indian philosopher and politician (1869-1948)

A father and daughter mourn at the graveside of Matthew Goniwe, an anti-apartheid activist who was murdered in 1985 on the orders of the South African government. The Truth and Rehabilitation Commission honoured his memor y.

◗ Journalist in Johannesburg

p r e s e rve th e histor y of the repression in the collec- tive m em ory.

T he C omm ission ’s report has neve r theless had a con siderable impact. T he truth began to come out, opening up new opportunities for “justice as far as possible”. U nder the current president, Eduardo F rei, the courts have handed out prison sentences to the for m er head of the D IN A, the d ictat o rs h i p ’s secret police,and to other m ilitary and police offi- cers involved in the repression.1

But two big issues have been put on the back bu rn er—the cr im es covered by the am n esty law (com m itted between 1973 and 1978) and the res- pon sibility of G en eral Au gu sto P inoch et. M a ny

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 25

Me m o ry: making p e a c e with a violent pas t

Chile: doing a deal with m e m o ry ◗ Oscar Godoy Arc a y a

Chileans have made a pact to ease the transition to democra c y. But the collective memory has played a more crucial part in pro g ress tow a rds a rule of law

◗ Professor at the Institute of Political Sciences of the Catholic University of Chile and a member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences of the Institute of Chile

1 M anuel C ontreras, the form er head of the D IN A, was sentenced in C hile for the m urder in Washington of O rlando Letelier, M inister of F oreign Affairs in the Allende governm ent,because C hile’s am nesty law does not cover crim es com m itted abroad. In July 1999, in a decision described as “historic”, C hile’s Suprem e C ourt confi rm ed the indictm ent of high-ranking officers on the grounds that when victim s’ bodies could not be found, the crim es involved were “perm anent and not subject to lim itation” and therefore not co vered by the am nesty la w. Editor

T he qu estion of hum an rights violation s by stat e o f ficials d ur in g th e m ilitar y d ictat o rship is not a priority in the current political debate.C hi-

leans have been saying this since 1990 in political s p e e c h e s , in the m ed ia an d throu gh pu blic opin ion p o l l s.Yet at regular in terva l s , this serious issu e fla r e s up in the national debate.When it does, political figures feel obliged to m ake am ends, but as a rule they prefer to let tim e do its work. Is this passivity or a laissez faire attitu d e that sh ou ld b e legally condem ned?

“Justice as far as possible,” was the line taken by Pat ricio Ay lwin wh ile he was presiden t. T he work of the Tr uth and Reconciliation C om m ission (see box page 27) form ed par t of this approach. Its aim wa s to compile a list of victims of hu man rights violat i o n s und er the m ilitar y regime and identify the guilty par- t i e s. T he id ea was to establish the tr u t h , awa r d m at e rial and m oral com pensation to the victims, a n d lay the foundations of national reconciliation.But th e C om m ission ’s work has been lim ited by an am nesty law passed under the m ilitary regim e. In other words, its role has been largely sym bolic: to

An anti-Pinochet demonstration outside the Chilean embassy in Madrid in October 1998.

D i s re g a rd and contempt for human rights have re s u l t e d in barbarous acts which have outra g e d the conscience of m a n k i n d .

Preamble to the Universal Declaration

of Human Rights (1948)

26 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

S ome people have alleged that the crimes of the P inochet dictatorship in C hile should not be punished because pouring salt into this open

wo u n d , establishin g the tru th an d obtain ing justice wou ld d estab ilize dem ocracy an d en d an ger so- called social peace.

Bu t all effor ts to stifle m em or y have fa i l e d .T h e arrest of Augusto P inochet in London on O ctober 16, 1998 revealed how fragile the C hilean dem o- c r atic syst em is an d sh owed th e t r u e face of a c o u n t r y which cann ot face up to a per iod of its h i s t o ry which con tin u es to d ivid e C hilean s in to two irreconcilable cam ps.

T he system atic cover-up of the dictatorship’s c rim es began on the d ay of the m ilitary cou p d ’état against P resident Salvador Allende in 1973. But

C hileans and foreigners wonder why a dem ocratic g ove rn m en t has n ot m an aged to repeal a law which seem s a disgrace and was passed in undem ocratic circum stances.

H ow is it that Pinochet has rem ained beyon d the reach of the law and that his political and crim inal responsibility has not been established? T he answe rs to these qu estion s are conn ect ed to th e special nature of C hile’s transition to dem ocracy, which in clu d es a n u n sp oken ag reem en t to keep th e am nesty law on the books an d gu aran tee im m u nity for P inochet.T he transition is the result of a pact, whose effects have been strengthened by the exis- tence of a right-wing electorate com prising u p to 40 per cen t of vo t e rs an d an electoral system that pre- vents a m ajority from domin ating parliament. A gr e e- m ent s have been m ad e; there has been n either pas- sivity nor laxity.

Reawakened memories T he society’s collective m emory is stron ger than

this, however. Whenever a debate arises about the p olitical her itage of the m ilitary regim e or som eon e tries to am end the constitution,m em ories are rea- waken ed of pr i s o n e rs wh o va n i s h e d , e xe c u t i o n s with or without trial and the torture inflicted on t h ou san d s of C h ilea n s. T h e re is n o colle ct ive am nesia: the wickedness of the crim es has left an indelible m ark.

For nearly nin e ye a rs , there was a tug-of-war bet- ween collective memory and political determ i n at i o n to forget. On the one hand, s e veral legal action s we r e s t a rted against Pinochet and members of his regi m e . O n the other, one could point to a certain sluggi-

A n unwritten page of history ◗ Fabiola Letelier del Solar and Víctor Espinoza Cueva s

Only a few of those responsible for crimes under the dictatorship have so far been tried

◗ Respectively president and executive secretary of Chile’s Corporation for the Defence of the People’s Rights (CODEPU)

from the start of the repression, hu m an r igh ts orga- n i z ations an d grou ps of victim s’ fam ilies tried to fin d ou t the tr u t h . T h ey all worked together to bu i l d this collective m emor y of the past. After a while, t h e action of a band of m others who denounced the c r im es com m itted again st their loved on es becam e the m ainspring of the stru ggle to restore dem o- c r a cy. T he m ain them e of the cam paign was “ n e ve r again ”—only th e establishm en t of a n at i o n w i d e cultu re of respect for hu m an ri g h t s , a com plete account of what went on and full rights to justice could ensure that history would not repeat itself.

We were cr it ic al of th e N ation al T r u th an d R e c o n c i l i ation C om m ission set u p at th e b egi n- ning of the transition process (see box).Why, we a s k e d , d id its br ief on ly cover th ose wh o d isap-

shn ess in the legal system , a veto by the ar m e d forces, and the feeling that drawn-out legal pro- ceed ings again st Pin ochet wou ld n ot catch up with him and that he would die a natural death before com ing to tri a l . T his was the situ ation when he wa s arrested in London.

P in ochet en joys im m u n ity beca u se h e h as a d i p l o m atic passport an d is a senator for life, a n d the C hilean gove r n m en t ha s accep ted th is. T h e g ove rn m en t m ain tains that it can not accept foreign jurisdiction over him that it has neither recognized by treaty nor through ratification of an internatio- nal legal instrum ent.

I appro ve of this approach because states are subject to international law even if it conflicts with my ideals. I also appro ve of it because I think the dem ocratic transition is our business. I would like to see,in m y lifetim e,C hilean courts put P inochet on trial for what he did and rem ove him from par- l i a m e n t . I would like to see the ar med forces qu ietly accept and respect cou rt d ecisions an d see the pro- P inochet right accept the requirem ents of the rule of law an d represen tat i ve d em ocrac y. In su m , I would like to see judicial sovereignty in C hile fully deployed,as part of the rule of law in a strong and established dem ocracy.

P i n o c h e t ’s d eten tion has m oved the C hilean justice system forward. Politicians ha ve turned a spotligh t on the crim es of the d ictat o rs h i p, a n d public opinion is starting to accept that globaliza- tion doesn’t only involve trade. T his is a process which is taking us towards a cosm opolitan society eq u ipp ed wit h su p ra- n ation al b od ies based on freedom and the defence of hum an rights. ■

K n owing how to f o rget is more a matter of chance than an art .

Baltasar Gra c i a n , Spanish moralist and essayist

( 1 6 0 1 - 1 6 5 8 )

December 1999 - The UN ESCO Courier 27

Me m o ry: making p e a c e with a violent pas t

Ti m e l i n e 1970: A socialist, Salvador Allende, is elected president. 1 9 73: Allende is ove rt h rown in a military coup led by Gen Augusto Pinochet on September 11. 1 9 7 8: Gen Pinochet pushes through parliament a law (still in force) granting amnesty for all crimes except non-political offences committed between September 1973 and March 1978, the main period of repression. 1988: Gen Pinochet loses a referendum he has organized in a bid to stay in power until 1997. 1 9 8 9: A Christian Democrat, Patricio Aylwin, is elected president in December in the first democratic election for 16 years. Gen Pinochet remains commander in chief of the army. 1 9 9 1: A Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up to investigate the re p ression bet- ween 1973 and 1990 and headed by Sen Raul Rettig produces a figure of 3,197 people killed, including 850 whose bodies are missing. 1993: Eduardo Frei (Christian Democrat) is elected president. 1 9 9 4: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission awards compensation to 2,115 families of the victims. 1996: A Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, issues a request for Gen Pinochet’s extra- dition to stand trial for genocide, tort u re and the disappearance of a number of people, all of them Spanish citizens in Chile. 1998: Gen Pinochet, now a senator for life, is arrested at a London clinic where he is having medical treatment. 1 9 9 9: On March 24, the British House of Lo rds refuses to grant Gen Pinochet immu- nity but limits the extraditable offences to tort u re perpetrated after 1988, when Britain ratified the international convention against torture. In May, the High Court in London rejects Pinochet’s appeal. On October 8, magistrate Ronald Bartle rules that he can be extradited to Spain. If the general loses an appeal against this decision, the British home secretary will make the final decision on his extradition. ■

peared and leave aside those who were tortured, forced to flee abroad, a r b i t r a rily arrested or sen t into internal exile?

M ost of all, we objected to its decision not to n am e those respon sible for the cri m e s , which wo u l d have at least been sym bolic justice. And the truth that the C om m ission established was only the ver - sion presented by the victim s, their fam ilies and hu m an rights organizat i o n s , sin ce the m ain cu l- p ri t s , the arm ed forces, refused to have anythin g to d o with it. So it was only half the tru t h . A page of our history is still unwritten.

International solidarity Yet through the C om m ission’s bri e f, the gove rn -

m ent recognized that the dictatorship had syste- m atically violated h um an rights on a m assive scale. T his organ ized rem em bran ce of the recent past was really an appeal for people to face the futu re bol- stered by a determ ination that such crim es m ust never happen again.

Later, fearing the clashes that digging up the truth and dispensing justice would inevitably pro- vo k e , the n in e-year-old gove rnm en t coalition passed m easures that rem oved the issue from the public arena.T he Truth and Reconciliation C om m ission and its successor,the Reparations and Reconcilia- tion C ommission, were supposed to have settled the problem on ce an d for all. Bu t far from recognizin g

A woman with photos of her father and other missing people takes part in a candlelight vigil organized in Chile in October 1999 by relatives of those who disappeared during the dictatorship.

the ethical, p o l i t i c a l , ju d icial an d social d im en sion s of the problem , they reduced it to a search for the rem ains of those who disappeared, with the result that the nation’s ordeal was revived.

P i n o c h e t ’s arrest mean s the country cannot avo i d facing the events whose m em or y, h owe ver pain ful it m ay be, we have been fighting to keep alive .I n d e e d , over 40 complaints have been mad e again st Pin ochet before a jud ge which have so far led to the arrest an d t rial of a dozen m ilitary offic e rs (see n ote page 25).

T he determ ination of the com plainants, along with international solidarity, m ade possible an act of justice none of us had im agined: the im prison - m ent of P inochet in a gilded cage. As the form er head of stat e , he is the chief perp e t r ator of what we regard as crim es against hu man ity committed under his rule in side and ou tside the coun tr y.T hese cri m e s should be tried by an international tribunal. Since such a tri bun al is still n ot fun ction in g, P i n o c h e t ought to be tried in his own countr y.

But C hile has neither adequate institutions nor the political will for that . So far there has been no real move to repeal the 1978 am nesty law or end the system of appointed sen at o rs. All this means that Chile is a par- tial and hesitant democracy, unable to guarantee a fa i r t rial for Pinochet. A l s o, because he is a senator for life, his parliamentar y im mu nity would have to be lifted before he could be tri e d . But since he is still a military o f fic e r , an examining magi s t r ate could declare himself in competen t to handle the case an d might send it to a military court , which obviou sly would n ot be inde- pend ent en ough. So P in ochet shou ld be tried in S p a i n .T his wou ld be a big step towards ending impu- n i t y, and an exe m p l a ry act against the treachery an d t y r a n ny of all dictat o rs h i p s.

Bu ilding a collective m em or y im plies kn ow- ledge of the past and all its consequences. As long as it is shrouded in the veil of pardon without jus- tice, we cannot plan a future of peace in a society reconciled with itself. ■

28 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

◗ Sociologist specializing in contemporary Russian society and teacher at Paris IV university

Russia: an unfinished j o b ◗ Alexis Bere l ow i t c h

Russians looked back in anger when p e re s t ro i k a re vealed the full scale of Stalinist massacre s and re p ression. But current difficulties have largely halted this re a p p raisal of the past

T he body of a dictator is buried and dug ups e veral tim es in G eorgian film maker Te n gi zAbuladze’s 1986 m ovie Repenta nce. Stalin had a sim ilar fate: he was sym bolically exhum ed d u rin g the political “ t h aw ” of N ikita Khru s h c h e v ’s r e i g n , hid d en away d u rin g the Brezhn ev ye a rs , d i s i n t e rred again du rin g p e r e s t r o i k a and is tod ay m ore or less out of sight.

T hese ups and downs show how hard it is for Ru ssian s to p er for m a cts of rem e m b er in g a n d m o u rn ing as a prelu d e to acceptin g an d copin g with what happened in the dark days of Stalinist terror.

D u ring the thaw ye a rs ,b e t ween 1956 an d 1964, Soviet society was confronted with its past for the first tim e when K hru shchev d enou n ced Stalin ’s c ri m e s. Bu t the d en u nciation only went part of th e way, and a thoroughgoing reappraisal of Stalinism was n ot possible. F rom the mid -1960s on , all refe- rences to Stalin were censored. D u ring the Brezhnev years, the dictator was quietly rehabilitated as the architect of the victory over N azi G erm any.

Bu t while the Soviet establishm en t offic i a l l y t ried to p lay d own or m ake p eople for get ab ou t S t a l i n i s m , th e m ost r ad ical win g of th e lib eral i n t e l l i g e n t s i a , the d issiden ts, contin u ed their scru - t i ny of the Stalin ist era. T he high poin t of this s t r u ggle t o re m e m b er cam e in 1 9 7 4 with t h e p u b l i c ation in the West of Aleksand r Solzhen itsyn ’s The Gula g A r c h i p e l a go.

In the grip of a reading frenzy

When p e r e s t r o i k a a l l owed people to speak freely, from 1985 on, the fir st thing the intelligentsia did was to turn to the past and try to m ake sense of it. In 1 98 6 an d 1 98 7, h i s t o rical n ovels wh ich had been written decades earlier and had either been u n published in the Soviet U nion or pu blished only in the West tu rned the spotlight back onto Stalinism . N early 10 m illion copies were printed of the m ost popular of these n ove l s ,A n atoly Rybakov ’s C h i l d r e n of the A r b a t. All the key m om ents an d even ts of the Stalinist era were now dealt with—the 1930s,col- l e c t i v i z at i o n , the Second World War an d stat e - s p o n - sored anti-sem itism .

In 19 88 , Vassili G rossm an ’s gr e at n ovel L i fe a nd Destiny, which had been published in the West in 1980, appeared in Russia, followed in 1990 by The Gula g A r c h i p e l a go. T he circu lation of the maga- zine N ovy M ir in which these works appeared rea- ched two m illion.T he whole country was gr ipped with a reading frenzy.

When the Soviet p eople discovered the scale of the d isaster it cam e as a terrib le shock. A sen se of shared responsibility spread throu ghout the countr y. People won d ered whether the whole society shou ld repent,and there was a call for a N urem berg-type trial of Stalinism . It was no longer just a m atter of contrasting an evil Stalin with good com mun ists and com rades of Lenin, as had been done during the 1987 rehabilitation of the victim s of the Stalinist show trials, but of asking what it was in Russian society that had mad e Stalinism possible. E s s ays and a r ticles by historian s took over fr om literat u r e . M ost au thors belongin g to the liberal in telligen tsia looke d for t he cau ses in R u ssia n h istor y — i n serfdom , the absence of a civil society and dem o- c r atic practices, and the hu ge size of the state sector. E s s ays and articles by historian s took over where lite- rature left off.

Waning interest in the past

T he duty of rem em brance was perform ed by groups which painstakingly sought ou t the nam es of the victim s, as the you ng histor ian D im itr i Yu r a s ov did,or looked for m ass gra ves.

T his m o vem ent led to the founding in 1987- 1988 of a M oscow-based hu m an rights associa- tion called M em ori a l , with m em ber grou ps all ove r the Soviet U n ion . It d rew a m ap of the labou r cam ps,set up a m useum and com piled lists of vic- tim s. In 1989, the Leningrad newspaper Vecherny published day after day the n am es of people who had been shot.

At fir st M em orial wa s a m ass or ga n izat i o n wh ich plan n ed to pu t u p a m on u m ent t o the vic- t i m s. Bu t which victim s? T h e victim s of Stalin ism or eve ryon e who had been persecu ted by the Sov i e t r e gim e? F rom 1988 on , c riticism was levelled n ot on ly at the Stalin ist per iod bu t at the en tire socia- list regi m e , an d this encouraged the ad option of the secon d d efin i t i o n .

Bu t just as the m on um en t project was bein g discussed,public opinion began to lose interest in the past. In 1996, the inauguration of a m em orial called T he M ask of Sorrow in the K olym a region, where the m ost terrible labour cam ps had been, passed largely unnoticed.

T here seem to have been several reasons for th is pu b lic loss of in ter est. F i r st th e e con om ic d isaster an d its social con sequ en ces are lead in g Russians to gi ve pri o rity to the presen t.T hey are also m akin g people qu estion th e ve r y validity of the d e m o c r atic project. M a ny Ru ssians feel nostalgic for

Concern about the f u t u re cannot be re g a rded as willingness to forg e t . Fo rgetting should n e ver be thought of as a passport to social peace. Memory is part of civil peace.

B ronislaw Gere m e k , Polish historian and politician

( 1 9 32- )

the Soviet era and about a quarter of them hanker after what they call the m ost “glorious” era, when the U SSR was feared an d respected, d u rin g Stalin ’s r ule.

T he sense of nation al hum iliation Ru ssians have felt in the 1990s has weaken ed their d esire to d elve into the darkest ye a rs. O pinion polls show m ore an d m ore people thin k there is too m u ch talk abou t Stalinist crim es. F or som e Russians,as the F rench historian M aria F erretti has shown, the desire to forget this period of the past h as spr un g from a rejection of the whole Soviet period as an unfortu - n ate in terlu de in Russian history an d from the glo- r i fic ation of pr e-1 91 7 Ru ssia. To d ay ’s Ru ssia is c om in g to be seen as th e d irect h eir of T s a ri s t R u s s i a , passing over the black hole of socialist ru l e .

So the Stalinist experience has now been erased. T he d ictator rem ains the least popu lar figu re in Russian history—though those with favou rable opi- n ion s of him rose from eight per cen t in 1990 to 15 per cent in 1997, while his disappro val rating fell from 48 per cent to 36 per cent in the sam e peri o d . T he proportion of the population which listed the m ass repression of the 1930s amon g the m ain eve n t s of the 20th centu ry fell from 38 per cent in 1989 to no m ore than 18 per cent in 1994.

T his new situation has not stopped inve s t i g at i o n s into Stalin ism and its cri m e s , bu t it ha s gr e at l y changed their nature.D uring perestroika, research was a joint effort and a cen tral par t of d aily life, bu t n ow it is con fin ed to profession al scholars. M e m o- rial has became m ain ly a research centre. H i s t o ri a n s

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 29

Me m o ry: making p e a c e with a violent pas t

Ti m e l i n e 1917: The October Revolution brings the Bolsheviks to power under Lenin’s leader- ship.

1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 2: Civil war and famine, confrontation between the Red and White armies, political executions. Foundation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

1924: Death of Lenin. Stalin becomes general secretary of the communist party. 1 9 3 0 - 1 9 3 1: The rich peasants (kulaks) are dispossessed of their land and massacre d . At least two million dead.

1936-1937: Moscow show trials, purges, reign of terror. The number of prisoners in the gulag rises from 500,000 in 1934 to 2.5 million in the early 1950s.

1953: Death of Stalin. Thousands of prisoners freed. 1 95 6: At the 20th Communist Pa rty Congress, Khruschev denounces St a l i n’s crimes. The thaw begins. 1964: Khruschev is removed from power; end of thaw; rise of Brezhnev. 1 9 8 5: Mikhail Gorbachev launches p e re s t ro i k a ( restructuring) and g l a s n o s t ( p u b l i c openness and accountability).

1 9 9 1: Boris Yeltsin is democratically elected president of the Russian Fe d e ration. T h e USSR is officially dissolved in December. Proclamation of the Commonwealth of Inde-

pendent States. ■

working on the Soviet period are devoting m ost of their efforts to pu blishin g official archive s ,p r ov i d i n g people with a less rom antic and increasingly accu- rate view of what went on.But the task of rem em- bering for society as a whole has again been inter- rupted before Russians have been able, at last, to reconcile them selves with their own history. ■

Files on thousands of prisoners of the Gulag are kept in the archives of Memorial, a Moscow-based association.

30 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

◗ Rithy Panh’s films include Site 2 (1989), Cambodia: Between War and Peace (1991) Rice People (1994) and One Evening after the War (1997).

I left C am bodia when I was 15 with a spiritual wound I knew would never heal. I had survi- ved the terrible ordeal of the K hm er Rouge

genocide, which killed a quarter of the country’s population. I didn’t understand how such a m as- sacre had been possible. Even now, I hardly do .

As soon as I reached the camp at M airu t , in T h a i- l a n d , I stopped fearin g for my life, bu t I felt a pro- fou nd sad ness, whereas I shou ld have been happy. I felt m y whole life was alread y behin d m e, t h at it belon ged to those ye a rs of stru ggle for su rv i va l .

I wanted to forget. G o som ewhere else, where I’d have no m em ory and no recollections, where nobody would know what I’d been through. I’d seen and heard m y relatives suffer. O ur fam ily had been deported from P hnom P enh to C hrey, a village in the m iddle of nowhere. O ne of m y sis- ters was brought back to m y parents, physically an d psychologically exh au sted after bu i l d i n g dikes and digging canals. Soon afterwards, m y father died. H e was a peasant’s son who had becom e a teacher and then a prim ary school ins- pector. H e decided to stop eating.H e chose to die as an act of rebellion, a last act of freedom .T hen, one after another, my m other, my sisters and m y nephews died of hunger or exhaustion.

Survivor�s guilt I didn’t want to talk about any of that . I had

made it part of my s e l f, and it becam e alm ost the m a i n s p rin g of my surv i va l . When I was living as an exile in France, there was a long period when I refu- sed to speak my nat i ve langu age and rejected any lin k with C am bodia. I had been uprooted and I felt s o m e h ow incom plete, t o rn between forgettin g and r e m e m b e ri n g, b e t ween past and presen t, a lways ill at ease. I lived with memories of m y relat i ve s , w i t h the an xiety—the cert a i n t y — t h at the sam e tragi c s t o ry would repeat itself. It was bu rned into my flesh foreve r , as if with a bran ding iron, t h at this is w h at the world is like: a place where there’s a lot of ind ifferen ce and hy p o c risy and little compassion.

When you com e out of a wa r , yo u ’re not sure that yo u ’ ve left violence behin d yo u .You are locked in a cultu re of su rv i va l . And when yo u ’ ve su rv i ved geno- c i d e1, you always feel guilty about being a surv i vo r.

Cambodia: a w o u n d that will not heal ◗ Rithy Pa n h

A Cambodian film-maker describes how he came to terms with horro r. His country will neve r re c over its lost identity, he says, unless it puts the past on trial

When the Italian writer P rim o Levi cam e back from the N azi death cam ps, he said that “you feel others have died in your place, that we’re alive because of a privilege we haven’t deserved ,b ecau - se of an injustice done to the dead. It isn’t wrong to be alive, but we feel it is.”

Lon g afterwa r d s , I learned to speak again and to accept what had h appened to m e. T hen I red is- c overed my m em ori e s , m y ability to imagi n e , t o l a u g h , to d ream , to rebu ild my life. In Cam bodia, they say people who’ve d ied a violent death can’t be rein car n at e d , t h at the souls of d ead p eople who h ave n ’t had a religious fu neral and bu rial wa n d e r the ear th foreve r , hau nting the livin g. T here are bon es all over th e place in the coun try s i d e . Pe o p l e fin d them whenever they start bu i l d i n g .

A machine to destroy memory If you can’t grieve, the violence continues. T he

C am bodian m other of a m odel fam ily, well inte - grated in F rance, cut off her child’s head just as the K hm er Rouge killers had chopped off her fat h e r ’s. Sim ilar case s h ave occu r re d in C a m b o d i a . At P re ah Sih an ou k H osp ital in P hnom P enh, the only departm ent that provides psychiatric treatm ent takes patients from all over the country. Som etim es there are 250 of them waiting in the corr idor. You only ha ve to see how m any are depressive and destitute to realize that som ething m ust be done.T here is a m assive col- lective wound.

T he ter rible thing about past wars and about the C am bodian genocide is not only the m illions of dead, the widows, the orphans, the am putees and the depressed, it’s also our shattered identity, the ruins of our social cohesion.

T he first political decisions of the K hm er Rouge, after they won power on April 17, 1975, were unutterably violent. T hey em ptied towns and hospitals, closed schools, abolished m oney, deported people en m asse to the countryside, d efrocked m on ks an d looted old hou ses.2 “Absolutely everything belongs to Angka r [the com m unist party],” they said. “If the party tells you to do som ething you m ust do it! Anyone who

We live in a world w h e re a man is more likely to be tried if he kills a single person than if he kills 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 .

Kofi Annan, Ghanaian diplomat, Se c re t a ry

G e n e ral of the UN (1938- )

1. T he author use this word in its broader sense; contrast U N ’s stricter definition, see page 20.

2. T he K hm er Rouge divided the C am bodian people into two categories: the “old”people living in rural areas and the “new”people in the cities who were “tainted” by culture and knowledge.

December 1999 - The UNE SCO Courier 31

Me m o ry: making p e a c e with a violent pas t

objects is an enemy, anyone who opposes is a corpse.” People had to dress in black, change the way they spoke, use certain words and exclude others from their vocabulary. It was forbidden to sing, dance, say prayers and even talk to other people. M y father, who had spent all his life trying to im prove C am bodia’s public education system , was particularly worr ied about the deci- sion to ban teaching.“T he spade is your pen, the rice-p ad d y is you r paper,” was the m essage Angka r drove hom e.

All social classes were affected to varying degrees by m ass deportations to the countryside, forced labour, sum m ary executions and fam ine. Paradoxically, all these absurd sacrifices were m ade in the nam e of restoring the glory of the Angkor era.All the roots of our culture and iden- tity, the basic social relationships and sym bolic links which attached C am bodians to their world were m ethodically and deliberately attacked and destroyed.

M ost of the detention centres were set up in pagodas, places of prayer and com passion, or in s c h o o l s , p laces of know l e d g e . A n g k a r was a m achine for destroying identity and wiping out m em ory.

Before they executed their victim s, the killer s tortured them and m ade them write hundreds of pages of false confessions dictated by K hm er Rouge officials. After being forced to denounce their fam ilies and friends, the prisoners were exe- cuted. “By elim inating you,” Angka r said, “we don’t lose anything. It’s better to wrongly arrest som ebody than to wrongly let som ebody go.”

O ne of the executioners at C am p S-21, in Tu ol Slen g—Pol Po t ’s m ain tortu re centre— today only expresses his “regrets”; he doesn’t feel guilty. H e destroyed non-persons, people the K hm er Rouge had stripped of all hum anity.

T his gen ocid e was “ s i l e n t ” . T h e K h m er Rouge im posed a reign of terror, and m ost execu- tions were car ried out without witnesses and without noise.T he world let C am bodians die and didn’t seem to care. N ot m any people denounced the m assacres.

When I arrived in F rance in 1979, I was am a- zed to find that the K hm er Rouge still occupied C am bodia’s seat at the U nited N ations. A few years later, I took the absence of the word “geno - cide” from the P aris peace accords as a refusal to allow the survivors to rem em ber, as an insult to the victim s’ dignity.

The best memory is that which forg e t s nothing but pard o n s injuries. Wr i t e kindness in marble and write injuries in d u s t .

Persian prove r b

Survivors should have the courage to confront their history as �a debt owed to the dead and an obligation to their children�.

32 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

Ti m e l i n e 1953: Cambodia, a French protectorate since 1863, gains independence, becoming

a constitutional monarchy under King Norodom Sihanouk.

1960: Emergence of the Khmer Rouge organization, led by Pol Pot.

1 9 70 : Coup d’état by Prime Minister Lon Nol and proclamation of a republic. Sihanouk

aligns with a faction of the Khmer Rouge. In the ensuing civil war he is supported by

China and North Viet Nam, while the United States and South Viet Nam back Lon Nol.

1975: The Khmer Rouge seize the capital, Phnom Penh, in April and impose a totali-

tarian regime. Over 1.7 million people, or a quarter of the population, are killed.

1978: Viet Nam invades Cambodia in December and a new civil war begins.

1982: Sihanouk forms a government to resist the invasion with two other factions,

including one from the Khmer Rouge, and then moves closer to the pro - Vi e t n a m e s e

Prime Minister, Hun Sen.

1989: Vietnamese troops withdraw.

1 9 9 1 : A ceasefire takes effect in July. The Paris Agreement, on October 23, re c o g n i ze s

the Supreme National Council headed by Sihanouk and places Cambodia under UN

control.

1993: The monarchy is restored under Sihanouk.

1 9 9 7 : The Khmer Rouge breaks up. Pol Pot dies in 1998. Seve ral former Khmer

Rouge leaders join the royal army.

1999: Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has agreed to put the main leaders of the

Khmer Rouge on trial, opposes plans for the future court to be composed mainly

of foreign judges, as the UN wishes. He also opposes setting up a “truth commis-

sion”. At least three major Khmer Rouge leaders are left at large. ■

Film director Rithy Panh in Cambodia in March 1999 during the shooting of a documentary film about the installation of a trans-Cambodian optic fibre cable. Human bones were discovered when trenches for the cable were dug.

I wen t back to Cambod ia in 1990 after 1 1 ye a rs in exile. I wanted to fin d the su r v i vo rs of my fa m i l y an d recover the rem ain s of the d ead an d gi ve them a p roper bu ri a l , so their sou ls wou ld stop wa n d e- ring the earth and could be rein carn ated in the cy c l e of life and d eat h . I wan ted at least to confirm they had died,so I could start to m ourn properly.

I went to Tuol Sleng cam p, which has been tur- ned into a “genocide m useum ”. I wanted to try to find a photo of m y uncle am ong the hundreds of p ictu res of th e d ead p in n ed on the wa l l s. Bu t I couldn’t bring m yself to go in.I went back in 1991 to film the few surv i vo rs of the camp (on ly seven out of som e 15,000 people who passed through it). I wanted to understand the banalization of evil and the dehu m an izin g m achin ery of the Khmer Rouge.

But we ’re afraid of this recent past. C a m b o d i a n s who d are to talk about it are divided. Some think we shou ld forget an d look to the fu ture, t h at th ere’s no point in inflicting another ordeal on ours e l ves by try i n g to brin g back mem or ies an d pick over old wo u n d s. T hey fear that if trials are held they will revive seri o u s political quarrels which might set off another civil wa r. O r else they gen eralize about C am bodian s an d say m ost of them are “ fat a l i s t i c ” an d accept a history of war an d genocid e as their “ k a rm a ” .

T his approach was dism issed by a 30-year-old peasant called Torng, who was typical of m any people I spoke to while I was film ing. “T he K hm er Rouge didn’t just kill people,” he said. “T hey turned our generation into ignoram uses, anim als, idiots, who don’t know where they’re going. We didn’t study. All we know is how to use our physical strength. So we can only get jobs as

peasants or labourers. T he K hm er Rouge should be put on trial. If they aren’t, people like m e will be tem pted to take revenge.”

I believe , and so do others ,t h at we should face up to our history, so that our relat i ves and friend s didn’t die in va i n .M o u rn ing wo n ’t be possible u nless moral and political responsibility for the Cam bodian geno- cide is established. A trial of the Khmer Rouge, b e f o- re the Cambodian people, is absolutely essential. We h ave to gi ve m eaning to basic ideas of law and justi- ce in this cou ntry. In a democratic society, you can’t kill withou t bein g punished.

We m u st gi ve ou r m em or y a fair an d d ignifie d t rial in order to und erstan d th e past. I’m not bothe- red about the sentences that would be handed dow n . O n ly the tru th can free u s—the whole tru t h ,h owe- ver horri fic. T he other poin t of such a tri a l , which is ju st as im por t a n t , wou ld be to restore our id entity. T he Khmer Rouge have plunged generations of Cam- bodian s into a vicious circle of cu ltural loss.

N ot m any C am bod ian s tell their children ab out the gen ocid e, which is a fu zzy cor n er of their m em or y. But we can’t build our future by forget- t i n g . T he sur v i vo rs m ust tell their stories an d ensure t h at the m em or y of what happened is han ded d ow n from the past to the present. We owe a debt to the dead and we have an obligation to our children.

We shan’t be able to get rid of this 30-year culture of violence, cast out the m onster that is fear and put behind us the collective guilt we feel as survivors unless we m anage to understand our history. ■

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 33

Me m o ry: making p e a c e with a violent pas t

Rw a n d a�s collective a m n e s i a ◗ Benjamin Sehene

Christianity tried to destroy the collective memory of Rwandans. After independence, ethnicity became the yardstick of identity and the Tutsis we re d e m o n i zed. Then came the horrors of genocide.

I n Kigali, they are known as b a f u ye ba ha ga ze— t h e livin g d ead . T hey are the hu nd red s of thou sand s of su rv i vo rs of genocid e who have psychologi c a l

p r o b l e m s. In Septem ber 1994, I m et on e of them — a little girl called Élise, the on ly m em ber of h er fam ily who had survived. She was just under five years old,the sam e age as the civil war in Rwanda, which went on from 1990 to 1994.

Élise suffered from loss of memory an d had a ve ry l ow atten tion span . She could never rem em ber my first nam e. She had n o recollection of anything that had happened m ore than 20 min utes before—it wa s as if she was trying to protect hers e l f. O ne evening I fou nd a way of getting her to rem em ber my name. She wore ove rsized pyjamas and I said , “T hink of the word ‘ p y j a m a ’e ve ry tim e you see m e—pyjama-Ben - j a m i n .” W h e n e ver she saw m e after that , she wo u l d happily shout: “ H e y, wa i t ,i t ’s pyjama-Ben jamin!”

Like that little girl clinging to an im age,Rwan - d an s shou ld perhaps look for a com m on sym bol which cou ld un ite th em arou n d th eir lost m em or y.

F or cen tur i e s ,R wan dan civilization rested on a pyr am id al p ower stru ctu re wh ich wa s r ooted in m y t h s. It sha ped the econ omy an d con dition ed social relations. It built (and still builds) a tyranny based on hierarchy, but a hierarchy im bued with a sense of restraint.In an atm osphere of self-censor- sh ip an d silen ce, thin gs are left u nsaid—b etwe e n paren ts an d child ren , hu sban ds an d wive s , s h e bu j a s (bosses) and their b a ga ra g u ( s e rvants) an d betwe e n Tutsis, with their sense of superiority, and H utus, who feel inferior.

Severing links with the past Bu t the establish m ent of C hri s t i a n i t y, w h i c h

began with the arri val of missionaries in 1900, d e s- t r oyed Rwa n d a ’s collective m em or y. In 19 31, t h e C hurch deposed Musinga, the Tu t s i s ’ last divin e-ri g h t m o n a r c h , when he refused to be conve rt e d .C o nve r- sion to C hristianity would have under min ed his legi- t i m a cy and destroyed the meaning of the m agical and r e l i giou s fun ction s of the m on archy, th e p illar of R wandan society. All the traditions which made up the c o u n t ry ’s social an d sp iritu al fa b ric were d u bbed pagan rites and banned, despite the fact that they fos- tered social cohesion by bri n ging together the three ethn ic gr o u p s — H u t u s ,Tu tsis and Twa s.

T he abolition of the A b i ru s, the royal comm ittee of wise m en that was the official gu ard ian of th e s o c i e t y ’s collective m em or y an d its esoter ic ri t e s , m arked the en d of the on ly high-level in stitution that acted as a counterweight because it was m ade

u p m ostly of H u tu s. A proverb in the Kinya r wa n d a langu age was coin ed to d escribe this break with the esoteric past: Kerezia ya kuyeho kizira (the C hurch has forbidden the forbidden).

After ind epen den ce in 1962, the n ew republic of R wand a tried to ove rt u r n the trad ition al pyram id- shaped power str u c t u r e ,d e s t r oyed even m ore of the trad itional sen se of n ational iden tity and wiped out the nat i o n ’s collective mem ory. T he republic d efin e d its identity by abolishing the old order, which it regar- ded as being too strongly marked by centuries of Tu t s i m o n a r c h s , and by basin g its legi t i m a cy on the m ajo- rity ethn ic gr o u p, the H u tus.

E ve r ything with a Tu tsi con n otation was b an - n e d . T hou san d s of word s rooted in Rwa n d a ’s his-

tory and social organization were struck out of the l a n g u a g e . T h e ethn icization of the stat e ,s u p p o s e d l y to create a “social b alance” , led to a qu ota system which limited the propor tion of Tutsis in higher edu- cation and the civil service to nine per cent.It was based solely on n um bers. Pe o p l e ’s eth nic affil i at i o n cou ld be checked from their id en tity d ocu m en ts. T he n ew r u l e rs said they were red ressin g the social balance after centuries of feudal dom ination.

In the vacuum left by the collapse of the tra- ditional collective m em or y, ethnicity becam e the only point of reference.T his eventually led to the dem onization of the Tutsis in order to justify their exclusion from society. T he Tutsis were dehum a- nized and dubbed inyenzi (cockroaches), just as the N azis had called G erm an Jews “verm in”. M any term s of abuse were used to indicate they were unwanted parasites. It is easier to crush a cockroach underfoot than to kill a person.

T he “social revolution”which gave birth to the n ew Rwan d an rep u b lic b egan in 1 95 9 with a bloody revolt by the H utus, involving the ter r ible m assacre of 20,000 Tutsis and the flight of thou- san d s of others in to Bu ru ndi an d U gan da.T his irr e- parable act was the first step to wards the descent into am nesia.But a past that is forgotten is bound to repeat itself becau se forgettin g invo l ves a refu sal to adm it wrongdoing. In Rwanda, am nesia led to

◗ Rwandan writer, author of Le piège ethnique (Dagorno publishers, Paris, 1999)

The country lived for 35 years in a state of growing amnesia,

dominated by the law of silence, of the unspoken, of memories

c o l l e c t i vely re p re s s e dBringing the truth to light is already a s t a rt, as a victory for justice and a form of relief for the victims.

Ro b e rt Badinter, French lawyer and politician

( 1 9 28- )

34 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

Ti m e l i n e 1 959 : Hutus carry out a “social re volution”, killing members of Rwanda’s Tutsi mino- rity and overthrowing the Tutsi monarchy. Many Tutsis flee the country. Formerly German colonies, Rwanda and Burundi have been administered by Belgium since 1924. 1 9 6 2 : Rwanda gains independence. Massacres of Tutsis increase and an ethnic Hutu regime is gradually established in Kigali. 1 9 9 0 : The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi-dominated organization, launches an offensive against the regime of General Juvenal Habyarimana, in power since 1973. In October, intervention by Zaire, Belgium and France. French troops remain in the country. 1993: An accord signed in August at Arusha (Tanzania) provides for power-sharing with the RPF. It is stalled by President Habyarimana and his political allies. The UN sends in an international peace-keeping force, UNAMIR. 1 9 9 4 : President Habyarimana is assassinated, setting off a wave of killings aimed at Tutsis and moderate Hutus. UNAMIR withdraws. T h ree months later, the Fre n c h establish a “p rotection zo n e” in the southwest. The RPF forms a government of national union. In November, the UN creates an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which sits at Arusha.

According to the Red Cross, the victims of genocide number more than a million dead, mostly Tutsis, and over two million refugees. 1999: The RPF government extends its term of office by four years, promising elec- tions and a new constitution. ■

s u c c e s s i ve pogrom s again st the Tu tsis which began in the 1 960s an d en d ed in th e gen ocid e. T he cou n - try lived for 35 years in a state of growing am nesia, d o m i n ated by the law of silen ce, of the un sp oken, o f m e m o ries collectively repressed. Silen ce in evitably gave rise to im punity and im punity m ade am nesia acceptable.

I had a hard job interviewing Tutsi survivors in 1994 becau se the gen ocid e d ivid ed Rwan d an s into two cam ps—H utus and Tutsis,the perpetrators of gen ocid e an d the rest. In Rwan d a tod ay, you are forced to be on one side or the other; there is no h a l f way hou se. Ju st after the gen ocide, the Tu t s i s who retu rn ed were su spiciou s of T u tsis who had e s c a p e d , p resu m ing they had collaborated wit h the enem y to save their skins.

If you were a H u tu, you were autom atically gu ilty of genocide, just as the Tutsis were from 1959 to 1994 consid ered gu ilty ju st becau se they happen ed to b e T u t s i . T he gen ocid e was a crim e com m itted bet- ween neighb ou rs ;k i l l e r s an d surv i vo rs of the at r o c i- ties still live side by side tod ay.T he exterm i n ation of a m illion people in 100 d ays with crud e weapon s like m a c h e t e s ,c l u b s ,a xes and hoes, could not have taken place without th e p art i c i p ation of a massive n um ber of people. A third of all H utus are thought to have par- t i c i p ated in on e way or another.

Fear of reprisals Abou t 135,000 people su spected of invo l ve m e n t

in genocide are languishing in ove r c r owded jails, a n d the legal system, which was destroyed in the pro- v i n c e s , is finding it hard to get the trials underway.T h e I n t e rn ation al Cr im in al T ri bun al for Rwan da (the A rusha Tri bu n a l ) , which has scant resources, is not get- ting ve r y far either. All this is keeping Rwandans from the task of rem em bering their past, especially since s t at e - e n d o rsed ethn ic attitu d es still cond ition th e H u tu killers to think they killed their historic n eigh- b o u rs to ensure the surv i val of their own ethnic gr o u p. To d ay, the gu ilty flatly d eny there was any genocide.

So in on e of A f ri c a ’s m ost d ensely populat e d c o u n t ri e s , the surv i vo rs see their torm e n t o rs return i n g to live peacefully on the hillsides because there is not enough evidence to bring charges against them. In the first months after the genocide witnesses spoke freely, but they have becom e tight-lipped since a num ber of s u rv i vo rs have been mu rd ered by u n known killers. “ W h at ’s the use of givin g evid ence?” on e victim asked m e. “ T h e y ’re not being pu nished any way.” All Rwan d an s live in an atm osphere of ethn ic m is- t ru s t . Fear of reprisals is still ri f e .

T he new Rwand an au thorities may want to curb in d ivid u al score-settling an d encou rage nat i o n a l r e c o n c i l i at i o n , but the ragtag soldiers who carried ou t the 1994 massacres are still lurkin g in the forests of n e i g h b o u r in g C on go an d have n ot gi ven u p their plans to exterm i n ate the Tu t s i s. As long as the threat of a new genocide hangs over Rwa n d a , the present r e gi m e ’s pri o rity will be to d efend national frontiers , as shown by the on-going war in C ongo.

T he present is still barr ing the way to m em or y. ■

A Rwandan boy in a Catholic church which is now a memorial to the genocide. In 1994, thousands of Tutsis were massacred in the church�s grounds.

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 35

Le sida d�ferle: a l e rte z l es jeunes !Me m o ry: making p e a c e with a violent pas t

Ti m e l i n e 1 9 9 1: Slovenia and Croatia, two of the six republics of the Yugoslav federa t i o n , declare their independence. 1992: In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Croat and Muslim communities press for the independence of their republic. They are opposed by Bosnian Serbs who lay siege to Sarajevo and seize 70% of the country. Massive “ethnic cleansing” begins, mostly conducted by Bosnian Serb forces. 1 9 9 3 - 1 9 9 4: After the rejection of a peace plan by the Bosnian Serbs, the UN declare s six “safe areas”, but ground hostilities persist. Formerly allies, Croats and Muslims clash before signing an accord in March 1994. The UN Security Council creates an International War Crimes Tribunal for former Yugoslavia based at The Hague (Nether- lands). NATO goes into action against the Serbs. 1995: In July, Bosnian Serbs take over Srebrenica and Zepa “safe areas”. In August, NATO bombs their positions around Sara j e vo. The Dayton (USA) peace agreement in November ends hostilities. The republic is divided into two associated entities, the Fe d e ration of Bosnia and Herze g ovina (51% of the land area, including Sara j e vo ) and the Serb Republic. A NATO force monitors application.

In this conflict some 200,000 people were killed and almost 200,000 were dis- placed. Around 600,000 refugees have returned to their homes. ■

duct of the wa r. R at h e r , they were a tool to achieve its p ri m a ry aim : ethnic separatism or domination of one ethnic group over an other. By the wa r ’s en d in early 1 9 9 6 , all three sides had retreated into ethnically pure a r e a s , controlled by their respective arm i e s.

To d ay, th e C roat an d Serb politician s in sist on rem aining separat e . In fa c t , it is those ve ry groups res- ponsible for the wo rst crim es who in sist m ost ve h e- m en tly on ethnic sep arat i o n . T he lack of con sen su s on a multiethn ic society plays into the hand s of M us- lim extremists, who also practice a more su btle policy of ethnic exclusion. All three groups have formed their own school curri c u l a , which reinforce ethn ic hat r e d , blame the other gr o u p s , and glorify their own my t h o- l o g y. Each has begu n religious in stru ction in the s c h o o l s , which often takes the most pri m i t i ve form of ethnic in doctri n at i o n . All this only serves to cem ent the wa r tim e ethnic clean sin g.

T he sad tru th is that four ye a rs after D ayton (see b ox ) , neither sid e is any closer to recon ciliation than in late 1995. M a ny Bosn ian s of all n ation alities will s t ate open ly that they can stop hat i n g, bu t that they will n either forgi ve n or forget what happened du ri n g the wa r. And m any add that they wish to be left alone with th eir own eth n ic gr o u p. After what the other grou ps d id to them, they no lon ger wish to live with them any way. In a political clim ate that works again st the em ergen ce of an y reliable n on -nation alist refe- rence point, m e m b e rs of all com munities still fear firs t an d forem ost for the su rv i val of their ethnic identity an d place grou p in terests above all else.

R ather than work toward calm ing nationalist pas- sion s and anger, local politicians use these fears to fu r- ther their own political agendas. T his is seen part i c u- larly in the cases of the Serb an d C roat populat i o n s , both of whom look toward a m other cou ntry ou tside the bord ers of Bosnia and H erzegov i n a , and dream of e ventually seceding an d u nitin g th eir region with it. F rom Belgrade and Zagr e b , politicians continue to fa n the flam es of nationalist desire. T he continued in sis- tence of nationalist parties in Bosnia and H erzegov i n a , urged on by nationalists outside, on creating ethni-cally pure terri t o ries stands as the gr e atest obstacle to recon- c i l i at i o n . U ntil the outsid e forces live u p to their obli- g ations und er D ayton an d stop pushing for “ gr e at e r ” n ational progr a m m e s , little progress will be mad e in the recon ciliation of the cou ntry ’s pre-war ethnically d i ve rse populat i o n . And until that time, its citizens will l i ve in an environment of fear of the other ethnic gr o u p s.

I n N ovember 1995, Bosnia and H erzegovina signed the D ayton Peace A c c o r d s , a docum ent designed to create a new unified state comprised of two multi-

eth nic en tities. It wou ld have a fu n ction in g central g ove rn m e n t , hold d em ocratic elections an d adhere to i n t e rn ational human rights standards. D isplaced per- son s were to be allowed to retu rn to their homes and indicted war criminals were to be arrested an d turn e d over to the In tern ational T ri bun al of T he H ague.

To d ay ’s reality is dram atically different.T he coun- t ry consists of three de facto m ono-ethnic entities, t h r e e s e p a r ate arm i e s , three separate p olice forces, an d a n ational gove rnment that exists m ostly on paper. M o s t indicted war criminals remain at large. N ationalist poli- tical part i e s , in clu d in g m an y of the ethn ic clean sers wh o were respon sib le for the war in the fir st place, rem ain secu rely in powe r. N ationalist extrem ists— often backed by the ruling political parties—still bomb and torch the hom es of retu rning refu gees in cert a i n a r e a s.

C o n t r a r y to the pronouncements of local nat i o n a- list politicians or intern ational officials wishing to avo i d taking responsib ility, the Serbs, C r o ats and M uslim s l i ved together relat i vely peacefully in Bosnia and H er- z e g ovin a for hun d reds of ye a rs. All three groups res- pected each others ’r e l i gious customs and holidays and i n t e rm a rriage was comm on . But something changed when all sid es com mitted gri e vous atrocities duri n g the wa r. T hese crimes were not an accidental by-pro-

Bosnia and Herze g ov i n a : an i m p o s s i b l e re c o n c i l i a t i o n ? ◗ James Lyo n

A once ethnically diverse population lives in a climate of fear and distrust fuelled by nationalists

◗ Director of the International Crisis Group (ICG) project in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This private, multinational organization, which aims to strengthen the capacity of the international community to understand and respond to crises, produces analytical reports targeted at key decision-makers. (http://www.crisisweb.org)

36 The UN ESCO Courier - December 1999

Can we p re vent c r i m e s against humanity? Canadian judge Louise Arbour, former chief prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunals (ICT) for ex- Yugoslavia and Rwanda, b e l i e ves international law is making great strides in violence pre ve n t i o n

How has setting up ICTs helped the groups of people directly concerned to turn the page on atrocities they have experienced?

T hese tri bu n als have been a spectacular in novat i o n . For the fir st tim e, the in ter n ation al com m u nity has shown its concern not only with the short term — stopp in g arm ed con fli c t — but also with the lon g term . It has noted that in the Balkans and Africa’s G reat Lakes region there was very little hope of achievin g lastin g peace based on recon ciliation and social reconstruction unless the truth about past events was established.T he recording by interna- tional inve s t i g at o rs of irrefutable evid ence of cri m e s prevents history from being falsified and the past from being distorted.

When the truth is told , the need to d ispense jus- tice becomes obviou s. I t ’s ve ry im portant to pin cri- m in al responsibility for any crimes that have been committed not only on those who actually comm itted them but also on political and m ilitary leaders. In so d o i n g, the law at least recognizes that th e victim s h ave a legal status and to som e exten t restores their d i g n i t y. It also stops them from setting themselves on a cou rse for reve n g e , an agen da which can be handed d own from generation to gen erat i o n .

Do you feel the ICTfor the former Yugoslavia has helped victims to come to terms with the burden of memor y, a process which is crucial to reconciliation? In Bosnia, ther e�s a kind of �apartheid� between communities.

T he IC T has not yet contributed to reconciliation in Bosnia because it has not been given the neces- sary resources. Justice cannot be fully done part- ly because of the refusal of som e governm ents to gather evidence and arrest people who’ve already been indicted.

The existence of an ICTfor the former Yugoslavia doesn�t seem to have prevented the events in Kosovo.

T he IC T d id n ot h ave an im m ed iate deter r e n t effect becau se the U N Secu rity C oun cil didn ’t use its resou rces to oblige Serbia (the Fed eral Repu blic of Yugoslavia) to carr y out the arrest warrants the IC T had issued.T his encouraged the crim inals to feel that in practical ter m s they were goin g to en joy im punity and im m unity. T hroughout the K oso vo conflict, from January to June 1999, I repeatedly u rged the intern ation al forces there to arrest people

under indictm ent. I think this was the right deter- rent m essage to send to the parties in K osovo.

It’s clear that those who com m itted crim es in K o s ovo were m ore aware of t he r isk of b e in g ind icted an d that this in flu enced th eir m ethod s. T h e com m on gr aves in K osovo d u g u p by IC T investigators have provided a lot of evidence, cer- tainly enough to m ake the authors of these crim es realize that the law can always find such evidence, whatever lengths the crim inals m ay go to in order to cover up their crim es.

How has the ICT helped to promote reconcilia- tion in Rwanda, where people are afraid of the massacres starting again?

M i l i t a ry lead ers , p eople accu sed of ve r y seri o u s responsibilities for the genocid e, m i n i s t e rs an d eve n the form er prim e m inister (who has confessed his gu ilt) are awaiting trial in pr ison in A ru s h a , in Ta n- zania.T hey are no longer in a position to fan the flam es of ten sion , so the risk of violence has been to som e extent reduced. In Rwanda,even m ore than in Bosnia, the culture of im punity has existed for d e c a d e s. Violence goes in cy c l e s , bu t responsibility for it has not been proven.T he IC T represents a chan ge of d irection in this respect bu t it wo n ’t have an im m ediate im pact.

What can we expect from the proposed International Criminal Court (ICC), which will be the first permanent institution of its kind?

Setting up the IC C is a huge and irreversible step for the world.When it’s up and running it will be able to respond fairly qu ickly to events and to ind ict suspected crimin als before they can comm it fu rt h e r m a s s a c r e s. IC T s were set up after crimes were com- m itted in Bosn ia, C r o atia an d Rwa n d a . Bu t in K o s ovo, in dictm en ts were m ad e at the highest leve l at the b egin n ing of Ju n e 1 99 9 for cr im es com - m itted between January and M ay. Such speed was possible b ecau se th e IC T an d its in frastr u c t u r e were already in place.

So an ICC , if it has the necessary mu scle, will be able to act and intervene in real time, which is an enor- mous step forwa r d . If there’s the political will to arr e s t people who’ve been in dicted, e f f e c t i ve prevention of c rim es against hu manity can be env i s a g e d . ■

Interview by Martine Jacot, UNESCO Courier journalist

December 1999 - The UN ESCO Courier 37

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P OL ICE AG A INST RACISM ◗ Asbel López

Training schemes in several European countries are getting to grips with the stereotyping and prejudice that all too often influence police behaviour

■ In a vast salon in M onceau C astle ( B e l gi u m ) , 13 policem en from C harleroi,a town in the centre of the

countr y, have been divided into team s and are absorbed in a boisterous card gam e.T he officers, unarm ed and wearing civilian clothes, are all m en in their for- ties. Today, in early O ctober, they are taking part in the fourth session of a workshop against racism and xenophobia run by the C entre for Equal O pportunity and the F ight Against Racism , a Brussels- based public institution founded in 1993.

L au gh ter eru pts from th e policem en and the C entre’s two instructors when the w i n n e rs of each gam e go on to the n ext rou n d of th e con test. T his tim e they will be playing a gam e according to rules none of them will know.

A game with unknown rules Jean,who has spent half his 42 years in

the police force, s ays this is what happens to i m m i gran ts when “they arr i ve in a coun tr y without knowing the rules and when the r u les th ey h ave b ac k h om e a re n o u se because they don’t work in the new society.”

F or exam ple,he says, r ules for wom en in Islam ic cou n tries are ve r y d ifferen t from those in the We s t .L ater on , d u ring a review of the session , Jean says he has n ever had the chance to talk abou t such thin gs or d iscuss the relationship he has with im m igrants in the course of his work.

T he workshop is one of 11 projects that nine European countries are carr ying out under an international program m e called N G O s an d Police Again st P r eju d ice (N AP AP ), set up by the European C om- m ission in 1997 to fight racism and xeno- phobia th rough workshops for m em bers of the police.

Each cou n try has its own pr i o rities an d m e t h o d s. As p ar t of th e B ritish project m e m b e r s of m in or ity eth n ic grou ps are invited to take part in the training courses.

◗ UNESCO Courier journalist

T he C atalan s hold day cour ses for their p olic e r u n b y local im m igr an t gr o u p s. F ran ce stresses the socia l in tegr ation of i m m i gr a n t s. In Germ a ny em phasis is laid on m akin g police m ore aware of the problem s that arise in a m ulticultural society.

In recent years racism and xenophobia h ave increased in m any Eu ropean cou n - t ri e s , especially becau se of econ om ic cri s i s , u n e m p l oy m e n t , a rise in the im m igr a n t population and anti-foreigner propaganda by extrem e right-win g parties who are get- ting more and m ore vo t e s1. In this situ at i o n , police forces are in a particularly exposed position.

T he C en tre, which record s an d pur - sues cases of racist behaviour, says that in Belgium m ore com plaints about discrim i- n ation based on the ori gin of an in dividu al are laid against the police than against any other gr o u p2. T he situation is also troublin g

in other European countries. In Britain, a report by a form er H igh C ourt judge, Sir William M acphers o n , said in early 1999 t h at there was “in stitu tion alized racism ” i n L o n d o n ’s M etropolitan police for ce. I n G e rm a ny, an official su rvey showed th at police violen ce again st foreign er s was “ n o t just a m atter of isolated cases”. Am nesty I n t e rn at i o n a l ’s 1999 repor t d etailed abu s e s by the police in F rance, S p a i n , G reece an d Switzerlan d again st imm igrants an d m em - bers of ethnic m inorities.

In a d em ocratic system , su ch th in gs should not happen and the police should respect the principle of equal rights for all citizens. To ensure such respect, the first thing to be done is to see that stereotyping and preju d ice do n ot affect the professional b e h aviou r of the police. T his is not easy because police opinions and attitudes are developed at first hand in the front line of social con fli c t , and are u sually the result of an accum ulation of personal experiences, frustrations and m isunderstandings.

T he worksh op s r u n b y th e Belgi a n centre are special becau se they feature gr o u p work drawing on personal experience and incid ents the policemen agree to talk about.

Belgian police inspector Nestor Van Villinghen with a young immigrant. This photo and those on the following pages show scenes from a video used in Belgian police training courses.

1.T he recent electoral successes of the extrem e right in Austria and Switzerland illustrate this process. 2. Éga ux et reconnus, bila n 1993-1998 et perspectives de la politique des immigrés et de la lutte contre le ra cisme, C entre pour l’égalité des chances et la lutte contre le racism e, page 16,Brussels, 1999.

Ju st speakin g freely an d open ly about these issues is already a big step, she say s ,b e c a u s e “putting things into words an d talking abou t them allows you to be m ore objective abou t t h e m , to realize their seriou sness and im por- tance and to start thinking about them .”

T h is was n ot h a pp e n in g wh en sh e s t a r ted the C en tre’s workshops six ye a rs ago. At that tim e, training focused on the im m igrant, not the police.T he aim was to

throw light on the culture of im m igrants’ countries of origin, how they had com e to B e l gi u m ,p o p u l ation statistics an d the signi- ficance of religiou s festivals like Ram adan or practices like we a r in g the chador, the shaw l or veil worn by M uslim wom en.

But the C entre’s officials soon noticed t h at this kind of in form ation session n ot only failed to m ake the police aware of cu l- tural diversity but was even counter-pro- d u c t i ve . T he policem en got the im pression t h at by explaining how imm igrants live d ,t h e i n s t ru c t o rs were tr ying to justify behav i o u r that to them was unacceptable.T hey felt they were bein g m ad e fun of an d this gen e- r ated gr e at hostility towa rd s th e cou rs e organizers.

T heir com m en ts were bru t a l . “T he ins-

38 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

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T he starting point of the six-day course is not a lecture on tolerance or study of the U n i ve rsal D eclaration of H um an Rights, bu t c o n t ri bu tion s from the policem en d ur i n g ac t ivit ies in clu d in g car d gam es, r o l e - p l ay i n g, a nd lookin g at photos an d fil m e x t r a c t s.

M a r isa F e l l a , an in st r u c t or a t t h e C e n t r e , s ays th e se “ ap p a re n tly sim p le” e xercises encou rage serious reflection by the policem en abou t their profession al beha- v i o u r. She rem em b er s on e occasion when solving a pu zzle open ed u p t he su bject of c o m m u n i c ation an d aggressivity an d eve n- tu ally tu r ned in to a debate about p olice b ru t a l i t y. “T hey discussed their own violen t b e h aviou r a s p olicem en , wh en an d why they h ad been violen t or n ot violen t, a n d h ow th ey d ealt with violen ce b y offic e r s u nd er their ord ers.” A “ f o ru m for talkin g an d th in kin g” wa s ope n ed an d allowe d th em t o d ista n ce th em selves fr om th eir j o b s , som ething which can be hard to do when you are in th e th ick of thin gs.

A forum for talking and thinking Bit by bit,as confidence is built up, the

participants stop using official jargon and begin to recognize nuances. F or exam ple, wh en on e p olicem a n sa id h e cou ld n ot accept the position of wom en in Islam , t h i s was alread y a step forwa r d , becau se h e wa s b e gin n in g to d istin gu ish between whole- sale rejection of M u slim s an d his d isap - proval of one aspect of their culture.

F ella says the m ost heartenin g aspect of her wor k is to see th at “ behind the u n i- f o r m s th ere ar e h u m an be in gs who ask t h e m s e l ves qu estion s abou t their profes- sion an d abou t how they do their jobs.”

t ru c t o rs think we ’re ign oran t an d therefore r a c i s t . . . . T hey gi ve us nice little talks about i m m i gr a n t s , as if t h ey’re a ll n ice a n d f ri e n d l y, bu t they’ve n ever patrolled the streets like we have.”

T hese days, such resistance has disap- peared or at least has subsid ed. T h e d oor to change has open ed. But problem s still exist. T he police say they do not know exactly h ow to pu t in to practice what they have l e a rn ed in t he worksh ops abou t confli c t m anagem ent, non-verbal com m unication and hand ling aggression when they are back doing their job, which nearly always invo l ve s speed, stress and confusion.

Another big problem is the progr a m m e ’s lack of resources. T he C entre has just five instructors, three of them full-tim e. O nly about 300 of Belgium ’s 36,200 police and gendarm es attended workshops like these between 1994 and 1998. A m edium -ter m p roposal to overcom e this is to have th e current instructors train new ones.

Another weak point is that it’s senior officers who ask for courses to be held for their men, who are not necessarily stat i o n e d in places where the incidence of racial dis- c ri m i n ation is high. W h at ’s m ore, the en tire staff of a police station rarely attends the course, and this causes friction when they go back to work.

But despite everything, those who take p a rt agree that the process of exch an ge and discussion between instru c t o rs an d police is encouraging.

Long-term effects O n e instru ctor tells a group that five

vo l u n t e e rs are n eed ed for a role-play i n g game in which three policemen will play the part of young im m igrants and two others will be the police.T he first volunteers are those who want to play the im m igrants.

When the two policem en pass the gr o u p of “ i m m i gr a n t s ” , the policeman playin g the p a rt of Fa b i o, an 18-year-old Belgian citizen of Med iterranean ori gi n , calls them “p o u l e t s” (chickens) a F rench slang word m eaning “ c o p s ” . T he two p olicem en im m ed iat e l y t u r n roun d to ar rest th e yo u t h s , while their f r ien ds laugh at a n ickn am e that , as police, th ey have all been called at on e tim e or another.

W hen this episode is d iscu ssed after- wa r d s , som e of t h e p olic em en say th ey would ha ve just kept on walking and not a rrested an yone for “ su ch a tr ivial m at t e r ” . An other n otes that a few ye a rs ago, t h e youths would have had their ears boxed.

T he instru ctor u ses the episode to sh ow how the idea of what constitutes an insult can chan ge over the ye a rs , poin tin g out th at this is not just a subjective m atter and that

Sensitive issues are discussed in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere.

‘Behind the uniforms there are human beings who ask themselves questions about their profession and about how they do their jobs’

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 39

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th e stu d en ts gr ad u a lly com e to see th e con n ection between what they learn in the classroom and real-life situations.

Before continuin g, one of the instru c t o rs explains to the police that they were called “ c h i c k e n s ” becau se Pa ris police head quar- ters is built on the site of an old chicken fa rm .“ R e a l l y ? ”m u rm u r s on e of them who had n o id ea of this, while his colleagu es laugh.

F rançois D elor, a psychiatrist and ins- t r uctor at the C en tre, thin ks this reaction is i m p o r tan t from a m ethodological stan d - p o i n t .“ L a u g h t e r ,” he say s , “is a way of avo i- d in g con fron tat i o n . Lau ghin g toget her is sharing a kind of intim acy and that m akes it possible to work together in a clim ate of trust.”

T he instructor’s job is to m onitor eve- r ything that is said an d don e du rin g the sessions an d also to spot cer tain expres- s i o n s , put them in a broad er context and use that to break down prejudices.

F red,who has spent 17 of his 40 year s as a policem an , tells how he was on ce gi ve n what he thought was a “stupid” order to a rrest all the G ypsies in the market in C h a r- l e r o i . Bu t a colleague supp or ted th e order, s ayin g that “regu lar checks, esp ecia lly of G y p s i e s , will cu rb cri m e .” F red retor t e d t h at “ m y job isn ’t to ar rest G ypsies ju st b ecau se th ey’re G ypsies” an d said it wo u l d b e b e tte r to d ep loy p la in cloth e s p olic e

who cou ld catch thieves red -h an ded , w h e- t h er t h e y wer e for e ign e r s o r B elgi a n s. F r e d ’s stor y abou t the clearly xe n o p h o b i c asp ect of a n o r d e r is m ore effect ive in c o m b atin g racist attitu des than any speech b ecau se it d oes n ot com e fr om on e of th e i n s t ru c t o r s bu t fr om a fellow policem an .

Am id jokes and frien dly chat in a conv i- vial at m o s p h e r e ,s e n s i t i ve an d seriou s su b- jects are raised qu ite easily. Bu t how can we be su re these policem en will in corp o r at e

in to their p rofession al lives som e of th e things they have seen and heard in these workshops an d behave m ore fairly towa r d s im m igrants in general?

D elor is firm ly convinced that exchanges like these have positive effects which m ay som e day in fluen ce the m in ds of these m en and change the w ay they act. “Words and exchanges which seem un im portan t some- tim es have su r p risin g effects in the lon g term .” H e adds that people tend to absorb as a “potential cognitive resou rce” s c at t e r e d

elem ents whose utility m ay not be obvious at the tim e.

T his seems to be con firmed by C hri s t i a n Raes, an assistant police com m issioner in B ru s s e l s. In a n in ter view in th e Belgi a n daily newspaper Le M a tin in July 1999, he said that during the training at the C entre “bonds were forged between m em bers of th e gr ou p an d som eth in g of th at has rem ained. I haven’t changed dram atically, bu t som etim es I look at thin gs in a d ifferent way an d also try to spend a bit more time lis- tening to m y m en.” T he C en tre’s workshops are u n dou btedly helpin g the fight again st racism and xe n o- p h o b i a . But changing behaviour pat t e rns that are d eeply rooted in a society is a long-hau l job whch depends, as eve r , on the enthusiasm an d determ i n ation of eve r yo n e . ■

Group work drawing on personal experience is a key feature of the Belgian police training courses against racism and xenophobia.

‘Laughter is a way of avoiding c o n f r o n tation. Laughing together is sharing a kind of i n t i m a cy which makes it possible to work together in a climate of trust’

+ � Centre pour l’égalité des chances et la lutte contre le racisme Rue de la Loi, 155 Résidence Palace 1040 Brussels. Tel: (32 2) 233 06 11 email: [email protected] http:/ / www.antiracisme.be Robin Oakley, Police Training concerning Migrants and Ethnic Relations: Practical Guide- lines, Council of Europe Publishing, 1994.

S I G N S O F TH E TI M ES

40 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

■ At m id n ight on D ecem b er 3 1 , t h e world will en ter the year 20 00 . F o r m onths, som etim es years, plans have

b een m ad e to celeb rate this special N ew Ye a r ’s E ve , especially in the C hr i s t i a n world.But what,if anything, does the date m ean to non-C hristians?

“D ecem ber 31 m ay herald a new year, a new century and a new m illennium , but for m e it’ll just be a norm al day,” says an a m u sed P. B a l a s u b r a m a n i a n , th e chief accou ntant of a large firm in the Ind ian city of M adras.

For a large part of hum an ity, the arri va l of the year 2000 will p ass com pletely u nn o- t i c e d . Bu t because globalization m eans fol- l owin g tren d s or sim ply becau se there is m oney to be m ade, m a ny people have yielded to the temptation to join the festivities.

Marketing the millennium

In Ind ia, a d ve rtising razzmatazz orches- trated by m illennium m arketeers has rea- ch ed m ost of th e popu lat i o n , than ks to satellite television. N ew D elhi is staging a “M illennium N ight C elebration”.Railway s t at i o n m a s t e rs will blow their wh istles to send trains off on prestigious trips around the su b-con tin en t. In m ost of In d ia’s m ajor tourist centres,from Agra, K hajuraho and Jaipur,all the hotels are booked up.Yet for m a n y In d ian s, m ostly H in d u s, th ere is really little to get worked up about.

Accord in g to th e V i k ra m S a mva t, t h e calendar of the H indus and Sikhs of nor- thern and western India, we are already in the year 2055, while the Sha ka , the coun - t ry ’s m ost wid ely u sed H in d u calen d ar , only clocks up 1920. As Indian C atholics m ark the en d of 19 99 , Bu d d hists will be e n j oyin g the year 2 54 2 an d M u slim s the year 1420 of the H egira.A hundred year s a g o, accord in g to an other an cien t H in d u c a l e n d a r , the sixth m illen n iu m of the K a l i y u ga era began , su pposed ly the wo r l- d’s last (see box).

When all’s said and don e, only th e we a l- thiest and m ost westernized Indians really feel concerned by the m illennium celebra- tions. “It’s a legacy of colonial tim es and a prod u ct of m arketin g,” s ays Bh u p in d er S i n g h , a practisin g Sikh who has r etired from the higher civil service and becom e a bu s i n e s s m a n . Bu t he ad m its he has gon e along with it all. H e is prom otin g Pa k i s t a n ’s m ost fam ou s classical sin ger, S h a f q at A l i K h a n , in In dia with the slogan “T he Star of the M illennium ”.

Another “ s t a r ” is th e islan d of Kat c h a l l , one of the N icobar Islan d s in the Bay of B e n g a l , which will be the first place in India to see the su nrise on N ew Ye a r ’s D ay 200 0.

T he m in istry of cu ltu re is cashing in on the event (as well as m aking up for India’s lack of infrastructure) by inviting seven luxur y ships from all over the world to anchor off the N icobar Islands for the big m om ent.

O ther ships are being encouraged to go to Tonga, in the m iddle of the P acific near the international dateline. To attract them , Tongan K ing Taufa’ahau Tupou IV has decreed a switch to sum m er daylight saving tim e on O ctober 3, thereby gaining 14 hours over G reenwich M ean T im e (G M T ) and m aking the archipelago the fir st place on earth to enter the “third m il- lennium ”. T his kind of thing has been done in the past. When P ope G regory XIII shortened the year 1582 by 10 days as part of his reform of the Julian calen- dar, it m eant that St Teresa of Avila died during the night of the 4th to the . . . 15th of O ctober.

Weddings and marathons T he U. S . M a rin e O bser vat o ry in T h a i-

land has put forward the controve rsial theory t h at the sun will rise at 7 a.m . on Ja n u a r y 1 a b ove the fron tier between M ya n m a r ( B u rm a) an d T hailand an d that this will be “the best place in the world to see in the mil- l e n n i u m .” Bu t while the T hais have a front s e at for th e big show, they m ay be giving it a m i s s. Like Laos, C a m b o d i a , M yanm ar and S ri Lanka,T hailan d is a cou ntr y where T h e- r avad a Bu d dhism is practised ; it celebrat e d its third m illen nium 543 ye a rs ago. W h at ’s m o r e , T hailand marks the new year in m id- A p ri l ,d u ring S o n g k ra n, the water festiva l .

All the sam e, som e attem pts are being m a d e to stir u p en th u siasm for th e ye a r 2000.T he Tourism Authority of T hailand ( TAT ) is organizin g even ts with a “new mil- l e n n i u m ” tag—m illen n iu m wed d in gs for 2,000 cou ples, a m illen n ium m arath on and a b ig seasid e con cer t . Bu t in South east Asia, which is struggling to recover from a t wo - year econom ic cri s i s , the “new m illen - nium ”is on the whole generating little real interest or extra vagant projects. T AT says ther e h as b een a 3 0 per cen t increase in

T HE YEAR 2000: WHO ’ S COMING TO THE PA RTY ? ◗ Jasmina Sopova

From Osaka to San Francisco, from Beijing to Moscow and Pretoria, millennium fever seems to have gripped most—but not all—of the planet

◗ UNESCO Courier journalist

CA L ENDA RS F OR ALL: We are in the year: ● 11 of the Heisei era, which corresponds to the reign of Japanese Emperor Akihito. ● 1420 of the Hegira, the Muslim era, which begins on the day when the prophet Muhammad left Mecca and went to Medina. ● 1999 of the Gregorian ca l e n d a r. Used all over the world, it is named after Pope Gregory XIII , who reformed the Julian calendar in 1582. The Julian calendar was itself a reform of the Roman calendar (starting from the date of the foundation of Rome) instituted by Julius Caesar. The Julian calendar began to be observed by Christians in the year 532, when the Church fixed the start of the Christian era as the presumed day of Christ’s birth. ● 5100 of the Ka l i y u ga e ra, the “age of c o n flicts”. According to Brahman cosmogony this is the last cosmic phase of human history. It is considered to have begun in 3102 B.C. at the end of the Great War which is the main topic of the Mahâbhârata epic. The era is supposed to end in the year 428,999. ● 5543 of the Buddhist era, which commemo- rates the death of Buddha. ● 5760 of the Jewish calendar, which is based on the Babylonian calendar, that starts from the supposed date of the creation of the world. ■

S I G N S O F TH E TI M ES

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 41

hotel reser vations for D ecember com pared with D ecember 1998, bu t nearly all of them have been by foreigners.

Japan has followed the We s t e rn calen dar sin ce 187 3, as par t of the m oder n i z at i o n p rocess it em barked on d u r in g th e M eiji Era. U ntil then, the country had used the lu n ar-solar Ta i i n t a i yo r e k i calen d ar d at i n g from the N ara Era (64 5 -79 4), Ja p a n e s e civilization’s golden age. F or nearly a cen- t u r y, t h o u g h , the Ja p a n e s e , especially those living in the countryside, went on celebra- ting the “old”N ew Year as well as the new o n e . And sin ce tradition d em an ds that tim e is m easu red again from zero when ever a new em peror com es to the throne, the Ja p a- n ese followed three d ifferen t calen dars at the sam e tim e.

T hese d ays the Ta i i n t a i yo r e k i is on ly o b s e r ved by a few sen tim en tal folk an d N ew Year is celebrated on D ecem ber 3 1. But though calendars com e and go, tradi- tions rem ain. And so the Japanese will be

m arkin g the N ew Year as their an cestor s d i d , with an cien t gam es an d d ecorat i o n s , f o r m al cloth es an d special “ l u c k y ” f o o d dishes.

O n e we l l - k n own restau rateu r has announced grandly he will m ake a Ta le of G e n j i m e a l , r e f e rrin g to a fam ou s 1 ,00 0- year-old classic n ove l . O n the m en u will be 35 dishes for four gourm ets. All for a m ere $8,000. M ore accessible will be the wildly popu lar television p rogram me Kohaku Uta G a s s e n, a con test b etween the ye a r ’s best m ale and fem ale singers,which m ost Japa- nese watch eve r y D ecem ber 31—esp ecially this year when the Y2K com puter bug will encourage people to stay at hom e.

To the west of the Land of the Rising S u n , the new Gregorian year will be gr e e t e d with typical panache in C hina.Beijing city council has gone to great expense, helped by gen erous d onors in H on g Kon g, to bu i l d a “C hinese Altar of the C en tur y ” .T he bu i l- din g com plex, which in clu d es several exh i-

The church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. To mark the year 2000, the Palestinian Authority has launched a major construction and renovation programme in the town.

bition halls,has cost som e $24 m illion and m obilized som e 200 architects and art his- t o ri a n s. T he rotatin g altar, 47 m etres across, has a huge stage which can accom m odate m ore th an a thou sand sin gers and d an cers. You en ter it th rou gh a 30 0-m etre-lon g “ T un n el of T i m e ” , d e c o r ated in sid e with br on ze reliefs sh owin g scen es from the country’s 5,000-year history.

But the older generation prefer to wait until F ebruary to celebrate the start of the Year of the D ragon, and rem ote provinces will m ostly ignore the fuss about the third m i l l e n n i u m . You n g people howe ver can ’t wait for N ew Ye a r ’s Eve , an d bru sh asid e the rebukes of the ardent defenders of the C hinese calend ar who pu blicly oppose this “biblical” anniversary, as well as the insis- tence of astronom ers, who have taken the m atter seriously and are trying to explain t h at the n ew m illen n iu m will n ot in fa c t arr ive until a year later.

I n d e e d , in a calen d ar begin n in g with

S I G N S O F TH E TI M ES

42 The UN ESCO Courier - December 1999

the year 1, a new century does not strictly b e gin u n til the year 101, an d so on u n til 2 0 0 1 . T he G regorian calen d ar in its pre- sent for m has on ly existed for 418 ye a rs , an d it is really 2,044 ye a rs old when seen as a direct descendant of the Julian calendar. W h at ’s m ore, C h r ist was actua lly bor n a few years before the official C hristian date of his birth. So perhaps it’s not surprising t h at youn g C on fucians, B u d d h i s t s , Ta o i s t s , M u s l i m s , C h r istia ns an d atheists h ave conclu d ed th at th e year 20 00 ju st rep re- sents a worldwide desire to enter the new m illenn iu m as qu ickly as possible—cele- b r atin g an d m akin g m on ey at the sam e tim e—and are keen to take part.

T he sam e en thusiasm can be fou n d in the Jord an va l l e y. On the Israeli sid e there is “N azareth 2000” an d on the Palestin ian side “Bethlehem 2000”. Luckily the share-out of the holy places is fair to the two peoples w h i c h , despite the small nu m ber of Chri s- tians am on g them, are doing u p these sites, which date back to the dawn of C hri s t i a n i t y.

In a region with so m any celebrat i o n s , there are countless welcoming banners. A f t e r c e l e b r ations to m ark the 3 ,000th an n ive r- s a r y of Je rusalem an d 50 ye a rs of Israeli his- t o r y have been played down becau se of the stalled peace process, I s r a e l ’s Lod in tern a- tional airp o rt is build in g an extension cal- led “Ben G ur ion 2000” (after the cou ntr y ’s first prim e m inister) to welcom e the pilgri m s

w h o, b e t ween this C hr istm as an d Easter 2 0 0 1 , will clim b the Via D olorosa which symbolizes the life of C hri s t .

Will there be six m illion of them ,as the Vatican pred icts, or three to four m illion as Israel has provided for, or the 2.5 m illion foreseen by the pessim ists, who are prepa- r ing for only a 20 per cent increase in tou- rist num bers?

Storm in a wine-glass? For Bethlehem, the year 2 000 is an eco-

nom ically im portant one.Experts forecast t h at the influ x of tou rists will boost th e in com e of th e Palestin ian popu lation by $100 per capita du ring the ye a r. T he Wo r l d Ban k has asked don or cou ntr ies to b eat the T hree Wise M en to it in Bethlehem , by pro- viding $85 m illion to do up the town.T he private sector has also com e up with funds to build 6,000 extra hotel room s.

But the m illennium has also produced som e inappropriate tidings. A world away from th e r osa ri e s , th e m erch an ts of th e Tem ple have had the ultim ate bad taste to offer a “ Je rusalem 2000” C a b e rn et win e. Its la bel shows the D om e of the Rock, Islam ’s third m ost holy place (after M ecca an d M ed in a) despite the fact th at Islam prohibits con su m ption of alcohol. A storm in a wine-glass? T he m atter has been taken up with the Arab League.

In the Arab wo r l d , Egypt h as decid ed

In Shanghai, a young couple watch the Bell of the Century.

to be the cham pion celeb ran t of the m il- l e n n i u m , an d is avoid in g any religious ove r- t o n e s.T he occasion coin cid es with the start of ancient Egypt’s seventh m illennium , so the celebrations will naturally take place at the foot of the G iza pyram ids. M ore than a th ou san d p erfor m e r s will gath er on a 20,000-square-m etre stage and join Jean- M ichel Jarre,a F rench com poser who spe- cializes in m ega-events, to present The 12 Drea ms of the Sun.

T he prod u cer s are happ y, as the $9.5 m illion spent on the project will be recove- red from som e 50,000 people expected to atten d with tickets ran gin g from $1 50 to $4 00 ap iece. Su ch su m s ar e beyon d the reach of m ost you n g E gyptians, who will be able to have a “place in the sun” for a m ore m odest am ount.

T he concert will begin at dusk on the last day of 1999 an d con tin ue un til dawn on the first day of 2000.When the fi rst ray of the sun appears in the Egyptian sky, a n ine- m etre-high golden pyram id will be placed on the C heops pyram id to m ark the birth of the “new m illennium ”.

H appy N ew Year! ■

With contributions from Indian journalist Utpal Borpujari ( N ew Delhi), Thai journalist Wanphen Sresthaputra (Bang- kok), Paris-based Japanese journalist Missawa Kano, Chi- nese journalists Li Xiguang and Huang Yan (Beijing) and French journalist Claudine Meyer (Isra e l )

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 43

CO N N EX I O N S

■ In Budapest (H ungary ) ,B ri t i s h ,F r e n c h and G erman pu blic rad io broad casters are m akin g a joint bid to open an F M

s t ation in 2000.T he venture is emblematic of the new world in which inter n ational radios are n av i g at i n g . Alm ost ove rn i g h t , the fall of the Iron Curtain radically called into question the tradition al m ission of th ese broad cas- t e rs—to sen d an oxygen balloon of inform a- tion to citizens living in one-party states or u n der repressive regi m e s.

N ot that this m ission has lost its rele- va n c e . Afghan istan an d C hin a are am ong Voice of A m e ri c a ’s top five m arkets, an d in the latter jam m in g is stan d ard practice, a m easu re of the broad caster’s un desirable i n flu e n c e , at least by C hin ese gove rn m e n t s t a n d a r d s. In times of crisis su ch as the recent K o s ovo confli c t , audien ces surge. F aced with the m ost d rastic bud get cuts in the history of G e r m an pub lic broad casting in 1 999, D eutsche We l l e ’s director general D ieter We i- rich rem ain ed ad am ant about the mission of an in tern ation al ser v i c e : “ Two third s of humanity live in countries without freedom of the press or inform at i o n . We regard it as ou r p a r ticular duty to provide them with unin- t e rrupted objective inform ation from credible s o u r c e s.”

A buoy for freedom But in many parts of the wo r l d , the end of

the C old War has taken a time-old ideologi c a l ed ge off the eq uat i o n , forcing intern at i o n a l b r o a d c a s t e rs to adju st rapidly to a radically n e w, m ore fragmented env i r o n m e n t . N o lon- ger can they claim to be the sole altern at i ve to censored gove rn ment broadcasts; no longer are they viewed as a freedom bu oy to som e, a s u b ve rs i ve force to others. F u rt h e rm o r e , i n n um erous developing cou ntri e s , newly elec- ted gove rnm en ts h ave yielded control ove r

IN T ERN AT IONAL RA DIO MAKES NEW WAV ES ◗ Cynthia Guttman

Once the sole source of outside news for many countries, international public broadcasters have had to adapt to a new competitive environment

◗ UNESCO Courier journalist, with additional reporting from Canada by Anne Pelouas

the airwave s , often openin g the way for a plu - rality of opinion s to be expressed on new F M ( f r e q u e n cy m od ulation ) stat i o n s.

“Becau se of a differen t political context, radios whose m ain goal was to provide infor- m ation to cou n tries that didn ’t have access t o an y ou t sid e n e ws sou r ce s h ave h ad to ch an ge th e ir tu n e an d d e velop on tr an s- m ission m ed iu m s other than short wave ,” explain s H u gu es Salord , d irector of in ter- n ation al affa i r s at Rad io F ra n ce In te rn a- t i o n a l e . In a sense, they have had to lear n to “sell them selve s ” on m arkets with en ti- rely differen t cu ltu res an d expectat i o n s ,b e it in Eu rope, A f ri c a , Asia or Latin A m e ri c a . In short ,e x t e r n al broad casters h ave had to becom e both local and international.

T he process of adaptin g to open m arkets has been tantam ount to an intensive im mer- sion cou rse for external broad casters. In a d e r e g u l ated audiovisual lan dscape, the firs t m ove for all broadcasters was to strike up

p a rt n e rships with F M stations arou nd the world for rebroadcast of their progr a m m e s ,o r to acquire F M transmitters to set up local fre- q u e n c i e s , a m or e expen sive op tion . As a m e d i u m , F M represents a quan tum qu ality leap over crackly short wave ,a l l owing broad- c a s t e rs to speak faster an d in sert music into p r o gr a m m e s.

T he BBC , accord in g to the World Serv i- c e ’s European news and current affa i rs ed i- tor Mark Bray n e , was “streets ahead of almost a nybod y else” in build ing u p F M netwo r k s , s t a rting with F in land in 1987. In 19 90, t h e World Service was in Rom an ia just after the fall of the C omm u nist regime sign ing deals with em erging radio stations and has built up a network of 97 local rebroadcasters. A recent stu dy shows that th e British broad aster has captu red 17 per cent of the Romanian radio a u d i e n c e :“ We have become a national broad- caster in a sense.We cover Rom anian news in qu ite som e detail bu t with BBC jou rn a l i s t i c

In the Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang (People’s Republic of China) a Mongolian boy listens to the radio in uplands near the border with Kazakhstan.

44 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

CO N N EX I O N S

values em bed d ed into a solid analytical fa r e of inter n ational news,” s ays Bray n e .

A f ri c a , where broad cast markets deregu - l ated faster than in A s i a , is a particularly cove- ted zone. W h e r e ver an extern al b road caster can get onto F M , au d iences shoot u p. T h e BBC and RF I pull in huge audien ces in their f o rmer A f rican colonies while Ethiopia ranks am ong VO A ’s top five markets. RF I has star- ted to open u p F M relays outside West A f ri- can capitals, in the secon d and third largest c i t i e s , and is introducing locally produced pro- gramm es in the Bambara lan guage in M ali.

“RF I is practically perceived as a full-fle d- ged nation al rad io ser v i c e , with au dien ce scores of u p to 30 to 40 per cen t of the F ren ch-speakin g popu lat i o n ,” s ays Erlend s C a l a bu i g, director of foreign lan guages. T h e F ren ch broadcaster is n ow tr ying to m ake inroads ou tsid e the francophone zone, w i t h the recent opening of an FM station in G hana and one to follow in Lagos. “T here is a clear d esire for coun tries in the region to break away from their zone of trad iton al cu ltu ral i n flu e n c e ,” s ays Salord. “I think anglophon e A f r ica is takin g a gr owing interest in the fran- cophone wo r l d , not only in a linguistic sense, bu t also from a political, econom ic and cul- tu ral stand poin t.”

Demand for accurate information C l e a r l y, th ere is a stron g d em an d for

e x t e rnal broad casters , an d not on ly as pro- v i d e rs of intern ation al news. “T here is fa r gr e ater com petition on a large nu m ber of m a r k e t s , bu t not always for accu rate and i m p a r tial news,” s ays C aroline T h o m s o n , d epu ty chief exe c u t i ve of the BBC Wo r l d S e rv i c e . “In m any cou n tri e s , a lot of m usic s t ation s have come on the air as a resu lt of d e r g u l at i o n , but news is quite h eavily regu - l ated or of ve ry poor qu ality an d su bject to consid erable local in terference.”

Voice of A m e ri c a ’s director Sandy Unger c o n c u rs that there is a strong demand in emer- gin g d em ocracies for balan ced an d accurat e i n f o rm at i o n . “Where media are not fully deve- l o p e d , where there are crim in al libel laws and all sor ts of con straints on free flow of infor- m at i o n , reliable inform ation ve r y often has to come from the outside,” he affirm s. E v i d e n c e seem s to speak for itself. Pointing to VOA ’s 4 00 affil i ate F M stations in Latin A m e ri c a , he asks: “ W hy are they sign ing up for this if there is n o need, if they were confid ent th at i n f o rm ation is bein g provided in their socie- t i e s ? ”

While all the major broadcasters are pre- sen t on local F M s, they each have a m ission to u phold.T he BBC World Service stand s by its reputation for trust and quality, r e p e at e d l y singled out in its au d ience sur ve y s. Voice of A m e ri c a , which becam e an in depend ent

fed eral en tity in O ctober, u phold s its m an - d ate to report on world news and on A m e ri- can politics, society and culture. RF I pri d e s itself on presen ting a F rench reading of the n ews that reflects the d ive rsity of op in ion in the cou n try. DW ’s d irector D ieter We i ri c h underlines the broadcaster’s role in “ f o rm i n g an in ter n ational awareness ab ou t the n ew m o d e r n Germ a ny.” But how this mission is c a rr ied ou t has changed , because F M calls for a m ore u pbeat ,i n t e r a c t i ve style of pro- gramm ing than short - wave broadcasting. A n d because F M stations are locally based, b r o a d- c a s t e rs have to understand and cultivate their n iche au diences.

“It is really a m atter of zoom in g in ,” explain s RF I’s C alabu i g .“ We have m ove d away from reaching an indiscri m i n ate mass of l i s t e n e rs via one mean s of transm ission span - nin g the whole globe to a focu s on prox i m i t y, wh ich m ean s cat e ring to the expectation s of l i s t e n e rs.” While intern ation al news remains the backbon e of all the broadcasters ’ p r o- gram min g an d has been sign ificantly expan- ded over the past few ye a rs to provide round - the-clock cove r a g e , menu s have also becom e more eclectic, mixing music and features adap- ted to different regi o n s. Local production has taken on a heightened import a n c e .

F rom 19 89 on wa r d s , the BBC start e d r e c ruiting youn ger people in the former Eas- t e r n bloc who were fam iliar with the target a r e a . In Bucharest and Sofia ,R F I ’s subsidiari e s broadcast a m ix of locally p rodu ced pro- gramm es alon g with others from Pa ris offe-

ring a more Franco-European angle on eve n t s. T here is a stron g conv i c t i o n , voiced by all European external broadcasters ,t h at they have a role to play in “ a c c o m p a nying a dialogue bet- ween C en tral an d Eastern Eu ropean cou n - t ri e s , to offer an open ing onto Eu rope,” a s C a l a buig puts in. And there is also a comm on responsib ility towards bu ilding a u n ifie d E u r o p e : Radio E, a current events progr a m m e , is put together with contri butions from seve r a l public European broadcasters , giving listeners a richer read ing of regional issues.

Local language broadcasting Broadcasting in local langu ages is one of

the keys to reachin g new au dien ces. R F I ’s e f f o rts to break into an glophon e A f rica will be stalled until the broadcaster can afford to m ove in to local lan gu ages, nam ely Swa h i l i an d H au sa, as VOA , BBC an d DW have all d o n e . T he BBC has in trod uced several lan - guages spoken in the newly independent repu- blics of the form er Soviet U n ion , n o t a b l y U z b e k ,A z e ri , U k r a i n i a n , Kazakh an d Ky r- g y z . At the same tim e, it has shut d own other lan gu age services—m ostly ve rn acular lan - gu ages in We s t e r n Eu rope—which d oesn ’t n e c e s s a rily m ean loss of in flu e n c e .

T he BBC ’s strategy is to target elites, an d m ore often than not this can be done in E n g l i s h . “When we have cu t lan gu ages, i t ’s tended to be because we thought that they were n o lon ger effective rather than because our budget had been slashed,” says T hom - s o n .T he BBC’s m ost recen t decision to pull out of G erman was taken after stu dies sho- wed that m ost of the broad caster’s au dien ce in the G erm an-speaking world listened to its program m es in En glish. In the U. S . ,t h e World Ser v i c e ’s au dien ce has even recor- ded growth in recent year s.

F aced with cu tbacks, DW is en d in g its p r o gramm es in Japanese an d Spanish, and is in the process of closing several other language s e rv i c e s , in clu ding C zech, S l ovak and H un- g a ri a n ,j u d ging that the countries where these lan gu ages are spoken are now “ e s t a b l i s h e d democracies with a gr e at va riety of media ava i- l a b l e ” . It is howe ver expan d in g its Russian and English-language progr a m m e s , and aims to make headway in the Asian market via the A s i a S at 2 sat e l l i t e . Regardless of bu d g e t c o n s t r a i n t s , all the m ajor playe rs have in tro- du ced broad casts in Alban ian and M acedo- n i a n ,r e flectin g the pri o rity they put on being on air as fast as possible when political cir- cu mstances wa rr a n t .

In troducing new languages may be at the h e a rt of broadcasters ’s t r at e gies in emergi n g dem ocracies and developing coun tri e s , but it costs money.While all broadcasters underline their ed itorial in d epen den ce from gove r n - m e n t , they all rely on them for fun din g, a n d

IN T ERN AT ION A L BROA DCAS T ING ’ S BIG LEAGUE BBC World Service : 1,120 hours reaching 143 million listeners weekly in 43 languages; budget: £175 million ($280 million) VOA (Voice of America): 870 hours reaching 91 million listeners weekly in 53 languages; budget: $106 million* D W(Deutsche Welle): 718 hours reaching 28 m i l- lion listeners weekly in 36 languages; budget: DM606 million ($336.6 million) RFI (Radio France Internationale)**: 313 hours reaching 45 million listeners weekly in 20 lan- guages; budget: FF754 million ($125.6 million)

*Salaries and reporting costs only. Excludes transmission costs. ** Including its subsidiary, RMC Moyen Orient.

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 45

CO N N EX I O N S

non e has been graced with a generou s in flu x over the past decad e.VOA ’s director San dy Un ger fears “ d r a m atic cuts” if Congress only grants the service a straightline budget for fis- cal 2000, which would mean absorbing a 4.8 per cent cost of living increase.T he World Ser- v i c e ’s budget has declin ed in real term s ove r the past eigh t ye a rs. R F I ’s h as been stable. DW ’s bu dget for 1999 was reduced by D M 30 million ($16.6 million /4.7 per cen t), a n d will be slashed by a further 10 per cent to D M 546 million ($302.3 m illion ), up to the ye a r 2003—seem ingly a turnabout from last ye a r , when the newly elected gove rnm en t promi- sed “an improvem ent in the way the coun try represents itself to the outsid e wo r l d ”a c c o r- ding to We i ri c h . Besides six language closures, over 700 jobs are to be cu t.

In the early 1990s, Rad io C an ad a Inter- n ationale (RC I), a smaller player on the wo r l d s t a g e , cu t seven of its 1 5 lan gu ages an d s h runk its staff, and nearly went off the air in 1996 wh en it was was saved at the eleve n t h hou r by a fed eral gove r nm ent gr a n t .F l o ri a n S a u va g e a u , a professor at Laval U nive rs i t y ( C a n a d a ) , argu es that the crisis reflected the g ove rn m e n t ’s lack of in terest in inter n at i o- n al culu ral relat i o n s. RC I n ow aim s to p ut f o r ward the country ’s economic strength and cu ltu ral d ive rs i t y, and is boostin g broadcas- tin g to Ch in a and A f ri c a .

In this belt-tightening env i r o n m e n t ,o n e of the dilem m as is how to be present on all f r o n t s. In politically sen sitive zon es, e x t e r- nal radios have to maintain a short - wave pre- sen ce in ad d ition to their F M frequ encies an d satellite broad casting. T hen com es i nvestment in n ew technologi e s. T he Inter- n et is top pri o rity for all pu blic broadcasters. “ I t ’s the short wave of th e fu tu re,” a f firm s T h o m s o n . “T he trouble with F M is that yo u are ve ry su sceptible to local pressures,” s h e c o n t i n u e s , n otin g that at any on e tim e, t h e World Ser vice has a cou ple of F M stat i o n s off th e air because an item has offen ded the p owe rs in place. “If you are lookin g at how to m ain tain vib ran t in tern ational broadcastin g in 20 ye a rs tim e, yo u ’ ve got to invest in the I n t e rn et n ow. I t ’s a m u ch freer mediu m.”

Digitalizing short wave T han ks to the net, In dian an d Pa k i s t a n i

com m u n ities in Britain can , for exam ple, access programmes in H ind i and U rdu.V i e t- namese can do the same in their own language, whether they are in the U. S . or V i e t n a m .A l l b r o a d c a s t e rs are also keeping a close watch on World space—d irect reception via satellite on in divid ual dishes allowing for an exceptional qu ality—an d the im minent digi t a l i z ation of s h o rt wave , which is likely to gi ve this medium a n ew lease on life. D i gitalized short wave will

n ot only en su re higher listening qu ality, bu t also redu ce production costs, a l l owin g for a bu rst of new stations to go on air and cater to increasingly specific aud ience segmen ts.

M a ny of the cou n tr ies where d er egu - l ation is u n d er way inh erited state br oad - castin g ser vic es from th eir for m er im pe- r ia l p owe r s. N ow, t h e lat t er a re h e lp in g the liberalization process alon g, often by p r ovid in g train in g cou r se s an d t echn ical a s s i s t a n c e . R F I r ecalls th at its lau n ch of the first F M station in D akar (Sen egal) in 1991 played a significan t role in “ o p e n i n g u p an d en r ichin g the rad io lan d scape an d r e i nv i g o r atin g n ational p u blic ra dio.” F o r VOA ’s U n ger, in a n u m b er of d eve l o p i n g c o u n t ri e s ,“ i n t e rn ation al broad casters are s e r vin g as a n e xam p le of wh at ca n b e d e ve l o p e d .” W h i c h e ver t ech n ology win s ou t —a n d c olo ssa l in ve st m e n t s ar e a t st a ke —on ly c o n t e n t s c an gi ve ext e r n a l b r o a d c a s t e rs th e cu ttin g ed ge. T heir gr e a- te st asset , fo r Salo rd , lies in th eir e xp er - t i s e , k n ow - h ow an d wor ld wid e n e t wo r k of cor r e s p o n d e n t s. “ I n t e rn at io n a l r ad io b r o a d c a s t e rs have a role to play in d ecr y p- tin g th e com p le xity of t h e world we live i n . T h is is our job, n ot to gi ve valu e ju d g- m en ts or lessons bu t to provid e facts a n d elem en ts that help th e listen er in for m i n g h is or h er own op in ion .” ■

In Tanzania, Rwandan Hutu refugees stand on a mound to get better radio reception.

46 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

TA L K I N G TO …

WA NG A RI MU TA MAAT H A I : K EN YA’S GREEN MIL I TA N T A noted environmental and pro-democracy activist hopes the next millennium will see a new African leadership that puts people first

You once said that the quality of the environment cannot be improved unless and until the living conditions of ordinary people are improved. Could you enlarge on this?

If you want to save the environm ent you sh ou ld protect th e peop le firs t , because hum an beings are part of biologi- cal diversity. And if we can’t protect our own species, what’s the point of protec- ting tree species?

It som etim es looks as if poor people are d e s t r oyin g the env i r o n m e n t . But th ey are so preoccu pied with their sur v i val that they are n ot con cer ned abou t the lon g-term damage they are doing to the env i r o n m e n t sim ply to m eet their m ost basic n eed s.

So it is ironic that the poor people who depend on the environm ent are also p a r tly responsib le for its d estr u c t i o n . T hat’s why I insist that the living condi- tions of the poor m ust be im proved if we really want to sa ve our environm ent.

F or exam ple, in certain regions of K enya, wom en walk for m iles to get fire- wood from the forests, as there are no trees left nearby. When fuel is in short supply, wom en have to walk further and further to find it. H ot m eals are ser ved less frequently, nutrition suffers,and hun - ger increases. If these wom en had enough resources they would not be depleting valuable forest.

What is at stake in the forests of Kenya and East Africa today?

Sin ce the begin ning of this centu ry, there has been a clear tendency to cu t d own indigenou s forests an d to replace them with exotic species for comm ercial e x p l o i t at i o n . We ’ ve now becom e m ore aware of what this invo l ves an d have reali- zed that it was wrong to cut d own ind ige- n ou s forests, thereby destroyin g our ri c h b i o l o gical dive rs i t y. Bu t mu ch d am age has alread y been don e.

When the G reen Belt M ovem ent (see box page 47) started its cam paign in 1977 to plant trees, K enya had about 2.9 per cent of forest cover. Today the forested area has further dwindled to around two

per cent. We are losing m ore trees than we are planting.

T he other im portant issue is that the East African environm ent is very vulne- rable. We are very close to the Sahara desert, and experts have been warning that the desert could expand southwards like a flood if we keep on felling trees indiscrim inately, since trees prevent soil erosion caused by rain and wind. By clea- r ing rem aining patches of forests we are in essen c e crea tin g m an y m icro-Sah ara deserts. We can already see evidence of this phenom enon.

We hold civic education sem inars for rural people, especially farm ers, as part of cam paign s t o r aise p u blic awa r e n e s s about environm ental issues. If you were to ask a hundred farm ers how m any of them rem em ber a spring or a stream that has dried up in their lifetim e, alm ost 30 of them would raise their hands .

What has your Green Belt Movement (GBM) achieved and in particular to what extent has it prevented environmental degradation in Kenya?

T he m ost notable achievem ent of the G BM in m y view has been in raising envi- r on m en tal awaren ess am on g or din ar y citizens, especially rural people. D ifferent groups of people now realize that the environm ent is a concern for everybody an d n ot sim p ly a con cer n for th e

governm ent. It is partly because of this awareness that we are now able to reach out to decision-m akers in the govern - m ent. O rdinary citizens are challenging them to protect the environm ent.

Secondly, the G BM introduced the id ea of en viron m en tal c on ser vat i o n through trees because trees m eet m any basic needs of rural com m unities. We started out by planting seven trees in a sm all park in N airobi in 1977. At that tim e we had no tree nurser y, no staff and no funds, only a conviction that ordinary country people had a role to play in sol- ving environm ental problem s. We went on from there and now we ha ve planted over 20 m illion trees all over K en ya.

T he act of planting trees conveys a sim ple m essage. It suggests that at the very least you can plant a tree and im pro- ve your habitat. It increases people’s awa- reness that they can take control of their e nv i r o n m e n t , wh ic h is t he first step toward greater participation in society. Sin ce the trees we h ave pla nted are visible, they are the greatest am bassadors for our m o vem ent.

Despite the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 and the Kyoto Climate summit in 1997, there has been no significant progress in environmental protection programmes and campaigns at a global level. Why?

U nfortunately, for m any world leaders developm ent still m eans extensive far- m ing of cash crops, expensive hydroelec- tric dam s,hotels,superm arkets,and luxu - r y item s, which plu n d er hu m an a nd natural resources. T his is short-sighted and does not m eet people’s basic needs— for adequate food, clean water, shelter, local clinics, inform ation and freedom .

As a result of this craze for so-called d e ve l o p m e n t , e nvironm en tal protection has taken a back seat.T he problem is that the people who are responsible for m uch of the destruction of the environm ent are precisely those who should be providing leadership in environm ental protection cam paigns. But they are not doing so.

‘The act of planting trees conveys a simple message. It suggests that at the very least you can plant a tree and improve your habitat. It increases people’s awareness that they can ta ke control of their environment, which is the first step toward greater participation in society ’

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 47

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Also, political power now is wielded by those who have business interests and close links with m ultinational corpora- tions (M N C s). T he only aim of these M N C s is to m ake profit at the expense of the environm ent and people.

We also kn ow that m any world political l e a d e rs are per su ad ed by M N Cs not to pay atten tion to d eclaration s m ad e in in tern a- tional environ men tal con ferences. I stron - gly believe that as citizens we shou ld refu - se to be at the m ercy of these corp o r at i o n s. C o rp o r ations can be extrem ely m erciless, as they have no human fa c e .

You started your career as an academic. Later you became an environmentalist, and now you are called a pro-democra cy activist. How would you describe your evolution in the last 25 years?

Few environ m en talists tod ay are wo r- ried about the we l fare of bees, bu t t e r fli e s

A 20 - MIL L ION -T REE GREEN BELT

In a country where women play a marginal rolein political and social affairs, 59-year-old Wa n- gari Muta Maathai’s achievements stand out as an exception. A biologist, she was the first woman from East Africa to receive a doctorate, to become a professor and chair a department—all at the Uni- versity of Nairobi.

Maathai began to be active in the National Council of Women of Kenya in 1976 and it was through the Council that she launched a tree-plan- ting project called “Save the Land H a ra m b e e” (a Swahili word meaning let’s all pull together). The project was renamed the Green Belt Movement (GBM) in 1977.

The GBM initiated programmes to promote and protect biodiversity, to protect the soil, to create jobs especially in rural areas, to give women a positive image in the community and to assert their leadership qualities.

The overall aim of the GBM has been to create public awareness of the need to protect the envi- ronment through tree planting and sustainable management. Nearly 80 per cent of the 20 million trees planted by the GBM have survived. At pre- sent the GBM has over 3,000 nurseries, giving job opportunities to about 80,000 people, most of them rural women.

In 1986 the GBM established a Pan-African Green Belt Network and has organized work- shops and training programmes on environ- mental awareness for scores of individuals from other African countries. This has led to the adop- tion of Green Belt methods in Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Lesotho, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe.

Maathai, who is a member of the UN Secre- t a ry General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament, has won 14 international awards, including the prestigious Right Livelihood Award. She won the award, presented by a Swedish foundation and often referred to as an Alternative Nobel Prize, in recognition of her “contributions to the well- being of humankind”.

In a country where single-party rule prevailed for decades, Maathai has been teargassed and severely beaten by police during demonstra t i o n s to protect Kenya’s forests.

“The government thinks that by threatening me and bashing me they can silence me,” says Maathai. “But I have an elephant’s skin. And somebody must raise their voice.”

Maathai, a mother of three children, is cur- rently involved in a struggle to save the 2,50 0 - a c r e Karura forests, northwest of Nairobi, where the government wants to build housing complexes.

■

an d trees alone. T hey kn ow that it is n ot possible to keep the environm en t pu re if you have a gove r n m ent th at does n ot con trol polluting in d ustries an d d eforesta- t i o n .

In Kenya , for example, real estate deve- l o p e rs have been allowed to go in to the m id dle of in digen ous forests an d bu i l d e x p e n s i ve houses. As concern ed ind ivi- d uals we should oppose that . When yo u s t a rt inter vening at that leve l , you fin d yo u rself in direct con fron tation with poli- cy - m a k e rs an d you start to be called an a c t i v i s t .

I was teaching at the U niversity of N airobi in the 1970s, when I felt that the acad em ic rights of wom en professors were not being respected because they were wom en. I becam e an activist at the u n i ve rs i t y, in sistin g that I wanted my r ights as an academ ic .

48 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

TA L K I N G TO …

M eanwhile,I found m yself confronted by other issues that were directly related to m y work but were not clear to m e at the outset, like hum an rights. T his direct - ly led m e to another area, governance. As a result I was drafted into the pro-dem o- cracy cam paign.

I realized in the 1970s that in a young dem ocracy like ours it was very easy for leaders to becom e dictators. As this hap- p en ed th ey star ted u sin g n at i o n a l resources as though they were their per- sonal property. I realized that the consti- tution had given them powers to m isuse official m achiner y.

So I becam e involved in the pro- dem ocracy m ovem ent and pressed for constitutional reform s and political space to ensure freedom of thought and expres- sion. We cannot live with a political sys- tem that kills creativity and produces cowardly people.

With your academic qualifications you could have lived a comfortable life in the U.S. or e l s ewhere in the West. But you decided to come back and settle down in Kenya. In the

last 25 years, you have been verbally abused, threatened, beaten, put behind bars and on many occasions forbidden to leave the c o u n t ry. Have you ever regretted returning to Kenya and becoming an activist?

I did not deliberately decide to beco- m e an activist, but I have never regretted the fact that I decided to stay here and to contribute to the developm ent of this country and m y region. I know that I have m ade a little difference.

M any people com e up to m e and tell m e that m y work has inspired them .T his gives m e great satisfaction because in the earlier days, especially during the dicta- torship, it was difficult to speak.

U ntil a few years ago, people used to com e up to m e in the street and whisper “I am with you and I am praying for you.“ T hey were so scared of being identified with m e that they did not want to be heard. I know a lot of people were afraid of talking to m e and being seen with m e because they m ight be punished.

I have been a greater positive force by staying here and going through trials and tribulations than if I had gone to other countries. It would have been very diffe- rent to live in the West and say m y coun- try should do this and that. By being here I encourage m any m ore people.

Do you think you were subjected to virulent attacks and abuses because you questioned men’s decisions?

Ou r m en think A f rican wom en should be d epend ent and subm issive , d e fin i t e l y not better than their h usban d s. T here is n o d oubt th at at first m any people opposed m e becau se I am a wom an an d resen ted the id ea that I had strong opin ion s.

I know that at tim es m en in positions of influence, including P resident D aniel Arap M oi, r idiculed m e. At one tim e M em bers of P arliam ent accused m e and ridiculed m e for being a divorced wom an. I have felt that deep inside they were hoping that by calling into question m y wom anhood I would be subdued. Later they realized they were wrong.

In 1989, for exam ple, we had a big confrontation with the authorities when we were fighting to save U huru P ark in N airobi. I argued that it would be ridicu- lous to destroy this beautiful park in the centre of the city and replace it with a m ulti-storeyed com plex.

U huru P ark was the only place in N airobi where people could spend tim e with their fam ilies outdoors. T he park was a wonderful place for people to go becau - se it was a place where no one bothered them .

When I launched the cam paign oppo - sing the construction of the “P ark-m ons- ter“, as the project later cam e to be known, I was ridiculed and accused of not u n d e r sta n d in g d e ve l o p m e n t . I d id n ’t

‘At one time Members of Parliament accused me and ridiculed me for being a divorced woman. I have felt that deep inside they were hoping that by calling into question my womanhood I would be subdued. Later they realized they were wrong’

Nairobi

Tanzania

0 100 km Indian Ocean

Uganda

Sudan Ethiopia

K EN YA

Mombasa

Kakamega

Kisumu Nakuru

Nyen Embu

Garissa

In Madagascar, a woman plants rice in the ashes of a felled area of forest, home to the last survivors of a lemur species.

K EN YA FACT FIL E Republic of Kenya (Jamhuri ya Kenya) A former British colony, gained independence in 1963 and became a republic the following year. Area: 582,646 sq.km Capital: Nairobi Population: 28.4 million Languages: Kiswahili, English Life expectancy at birth: 52 years Adult literacy rate: 79.3 % GDP per capita: $372 President: Daniel T. Arap Moi Monetary Unit: Kenya Shilling (74 shillings=$1 US)

Source: UNDP Human Development Report 1999

TA L K I N G TO …

A member of Kenya’s Green Belt movement.

study developm ent but I do know that you need space in a city. F ortunately oth er n on -gove rn m en tal organ izat i o n s and thousands of ordinary people joined our protests and finally the park was saved.

T he governm ent, which wanted to destroy that park, has since declared it a national heritage.T hat’s wonderful.T hey

could have done that without fighting and without ridiculing m e. What made you stand in the presidential elections in 19 97? Despite your popularity, why didn’t you win a sizeable number of votes?

I decided to stand for election for several reasons. In 1992, when a m ulti- party system was legalized in K enya for the fir st tim e, I tried very hard with other

political groups to unite the opposition, but in vain.When there were m any oppo- sition candidates running for the presi- dency, I withdrew from the cam paign.

As expected, the opposition lost those elections and everybody now accepts that the cam paign we launched for them to unite was right. We wanted to form a governm ent of national unity within the

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TA L K I N G TO …

‘This generation of Africa n leaders will go down in history as a very irresponsible one that has brought Africa to its knees. During the past three deca d e s , A f r i ca has suffered from a lack of visionary and altruistic leaders committed to the welfare of their people’

opposition in 1992. T his is exactly what they are now clam ouring for.

In the 1997 general elections, my idea wa s to persu ade the opposition to unite and fie l d a stron g candidate from one ethn ic commu - nity against the rulin g Kenya A f rican N at i o- n al Un ion (KAN U).1 But I was called a tri- b alist by som e opposition groups for proposing that id ea. When all m y effor ts to u n ite the opposition fa i l e d , I decided to ru n for president.

Bu t d urin g th e cam paign I also cam e to realize that in this coun tr y it is ve r y diffic u l t to get elected withou t m on ey. I d id n ’t h ave m o n e y. I realized that it d oesn’t m atter how good you are, h ow h on est you are an d how p r o - d e m o c r atic you are, if you d on ’t have m on ey to gi ve t o th e voter you wo n ’t get elected.So I lost.

All this gave m e a new experience. N ow I can speak as an insider. I also rea - lized that people here are not yet ready for dem ocracy and we need a lot of civic edu- cation and political consciousness. People here are still controlled by ethnicity and vote along ethnic lines. T he ethnic ques- t ion b ecam e a ve r y im por tan t issu e during the last elections.

Despite having enormous natural resources A f r i ca still lags behind other continents in terms of development and growth. Why is this?

Poor leaders h i p, without any d oubt. T h i s g e n e r ation of A f rican lead ers will go down in history as a very irresponsible one that has brou ght A f rica to its kn ees. D u rin g the past

thr ee d eca des, A f r ica h as su ffered fr om a lack of visionary an d altruistic lead ers com - m itted to the welfare of their people.

T here are historical reasons for this. Just before independence was granted to m any African countries, young Africans were prom oted by colonial rulers to posi- tions until then unoccupied by the local people and were trained to take over power from the colonial adm inistration.

T he new black ad m in istrat o rs an d burgeoning elites enjoyed the sam e eco- nom ic and social life-styles and privileges that the im perial adm inistrators enjoyed. T he only difference between the two in term s of the objectives for the country was the colour of their skin.

In the process, the A f rican lead ers aban - doned their people, an d in ord er to maintain their hold on power they did exactly what the colon ial system was doin g, n am ely to pit on e c om m u n ity aga in st an ot he r. T h i s internal conflict continued for decades in m a n y A f r ican c ou n t r i e s , d r ain in g th eir scarce resources.

So what we n eed is to im prove ou r lea- d e rs h i p. If we don ’t there is no hope, b e c a u s e h i s t o ry teaches u s that if you can not protect w h at is your own som ebod y will com e an d take it. If ou r people can n ot protect them - s e l ves they will continue to be exploited.T h e i r resources will continue to be exploited.

It is also true that Western powers, especially the form er colonial m asters of this region, have continued to exploit Africa and have continued to work ver y closely with these dictators and irrespon - sible leaders. T hat is why we are now deep in debt, which we cannot repa y.

A f rica also needs assistance from in ter- n ation al gove rnm ents to im prove its eco- nom ic standin g. F or exam ple, m ost foreign aid to A f rica comes in the form of cu rat i ve social we l fare program mes su ch as fa m i n e r e l i e f, food aid, p o p u l ation con trol pro- gr a m m e s , refu gee cam ps, p e a c e - k e e p i n g forces and hu m an itarian mission s.

At the same tim e, hardly any resources are available for su stain able hum an deve- lopment program mes such as fu nction al e d u c ation and training, d e velopm en t of i n f r a s t ru c t u r e , food produ ction and pro- motion of entrepreneurs h i p. T here are no funds for the developm en t of cu ltural and social programm es which would em powe r people an d release their creat i ve energy.

I am hoping that in the new m illen nium a n ew leadership will em erge in A f ri c a ,a n d I hope this n ew leadership will show m ore c o n c e rn for the people an d utilize the con ti- n e n t ’s resou rces to help A f ricans get ou t of poverty. ■

Interview by Ethirajan Anbarasan, UNESCO Courier journalist

1.T he K en ya African N ational U nion (K AN U ) was form ed in 1960, won the country’s fi rst post- independence election in 1963, and has been in power ever since.

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Études à l’étranger 2000–2001 3 1 E ÉD I TI O N LI V RE ET CD - RO M ( PC/ M AC)

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Estudios en el extranjero 2000–2001 3 1 . A ED I CI Ó N LI BRO Y CD - RO M (PC/ M A C)

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In the next issue

The UNESCO Courier is available on the Internet:

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Fo c u s : International Year for the Culture of Peace 2000 ■ A new arena for individual action ■ The South: people adrift in fragile States ■ Three unsung peace-makers ■ The Community of Sant’Egidio: serving the poor,

working for peace ■ Jubilee 2000: a campaign to cancel Third World debt ■ Indian farmers against GMOs ■ Mali: the culture of peace in power ■ Towards a coalition of alternative movements

Fe a t u res include ■ Photo report on Japan’s teenagers ■ The long haul to save the Aral Sea ■ Teachers up against classroom violence ■ The Hermitage comes out of its shell ■ The meaning of mortality: euthanasia and world religions ■ Interview with American philosopher Michael Walzer:

the quest for social justice