3pages

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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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 UNESCO Courier 3

P EOP LE AN D P LACES

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’)

■ When autumn began and leave s from the chestnut trees covered the road between the station and the

square, a moment would come 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 same window in springtime, my surprise came from the cherry tree, bursting with white blossoms. I was a small boy then, full of excitement at discovering the big top which had gone up in front of our house.T he evening air

was filled with the sounds of trumpets and the rumble of drums.

It was usually the same circus that Federico Fellini had applauded before me in Rimini, the chief town of the Adriatic R i v i e r a , near the village where I wa s b o rn—Santarcangelo di Rom agna. I remember how Fellini and I often talked about it during the shooting of Amarcord, the film in which he remembered his youth in Rimini.

By then, both of us had been living in Rome for many years. On Sunday mor- nings, Fellini would often drive me to

Cinecittà1. 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 make our way to that dank, empty place.

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

a voice charged with emotion: “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 Tuscolana just outside Rome.

4 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

P EOP LE AN D P LACES

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 UNESCO Courier 5

P EOP LE AN D P LACES

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 UNESCO Courier - December 1999

P EOP LE AN D P LACES

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 EOP LE AN D P LACES

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 around the huge drab area, and the sounds and images of shows we had seen as children came flooding back.

On days when the circus was in town, even my mother Penelope joined in the fun. Every morning, she would ask the keeper of the African animals 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 beautiful photos by Massimo Siragusa which illustrate this scrapbook of golden memories take me back to those childhood days as well as my long visits with the prodigious Fellini 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 time on November 1, 1993.

T hese memories also take me back to Russia, one of the countries I’ve loved most, and bring to mind the time when I worked for the director A n d r e i Khryanovsky. A few years ago, I gave him the script of a cartoon story called The Grey-Bearded Lion. A film was recently made of it which tells the story of a little circus whose main attraction is an unu- sual lion called Amedeo, or Teo to his friends. As the years go by and he gets older, divisions grow among the small family of circus folk.

The great Popov I also remember, like so many colou-

red bubbles, the times when I met the gr e at Russian clow n s , e s p e c i a l l y Karandash, who was so short that when he stood behind a table, he seemed to be sitting at it.

And Popov, the great Popov who per- formed his finest routine one day when he was in Amsterdam. H e entered the ring and prepared to eat a meal in a small spotlight which lit up part of the ground. When he finished, he gathered up the light with his hands, as if it were bread- crumbs, 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 much 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 Fioravanti, an old sculptor from Cesena, shaped with hesitant child-like hands. In Pennabilli (the village in the Marches region of Italy between Pesaro and Urbina where I’ve lived for the past

d e c a d e ) , he assembled all the stat u e s which reminded him of the circus and cir- cus life.T hey are still in the rooms of an old palazzo in the heart of the ancient vil- lage, the Bargello. In cells which once held prisoners, Fioravanti’s statues now stand as if waiting for a round of applau- se that might break out at any moment, applause suspended in mid-air .

T here’s something irresistible about this world that floods my memory with joy but also fills me with melancholy—the last notes of the music 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- me a kind of poignant lament 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. Sometimes we’d plant candles and create a ring of light around us. ■

8 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

P EOP LE AN D P LACES

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

The ringmaster of the Moira Orfei Circus.

EDI TORI A L

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 9

■ U NESCO is a factor of hope,because it is the one international organization which, through all its progr a m m e s , respects and defends what is of unive rsal wo rth and dignity in the mat e r ial and spiritual heritage of all cultures, and thereby, the absolute

dignity of all human beings. . . .

G l o b a l i z ation is accelerating with dramatic speed, presenting a global challenge which demands a global answe r.Yet the response must be made with all due respect for cultural d i ve rsity and identity, for that priceless individual component that makes up the true dignity of our many peoples.

But U NESCO can only go on providing the world with such hope, and such defence, if it proves itself to be an adequate world instru m e n t . UN E S C O is not an end in itself. UN E S C O is a world service,a tool which is at once delicate,highly complex, and precious. H uma- nity may all the better avail itself of such a tool if all the wo r l d ’s states—and peoples—agr e e once again to make proper use of it, and so contribute to its efficiency and universality. U NESCO must once more represent the whole world, with no exceptions. I pledge to do my best,in the course of my stewardship, to persuade those who stand outside to return or to join.

But criticisms,not all of them unfair,have been leveled against this great instrument: and failings,where verified,must be made good.T he purpose of sound management is, a g a i n , not an end in itself, but a duty to ensure that our institution fully discharges its gr e at task as a true world serv i c e , responsible and accountable to the world—and to the wo r l d ’s taxpayers.

Our resources are therefore not unlimited,nor should we spread ourselves too thin. I propose that we streamline our activities within the limits of our bu d g e t s , and closely focus upon those programmes which are our true mandate—not for the sake of fashionable aus- t e ri t y, but in order to make a real impact where best we may, and where truly we must, p r o- vide our needed service: in our ongoing war against poverty, through education and the nurturing of human resources.

I suggest pursuit of our most practically conceived progr a m m e s , in co-operation with leading institutions, scientists and scholars around the world, in terms of our four great directives, on behalf of education,science,culture,and communication.

UN E S C O is a challenging paradox . It cannot lapse into a mere club for intellectuals, bu t it must serve as a forum for international intellectual exchange.It cannot pretend to be a research institution but must keep abreast of and stimulate research.It is not an opera- tional agency, yet it must see that global ethics for peace, justice and solidarity, through international co-operation in education, science, culture and communication, are both morally observed and tangibly applied. F i n a l l y, U N E S C O is not a funding agency, a l t h o u g h it must provide catalytic funds to generate further funding: in order to demonstrate 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 minds of men. ■

(Extracts from an address gi ven by Mr Koïchiro Matsuura in Pa ris on 15 Nove m b e r , on the occa-

sion of his investiture as D irector-General of U NESCO.)

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 UNESCO Courier - December 1999

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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-maker Toyota (see page 13)

and others, the French car firm Peugeot launched a huge reforestation project in late 1999. T he result will be 10 million trees growing on 12,000 deforested hec- tares in the hear t of the Brazilian Amazon.

T he aim of the $10 million project, says Peugeot chief Jean-Martin Folz, is to “make the idea of a carbon sink a reality.” In other words, to show that reducing consumption of fossil fuels—gas, oil and coal—is not the only way to fight global warming. By using the ability of vegeta- tion to absorb and store carbon dioxide ( C O 2) , the main greenhouse gas, t h e amount of CO 2 in the atmosphere 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 CO2, which is why expanding forests are what is known as “carbon sinks”. Full-grown forests on the other hand cease to be carbon sinks and become carbon reservoirs. T hey store huge amounts of carbon above and below ground and play a neutral role in the CO2 equation. T he carbon dioxide given off when old trees decompose can be offset by that which is absorbed when young trees gr ow in their place. And when forests burn, they give off CO 2 and beco- me sources of carbon.T hat is the theory. 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 warming. “T here are uncertain - ties regarding the implications of increa- sed CO2 concentration in the atmosphere 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 rt on forests produced by the I n t e r g ove rnmental Panel on C limat e Change (IPCC). Today’s carbon sink can become a source of CO2 tomorrow.

According to currently available data, the world’s main forest carbon sinks are in the countries of the North (the United S t at e s , C a n a d a , Europe and Russia). After centuries of deforestation,mainly to create farmland, these regions have been gaining trees again in the past 100 years or so. As a result of the revolution in intensive agriculture, less land is needed for farming.

On 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 atmosphe- re. T he role of tropical forests in this context is highly controversial. In theor y,

as mature forests they should absorb as much CO2 as they give out. But recent studies suggest they actually absorb more CO2 than was thought. In fact, says Youba Sokona, deputy director of Enda T iers M o n d e , a non-gove rnmental organiza- 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 many have been done in the countries of the South. T he estimates of the Food and Agriculture O r g a n i z ation of the U nited N at i o n s (FAO) have sometimes been questioned.

Carbon credits

Despite all these unknown factors, the notion of carbon sinks has become highly topical—for political rather than scientific reasons. It came of age in 1997, when it was introduced into articles 3.3 and 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol on Clim at e Change.

U nder the protocol, which was the

Article 3.3 says that “direct human-indu- ced land use change and forestry activi- ties, limited to afforestation, reforestation and deforestation since 1990” can be used by states parties to meet their com- mitments. For example, a company may fund a reforestation project in its own c o u n t ry, or else a countr y like T h e N etherlands,say, could sponsor tree plan- t ations in Po l a n d . In 2008-2012, t h e amount of CO2 these trees have absorbed or “sequestrated” will be calculated and

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 11

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

result of tough negotiations in the wake of the 1992 United Nations Framewo r k C o nvention on C lim ate Change, t h e i n d u s t rialized countries promised to redu- ce their annual net emissions of gr e e n h o u- se gases by an average 5 per cent a ye a r until 2008-2012, using the 1990 level as a b a s e . To do this, some countri e s , n o t a b l y the U nited Stat e s , insisted on the esta- blishment of three “ flexibility mecha- n i s m s ” .

T he fi rst in volves setting up a market where the rich countries will bargain with each other to buy and sell emission per- mits. T he second is a “joint implementa- tion” (JI) arrangement under which they will earn carbon credits in exchange for funding reduction of emissions in former- ly communist eastern Europe through, for example, industrial cleanup projects. T he third is a “clean development mecha- nism” (CDM), which is like JI but ope- rates between industrialized and develo- ping countries. Many environmentalists 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 revamp their own energy consumption practices.

Including the carbon sink idea in the Kyoto Protocol is another way of making the Protocol’s application more “ 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 human activities rela- ting to carbon sources and sinks can be taken into account. “T hese articles are last-minute compromises,” says Michel Raquet of Greenpeace Europe. “T hey were drafted without much idea of their implications or whether everyone agreed on the meaning of the terms 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 UNESCO Courier - December 1999

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Villagers water seedlings at a tree nursery in India.

another.” Future 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 CDM. 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 more costly schemes at home to curb emissions from industry or transport.

T he Intergove rnm ental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the scientific organ of the 1992 Convention,thinks that carbon sinks can play an important role. As the FAO report notes,“IPCC has esti- mated, with a medium level of confiden- c e , t h at globally, carbon sequestrat i o n from reduced deforestation, forest rege- neration and increased development of p l a n t ations and agr o - f o r e s t ry betwe e n 1995 and 2050 could amount to 12 to 15 per cent of fossil fuel carbon emissions over the same period.”

Arthur Riedacker, a French expert involved in the IPCC’s work, also points out that such schemes produce biomass and timber, so reducin g fossil fuel c o n s u m p t i o n . Biomass is a renewa b l e energy source. Wood can replace plastic or concrete, whose manufacture uses hydrocarbons. But Ashley Mattoon of the Worldwatch Institute says the trade-off in

carbon sinks may be “a major loophole [in the Protocol] which admits 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 examined and tightly regulated. T he IPCC, which will report back in 2000, will have to be more precise about the meaning of the terms “afforestation”, “ r e f o r e s t at i o n ” and “ 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 example, the text currently says a country can chop down an old forest and replace it by one of fast- growing trees, notes Greenpeace expert Bill H are.T he felling would not be coun- ted in the country’s emissions but the reforestation would earn carbon credits. So the country involved would gain, but not the atmosphere or the environment, because an old forest and its soil contain more carbon, which would be released by the felling, than a managed forest ever will. Biodiversity would also suffer.

Another problem would arise if Japan, say, were to fund a forest protection pro- ject in Malaysia. In return, it would ask for carbon credits equal to the emissions 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 simply chop down trees further away?

For the moment, the world is roughly divided into three camps about the issue of carbon sinks. One consists of several rich countries (including the U.S., New Zealand and Australia) that want a broad definition and flexible use of carbon cre- d i t s. In some countri e s , like N ew Zealand, carbon sequestration from tree plantations covers a very high percentage of their greenhouse gas emissions. If they are unrestrictedly taken into account in 2008-2015, they will allow such countries to m eet their commitments without taking any steps in areas such as industry, transport and human settlements.

In the U.S., which has pledged to cut its emissions by 7 per cent over the next 10 years, the carbon sink mechanism is being used to persuade Congress to drop its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, says Mattoon. T he Clinton administra- tion argues that the sinks “could compri- se a significant portion of the country’s total required emissions reductions.”

A recent article in New Scientist maga- zine said Washington is even pressing for article 3.4 to be amended to include

December 1999 - The UNESCO Courier 13

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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 more CO 2 into the atmosphere. But how far is this going to go? “T he spirit of Kyoto demands that we should focus on things t h at produce fewer greenhouse gases, which means encouraging energy-saving, transport reform and improved industrial processes and housing, with improve- ments 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 IPCC report before making up their minds. T he third group is mostly made up of poor countries, which are divided on the issue, s ay s R av i n d r a n at h . “ T h e y ’re in terested in development, not so much in carbon,” says ENDA’s Sokona, who is a member of the IPCC working party.

E ve ryone has different wishes and constraints as far as development goes. India, China and the countries of sou- theast A s i a , which have competitive industries, seem opposed to introducing forestry projects into the CDM. T hey would prefer the rich countries to invest in them via industrial projects, which would include more technology transfer s. But some Latin American countries,such as Costa Rica, are basing their develop- ment on eco-tourism, so they have an interest in improving their forests.

Africa, where half of all greenhouse gas emissions are caused by deforestation, is hesitating because in a continent where food security is still the top pri o ri t y, people fear farmland will be lost if trees are planted. But Africa’s weak industrial base means it will probably not benefit much from the CDM if forestry projects are not included in it. So some experts are in favour of it under certain conditions.

“Protected parks don’t interest us,” says Sokona. “T hey mean moving people off land without giving them anything in return. It’s too easy for rich countries to come and plant trees in our countries,put a fence round them and earn carbon cre- dits. H owever, I’m in favour of agrofores- try, which meets our needs.”

Few countries have taken a clear stand so far. Others are still making their calcu - lations and trying to work out their posi- tion. T he real battle over the world’s forests will come after May 2000, when the IPCC will make 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.

encourage violence and revenge as solu- tions to problems,experts sa y.

M o r e ove r , child rights activists contend that corporal punishment goes against the 1989 U nited N ations C onvention on the Rights of the C hild, which affirms the chil- d ’s need for care and protection. A rticle 19 of the convention, which has been ratified by 191 countries including Kenya , s p e c i- fies that states must take appropriate mea- sures to protect children from “all forms of p hysical or mental violence, i n j u ry or abu s e , neglect or negligent treat m e n t , m a l t r e at- ment or exploitation.”

T he H RW report , based 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 , parents and offic i a l s , says that Kenyan children are often puni-

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

T he problem has dire implications for basic education.A recent study shows that the enrolment rate in pri m a ry schools is fast declining and only 42 per cent of those enrolled in first grade complete the pri- mary school cycle.T he decline is, among other reasons,due to poverty and a hostile learning environment,say analysts.

“Some students told us that they drop- ped out of school because 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 deat h s ,” s ays Jemimah Mwa k i s h a , a journalist who has written extensively on the subject in Kenya’s leading newspaper

14 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

W O RLD OF LEARN I N G

■ When Justus Omanga, a fourth gr a d e stu dent at M obam ba Secon dary School in Kenya ’s Kisii distri c t ,r e p e a-

tedly denied allegations that he had brought a girl in to the school compound one night last A u g u s t , his teachers became furi o u s.

Four of the teachers kicked, hit and beat Omanga so hard with a huge stick that the b oy fell unconscious. A month later he died in hospital as a result of severe damage to his kidneys and other in ternal in jur i e s , according to family members.

O m a n g a ’s case is not isolat e d . A c c o r- ding to the Kenyan media corporal punish- ment has led to the deaths of at least six students in the last four ye a rs.While caning is a regular feature in schools, some stu- dents have suffered serious injuries which include “ b ruises and cuts, broken bones, knocked-out teeth and internal bleeding,” s ays a recent repor t from the N ew Yo r k - based non-gove rnmental organizat i o n H uman Rights Watch (H RW) titled Spare the Child: C o rp o ral Punishment in Kenya n Schools.

An incentive to violence and revenge

K e nya is not the only country in the world that still practises corporal punish- m e n t .I n d e e d , only 70 countri e s ,b e gi n n i n g with Sweden in 1979, h ave banned the p r a c t i c e . But experts say Kenya is one of the worst offenders when it comes to vio- lence stemming from corporal punishment. “In Kenya corporal punishment against children in schools has reached dange- rously high levels,” says Yodon T honden, a T ibetan-American who led the five-mem- ber research team which prepared the H RW report.

A p a r t from the brutality which is often, in Kenya at least,associated with the prac- t i c e , c o rporal punishment in itself can p r ovoke anger in its victims, leading to resentment and 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

Daily Nation. N either are teachers commonly sen-

tenced for inflicting serious injuri e s. V i c- tims often come from rural areas, w h e r e people don’t have the finances to hire a l aw yer and where legal aid is poor. In some instances where teachers have been taken to c o u rt , they have gone unpunished, as it has been difficult to prove a motive in the killing as required under the criminal la w, Mwa- kisha says.

Parents scared to speak out

E x c e s s i vely harsh corporal punishment tends to be par ticularly comm on in the countryside.“In rural areas,parents don’t f o rmally object to their children being bea- ten for fear they [the children] might be victimized further,” says Mwakisha.

In public, K e nyan education ministry o f ficials have strongly denied the HRW alle- g at i o n s ,s t ating that some isolated incidents in rural schools have been exaggerat e d . H owe ve r , in pri vat e , a senior educat i o n ministry official admits that the report was “more or less corr e c t .” H e says teachers “ b rutally beat children in many schools without any proper reason.T his is a prac - tice that can only be stopped by abolishing corporal punishment altogether.”

Nevertheless the recent deaths and the r e p o rt have triggered a debate in Kenya on banning corporal punishment, as other A f rican countries including Namibia, B u r- kina Faso, South Africa and Ethiopia have done in recent years.

According to government regulations, c o rporal punishment may be inflicted only in cases of continued or gr ave neglect of work, lying, bullying and gross insubordi- nation.T he beating, with a cane no more than half an inch thick, can be gi ven only by or in the presence of a head teacher. Regu- lations state that boys should be hit on the backside and girls on the palm of the hand. Students are not supposed to get more than six strokes as punishment and 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 proceedings should be kept.

“T he rules are hardly followe d . Te a- c h e rs use clubs, bamboo 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 strong constituency of Kenyan tea- c h e rs is in favour of retaining corp o r a l p u n i s h m e n t , e ven though they concede more restrictions are required. A few ye a rs ago when the Director of Education tried to make the practice illegal, the teachers ’u n i o n said it would not recognize such a ban.

Many teachers argue that without cor- poral punishment the schools would des- cend into chaos and that children wo u l d become even more unruly by the time they reached high school. In fa c t , they believe that in the long run corporal punishment means less rather than m ore violence. “ We s t e rn countries gi ve excessive freedom to their children. Look at the violent inci- dents in many schools in the U nited S t at e s ,” s ays Lawrence Kahindi M ajali, Assistant Secretary General of the Kenya

punishment by citing Kenya ’s long tradi- t i o n . “When we were under British ru l e , those who refused to pay taxes or those who did not obey the rules were caned in public. T he use of the cane was a symbol of autho- rity and the legacy continues,” s ays M ajali.

M a ny teachers admit that they often c a rry out corporal punishment without the presence of the headmaster. In violation of the rules,the students are sometimes bea- ten all over the body, and often records of c o rporal punishment are not kep t in schools.

Stephen P, a fifth grade student in Moi p ri m a ry school in N airobi, s ays teachers cane him or slap him regularly. H is offences include coming late to school and not p aying school fees on time. Elizabeth Z, who is in the fourth standard, s ays teachers slap her and pinch her on the cheeks for not doing homework.

“My children were not treated well by the teachers after I complained about caning by their class teacher,” s ays Deborah N,a mother of two living in Nairobi.

Teachers are also afraid.T hey quote a growing number of instances in which tea- c h e rs have been attacked by students. I n

National Union of Teachers (KNUT ). M a ny Kenyan teachers also contend

that corporal punishment 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. According to a gove rnment report there are 5,718,700 students and 192,000 t e a c h e rs at pri m a ry school leve l , giving a teacher-pupil ratio of 1:31. In many schools classes of 50-60 students are common.

T he burden is heaviest in rural areas where retired and transferred teachers ’ posts are often left va c a n t . As a result, a u t h o rities frequently combine two or three schools in a regi o n , putting additional pres- sure on the existing teaching staff.

Te a c h e rs also try to justify corp o r a l

December 1999 -The UNESCO Courier 15

W ORLD OF LEARNI 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 OF LEARN I N G

HE AVY HANDED TRE AT MEN T

one extreme case,a class prefect was killed by students in the town of N ye ri , near Nai- r o b i , early this year for being too strict with them.

T he fact that corporal punishment leads so often to brutality may be sympto- m atic of the pressures facing the whole tea- ching profession. Te a c h e rs ’ s a l a ri e s — r a n- ging from 4,000 Kenyan shillings ($60) to about 15,000 ($200) a month—are among 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 exper t s. “ L ow salaries reduce teacher morale, and m any 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 ministry officials say gui-

dance counsellors in secondary schools encourage teachers to adopt m ethods to deal with depressed or problem students and thus avoid tensions leading to corp o r a l punishment.

T he counsellor discusses with the concerned student why he or she commit-

ted an offence and tries to find solutions. But officials admit that there are not enough counsellors in schools due to fin a n- cial constraints and even those who have been posted as counsellors undertake other responsibilities due to shortage of staff.

Te a c h e rs in favour of reducing corp o r a l punishment feel that the best place for introducing altern at i ve disciplinary methods is the Teacher Training Pro- gr a m m e s. At present teachers say that they hardly spend more than four to five hours on classroom management during their ini- tial two - year training period for pri m a ry school.

Realizing the gr avity of the problem, m a ny non-gove rnmental organizat i o n s h ave now joined the campaign to abolish

c o rporal punishment and have started wo r- king with teachers to minimize its use until the law is changed.

“Until a legal sanction is obtained, we decided it would be better to work with the teachers,” says Jacqueline Anam-Mogeni, child rights adviser at the N etherlands Development Organization (NDO).

T he N airobi-based N D O organizes workshops and training program mes to help teachers to get to grips with their pro- blems and encourage them to use counsel- ling methods and other forms of punish- ment,such as manual work.

Alternative solutions

N DO selects a group of teachers and vo l u n t e e rs from other non-gove rn m e n t a l o r g a n i z ations from a particular regi o n where corporal punishment incidents are h i g h , and organizes workshops exposing them to human rights and child ri g h t s issues. After a week’s training, the teachers go back to their schools and return for eva- luation every three months.

“We first ask the participants how they t r e at their own children at home. Once they realize there is a problem they themselves come up with altern at i ve solutions,” s ay s Mogeni.

T he first session attracted 24 part i c i- pants from different parts of Kenya.Some t e a c h e rs say their attitude towards children has changed after part i c i p ating in the course.

“Before I went for the child rights trai- n i n g, I always viewed the punishment as p a rt of the learning process. N ow I wo r k with the pupils almost at a level of part- n e rs h i p,” s ays Esther N yakio Ngugi , a tea- cher at Kiri giti Girls A p p r oved school in K i a m bu .

Teachers who participated in the pro- gram me say they have realized that they were basically driving away students from schools due to constant beatings.

“T his is only a begi n n i n g . We need more gove rnm ent and public support till we finally abolish corporal punishment,” says Mogeni. ■

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

As much of the world has its eyes fixed,at the turn of the millennium, on thefuture, 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 French 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 must draw a veil over all the horr o rsof the past,” said Winston Churchill notlong after the end of the Second Wo r l d Wa r. Around the same time, the A m e rican philoso- pher George Santayana issued a wa rn i n g, o f t e n r e p e ated since, to the effect that “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” For those of us who have experienced the painful history of the 20th century, which of these two injunctions is the most useful? W h at should we do—forget or r e m e m b e r ?

T he two operations are contradictory in appearance only. Remembering is always, by defi- nition, an interaction between forgetting (erasu- re) and complete preservation of the past—some- thing that is virtually impossible. T he Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges creates a character in his s h o rt story Funes el memori o s o (F unes the Memorious) who remembers every detail of his life. It is a ter rifying experience.

Memory selects from the past what seems important for the individual or for the communi- ty. It organizes this selection and imprints its values on it. Peoples prefer to remember the glo- rious pages of their history rather than shameful episodes, and individuals often try unsuccessfully to free themselves from the memory of a trauma- tic event.

How to live with painful memories Why do we need to remember? 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 confirmation of our existence that it provides, we feel threatened and paralyzed. T he need for an identity is thus quite legitimate. We have to know who we are and what group we belong to. But people, like groups, live among other people and other groups. And so it is not enough simply 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 reminders of the past are worthy ones, and those that encourage revenge are always suspect.

T he victims of evil may, in their personal lives, be tempted to try to forget the experience com- pletely, blotting out painful or humiliating memo- ri e s. To a woman who has been raped, f o r example, or a child who has been the victim of incest, might it not be better to act as if these traumatic events never happened? We know from people’s reactions that this is unwise, because such a blanket refusal to remember is dangerous.

Repressed memories remain more 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 important thing is not to go to the other extreme and endlessly brood over it, but to gra- dually distance oneself from it and neutralize it— in a sense to tame it.

T his is how mourning functions in our lives. First we refuse to accept the loss we have expe- rienced and we suffer terribly 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 Communities are rarely tempted to try to for -

get completely evil events that have befallen them.Afro-Americans today do not seek to forget the trauma of slavery their ancestors suffered.T he descendants of the people who were shot and burned to death in Oradour-sur-Glane1 in 1944, do not want the crime 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 might be hoped that the barren alternatives of totally erasing the past or endlessly poring over it could be avoided.T he suffering should be inscribed in the collective memory, but only so that it can increase our capacity to face the future. T his is what pardons and amnesties are for. T hey are jus- tified when crimes have been publicly admitted, not to make sure they are forgotten but to let bygones be bygones and give the present a new chance. Were Israelis and Palestinians not right when they met in Brussels in March 1998 and noted that “just to start talking to each other, we have to leave the past in the past”?

When Churchill called for for a veil to be drawn over past horrors, he was right in a sense, but his injunction must be qualified by all kinds of conditions. No one should prevent memory from being regained. Before we turn the page, said future Bulgarian president Jeliu Jelev after the fall of communism, we should first read it. And forgetting means very different things to evil- doers and to their victims. For the latter, it is an act of generosity and faith in the future; for the

1.A French village where the SS massacred 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 community may need to appro- priate the memory of a past hero or—more sur- prisingly—a victim as a way of asserting their right to exist.T his serves their interests, but does not make them any more virtuous. It can in fact blind them to injustices they are responsible for in the present.

T he limits of this kind of remembering, which emphasizes the roles of the hero and the victim, were illustrated during the ceremonies held in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the bom- bing of H iroshima and Nagasaki. In the United States,people were only interested in recalling the heroic role of the U.S. in defeating Japanese mili- tarism. In Japan, attention focused on the victims of the atomic bombs.

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 claiming an exclusive right to the status of former victim. By the same 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 must serve the present, just as the duty to remember must serve 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

former it results from cowardice and refusal to accept responsibility.

Yet is remembering the past enough to preve n t it from repeating itself, as Santayana seems to say ? Far from it. In fa c t , the opposite usually happens. To d ay ’s aggressor finds justific ation for his actions in a past in which he was a victim. Serb nat i o n a l i s t s h ave sought justific ation by looking ve ry fa r back—to their military defeat by the Turks in K o s ovo in the 14th century.

T he French justified their belligerence in 1914 by referring to the injustice they had suffered in 1 8 7 1 . H itler found reasons in the humiliat i n g Tr e aty of Ve rsailles at the end of the First Wo r l d War to convince Germans to embark on the S e c o n d . And after the Second World Wa r , the fa c t t h at the French had been victims of Nazi bru t a l i t y did not prevent them—in many cases the same people who had joined the army after fighting in the resistance—from attacking and tort u ring civi- lians in Indochina and A l g e ri a . T hose who do not forget the past also run the risk of repeating it by r e ve rsing their role: there is nothing to stop a vic- tim from later becoming an aggr e s s o r. T he memo- ry of the genocide which the Jews suffered is vivid in Israel, yet the Palestinians have in turn been vic- tims of injustice.

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 first definition of these crimes was given in the Charter of the Intern ational M ilitary Tribunal set up by the Allies to prosecute the major N azi war criminals (the N urem berg Tribunal) in 1945. It runs as follows: “murder, 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 inhumane acts committed 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 crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal,whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the coun- try where perpetrated.”

T he United Nations Convention on the Non- Applicability of Stat u t o ry Limitations to Wa r Crimes and Crimes Against H umanity of 1968 added the following provision:“eviction by armed attack or occupation and inhuman acts resulting from the policy of apartheid, and the crime of genocide.”

Genocide T his term coined by Raphael Lemkin, a

Polish-born American scholar, comes from the Greek word genos (race or tribe) and the Latin suffix cide (from caedere, to kill).

Regarded as the most serious crime against h u m a n i t y, it was legally defined by the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was unani- mously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948, entered into force in 1951, and has so far been ratified by 130 states. T hree major conditions for the identifica- tion of genocide (article 2) are: 1) T he victims must belong to a national, ethni- cal, racial or religious group, as such. Political, economic or cultural groups (e.g. the victims of the Khmer Rouge in C am bodia) are thus excluded. 2) T he members of this group are killed or perse- cuted because of their membership of the group. 3) Genocide is a planned collective crime com- mitted 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 commit genocide;direct and public incitement to commit genocide; an attempt to

commit genocide; and complicity in genocide. Article 4 stipulates that all persons commit-

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 mentioned in the 1948 Genocide Convention. But it was not until 1998 that 120 countries (out of 160 participants) meeting in Rome adopted a statute for a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) to sit in T he H ague (Netherlands). T he Court 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 ICC will have (non-retroactive) jurisdic- tion over war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, under certain conditions. Signatories have the opportunity not to recognize its jurisdiction over war crimes.

Ad hoc War Crimes Tribunals

T he War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was set up by a resolution of the UN Security Council in May 1993. Based in T he H ague, it is empowered to prosecute those char- ged with serious violations of international law on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genoci- de.

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

T he Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania, was set up by the UN Security Council in November 1994. It has jurisdiction over the same crimes as the above, committed in Rwanda or neighbouring countries between January and December 1994.

So far, 48 persons have been charged, 38 of whom are in custody. Five defendants have been sentenced, including three to life imprisonment 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 UNESCO Courier 21

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

R osalina Tuyuc has spent the past 17 ye a rs wa i t i n g. One night in June 1982, the Guatemalan army came and 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 Rosalina, a 43-year-old Kakchiquel Maya n I n d i a n , was not deterred and in 1988 she founded the N ational A s s o c i ation of Guatemalan 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 war 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 coalition of left-wing part i e s.

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

No, you never find peace from that. My children still ask me what’s happened to their father and if he’s coming home. We relatives of people who’ve disappeared are looking for our loved ones, and we don’t find them,either dead or alive.Now that the state has admitted that abuses occurred,it has a moral duty to tell us where our dead are buried. Many of them were executed at military bases. In the name of reconciliation, the army must say where they are. Most people just want to give their spouses or children a Christian 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 and for Indian rights to be recogni- z e d . But we’ll continue to seek compensation for vic- tims of the wa r , to be told where the mass gr aves are and to bring impunity to an end.

What kind of compensation? T he gove rnment has launched a plan to compen- s ate comm unities—by introducing electri fic at i o n and building schools, roads and bri d g e s — but it’s forgotten the wid ow s. We want direct individual c o m p e n s ation for the women themselve s ,i n c l u d i n g a psychological support 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 unmarked graves.

Can anything more be done to fight impunity? Keep on trying those responsible. We don’t want revenge, we want justice.We’d like to take matters to an international court because it’s very hard in Guatemala 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 mean forgetting. First we need to know who to forgive. Many families don’t know who killed their relatives. And if we don’t manage to establish who was responsible, history may 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 agreements 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 doesn’t apply to acts of g e n o c i d e , kidnapping and tort u r e .We voted against this law and we will oppose any other amnesty.T h e a rmy and the guerrillas share responsibility for the wa r , though in different measure. I t ’s normal that their leaders have made peace with one another, but in the villages, families 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 long 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 UNESCO 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 Mandela’s A f rican N ational Congr e s s

( A N C ) , and the apartheid gove rnment of South A f rica were forced to recognize the need for a nego- t i ated settlement. In a crucial meeting between the ANC and the right-wing generals of the South A f ri- can armed forces,Mandela declared:

“ ‘If you want to go to wa r , I must be honest and admit that we cannot stand up to you on the battlefield.We don’t have the resources. It will be a long and bitter struggle, many people will die and the country may be reduced to ashes. But you must remember two things. You cannot win because of our numbers : you cannot kill us all. And you cannot win because of the international community.T hey will rally to our support and they will stand with us.’ General Viljoen was forced to agree.T he two men looked at each other . . . [and] faced the truth of their mutual dependency.”

T his declarat i o n , and its acceptance by eve ryo n e at that meeting, i l l u s t r ates one of the major fa c t o rs that led to the foundation of the Truth and Reconciliat i o n Commission (T RC) in 1995 (see box ) . T he basis of a ny compromise is that contending parties display a willingness to gi ve up irreconcilable goals, and then enter into an agreement that yields substantial bene- fits to all part i e s.T he apartheid gove rnment of South A f rica desired to continue 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.The liberation move m e n t ,o n the other hand, desired the complete removal of white p owe r. Neither of these goals seemed achieva b l e without an all-out wa r. It seemed in the best interest of all to avoid such a situat i o n .

One of the demands of the beleaguered apar- theid gove rnment was that in exchange for loss of p ower there should be a blanket amnesty for all the agents of apart h e i d ,p a r ticularly the police and the a rmed forces. But while such an outcome would be b e n e ficial to whites, it would not enjoy the support of those who were victims of apart h e i d . T hey wo u l d rightly feel that the benefic i a ries and enforcers of a p a rtheid were getting away too easily. T he wo rs t outcome of such a solution would be that black South A f ri c a n s , victims of apart h e i d , would lose c o n fidence in any of their leaders who could accept such a solution.

T he flaw in this equation is that it does not offer

a substantial benefit for both sides, and therefore does not inspire unive rsal confid e n c e .W h at wa s finally agreed upon was conditional amnesty. F i rs t l y, the victims of apartheid should have the o p p o rtunity to tell what happened to them, and for their suffer ings to be publicly acknow 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 should account for their deeds by making full and tru t h f u l d isclosure of their actions. L a s t l y, r e p a r at i o n s should be made to the victims.

An important aspect of the amnesty process is the s t i p u l ation that the life of the T RC be prescri b e d , on the grounds that a time frame would provide an i n c e n t i ve for perp e t r at o rs wishing to come forwa r d a n d , after making full disclosure, to be amnistied. Failure to take advantage of the process within the p r e s c ribed time would open perp e t r at o rs to prose- cution in the ordinary courts of law.

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

wing stories of suffering and cruelty were heard. D id the process result in reconciliation?

One strong criticism of the amnesty process is that it frustrates justice and the desire for punish- ment.T his does not take into account the fact that m a ny of the recipients of amnesty experience a kind of punishment they never anticipat e d : the shame of being publicly exposed. T he exposure of their p a rt i c i p ation in despicable acts of cruelty has in some cases resulted in broken families,disorienta- tion and loss of self-esteem—a form of punishment t h at can arguably be far more deva s t ating than that exacted by an ordinary jail sentence. Equally, the contrition leading to a plea for forgiveness,as part of a quest for reacceptance in society, can be fa r more restorative than the hoped-for rehabilitative effects of an ordinary prison term.T he cure in the method of the T RC is located within social practice rather than in the artificiality of punitive isolation. T his experience raises legitimate questions about traditional methods of retributive justice.

It can be said that as a result of the T R C ,S o u t h A f rica has become a more sensitive and a more com- plex society. South A f ricans have been forced to confront the complex contradictions of the human c o n d i t i o n , and the need to devise adequate social a rrangements to deal with them. T he healing that results will not be instant . It will come from the

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. ■

new tendency for South A f r icans to be willing to n e g o t i ate their way through social, i n t e l l e c t u a l ,r e l i- gi o u s , political and cultural dive rs i t y. In sum, it will come from the progr e s s i ve accumulation of ethical and moral insights.

C e rt a i n l y, some objectives have been achieve d . No South A f ri c a n ,p a rticularly white South A f ri c a n s , can ever claim ignorance of how apartheid disru p t e d and destroyed the lives of millions of black people in the name of the white electorat e . All South A f ri c a n s can now claim to have a common base of know l e d g e about where they have come from, p a rticularly in the last 50 ye a rs , and this is an essential foundat i o n for the emergence of a new national value system. Public acknowledgment of South A f ri c a ’s history of racism represents a form of reconciliat i o n .

Moving towards social justice T he T RC has not by any means been a smooth

process. Many whites, particularly among Afrika- ners, felt that the T RC was a punitive witch-hunt, targeting them as a community. T his criticism did not take into account the fact that the T RC also addressed gross human rights violations perpetra- ted by the liberation movements themselves. 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 not happy with the amnesty mechanism and strongly feel that justice has been compromised (see next page). Fo rt u n at e l y, a n e g o t i ated transition ensured there were functioning institutions in place for citizens to exercise their ri g h t s.

R e c o n c i l i ation is not a single eve n t . It is a process. T he T RC was a mechanism to deal with enorm o u s human tensions which could have exploded 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 ry rough seas.T h e question is whether after its second democratic elec- tions South A f rica has the will and resourcefulness to take full advantage of the foundation it has inheri t e d . Continuing 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 must move to a second stage: the achievement 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 disintegr ation of the South A f rican stat e through racial conflict is unlikely in the foreseeable f u t u r e .This outcome is a highly significant measure 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 victims of apartheid accept that the South A f rican Truth and Reconciliation Com- mission (TRC) gave amnesty to assassins and

mass killers of the former apartheid regime? T his is just one of the questions asked by critics of the T R C process inside the country. At the heart of all cri t i c i s m is the legal power gi ven to the commission to gr a n t a m n e s t y, under certain conditions to people who com- mitted politically motivated crimes between 1960 and 1 9 9 4 . Amnesty means a person can never be cri m i- nally charged with that cri m e , nor can he be sued in a civil court for damages resulting from that act.

More than 7,000 people applied for am nesty, including two form er cabinet ministers of Pr i m e M inister P. W. B o t h a ’s gove rnment and several of his police generals. Most have been granted amnesty, although several cases are still under considerat i o n .

Ve ry often, the families of the victims murdered by former policemen and soldiers , and in a few cases by members of the two liberation arm i e s ,h ave rejected the entire notion of amnesty.T he most prominent include the widow and son of Black C onsciousness leader Steve Biko, who was beaten to death in a cell by policemen, and the family of Gri f fiths Mxe n g e , a black law yer whose throat was cut by three policemen because he represented anti-apartheid activists.

T hey argue that the provision for amnesty robs them of any sense of justice. In their view, m u r d e r e rs should face a criminal trial and be jailed—failing to do so cheapens the lives of their victims. Simply confes- sing to these brutal acts should not be enough to bu y

the perp e t r at o rs complete freedom, they argue.T h e y are also against the provision that no civil claims may be made against the killers once they receive amnesty, arguing that it cuts out the chance 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 counter-argument, s t ated many times by C ommission chairp e rson Desmond Tu t u , is that it would not be in the interest of national reconciliat i o n to send hundreds of former 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- nard (who did not ask for it), were prosecuted and gi ven life sentences.Wouter Basson, the head of the f o rmer gove rn m e n t ’s Chemical and Biological Wa r- fare progr a m m e , is currently on tri a l .T here is no evi- dence to suggest that these cases undermined the r e c o n c i l i ation process in any way.

Another argument often put forward in favour of amnesty is that much, if not most, of the inform at i o n the T RC obtained about the evils committed 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 murders would not have come out. And for the nation as a whole, if there had to be a tradeoff, t ru t h was considered more important than justice.

New heroes The amnesty applications of Phila Ndwa n d we ’s

m u r d e r e rs is a case in point.The young mother of a baby boy and a unit commander of the A f rican Nat i o- nal Congress army, N d wa n d we was stationed with her unit in neighbouring Swaziland when she crossed the border one day, n e ver to be seen again. For many ye a rs the ru m o u rs dogged her family that she could possibly have been a collaborator of the apart h e i d g ove rn m e n t .Then the story came out in the amnesty 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 house.There they assaulted and tortured her in an effort to get her to join the apartheid police 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.

Phila N dwa n d we ’s remains were dug up and r e bu ried at a huge public funeral, where her nine- year-old son received a medal for exceptional bra- very on behalf of his dead mother. Instead of Phila N d wa n d we being remembered as an apartheid 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 memory.

◗ Journalist in Johannesburg

p r e s e rve the history of the repression in the collec- tive memory.

T he C ommission’s report has neve rtheless had a considerable impact.T he truth began to come out, opening up new opportunities for “justice as far as possible”. Under the current president, Eduardo Frei, the courts have handed out prison sentences to the former head of the D IN A, the dictat o rs h i p ’s secret police,and to other military and police offi- cers involved in the repression.1

But two big issues have been put on the back bu rner—the crimes covered by the amnesty law (committed between 1973 and 1978) and the res- ponsibility of G eneral Augusto Pinochet. 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 Manuel Contreras, the former head of the DINA, was sentenced in Chile for the murder in Washington of Orlando Letelier, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Allende government,because Chile’s amnesty law does not cover crimes committed abroad. In July 1999, in a decision described as “historic”, Chile’s Supreme Court confirmed the indictment of high-ranking officers on the grounds that when victims’ bodies could not be found, the crimes involved were “permanent and not subject to limitation” and therefore not covered by the amnesty la w. Editor

T he question of human rights violations by stat e o f ficials during the military dictat o rship is not a priority in the current political debate.Chi-

leans have been saying this since 1990 in political s p e e c h e s , in the media and through public opinion p o l l s.Yet at regular interva l s , this serious issue fla r e s up in the national debate.When it does, political figures feel obliged to make amends, but as a rule they prefer to let time do its work. Is this passivity or a laissez faire attitude that should be legally condemned?

“Justice as far as possible,” was the line taken by Pat ricio Ay lwin while he was president.The work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (see box page 27) formed par t of this approach. Its aim wa s to compile a list of victims of human rights violat i o n s under the military regime and identify the guilty par- t i e s. T he idea was to establish the tru t h , awa r d m at e rial and moral compensation to the victims, a n d lay the foundations of national reconciliation.But the Commission’s work has been limited by an amnesty law passed under the military regime. In other words, its role has been largely symbolic: 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 Pinochet dictatorship in Chile should not be punished because pouring salt into this open

wo u n d , establishing the truth and obtaining justice would destab ilize democracy and endanger so- called social peace.

But all efforts to stifle memory have fa i l e d .T h e arrest of Augusto Pinochet in London on October 16, 1998 revealed how fragile the Chilean demo- c r atic system is and showed the t rue face of a c o u n t ry which cannot face up to a period of its h i s t o ry which continues to divide C hileans in to two irreconcilable camps.

T he systematic cover-up of the dictatorship’s c rimes began on the day of the military coup d’état against President Salvador Allende in 1973. But

Chileans and foreigners wonder why a democratic g ove rnment has not managed to repeal a law which seems a disgrace and was passed in undemocratic circumstances.

H ow is it that Pinochet has remained beyond the reach of the law and that his political and criminal responsibility has not been established? T he answe rs to these questions are connected to the special nature of Chile’s transition to democracy, which includ es an unspoken agreem ent to keep the amnesty law on the books and guarantee immunity for Pinochet.T he transition is the result of a pact, whose effects have been strengthened by the exis- tence of a right-wing electorate comprising up to 40 per cent of vo t e rs and an electoral system that pre- vents a majority from dominating parliament. A gr e e- ments have been made; there has been neither pas- sivity nor laxity.

Reawakened memories T he society’s collective memory is stronger than

this, however. Whenever a debate arises about the political heritage of the military regime or someone tries to amend the constitution,memories are rea- wakened of pri s o n e rs who 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 thousan ds of C hileans. T here is no collect ive amnesia: the wickedness of the crimes has left an indelible mark.

For nearly nine 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 actions we r e s t a rted against Pinochet and members of his regi m e . On 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, human rights orga- n i z ations and groups of victims’families tried to fin d out the tru t h . T hey all worked together to bu i l d this collective memory of the past. After a while, t h e action of a band of mothers who denounced the c rimes committed against their loved ones became the mainspring of the struggle to restore demo- c r a cy.T he main theme of the campaign was “ n e ve r again”—only the establishment of a nat i o n w i d e culture of respect for human ri g h t s , a complete account of what went on and full rights to justice could ensure that history would not repeat itself.

We were crit ical of the N ational Truth and R e c o n c i l i ation Commission set up at the begi n- ning of the transition process (see box).Why, we a s k e d , d id its brief only cover those who disap-

shness in the legal system, a veto by the arm e d forces, and the feeling that drawn-out legal pro- ceedings against Pinochet would not catch up with him and that he would die a natural death before coming to tri a l .T his was the situation when he wa s arrested in London.

P inochet enjoys immunity because he has a d i p l o m atic passport and is a senator for life, a n d the C hilean gove rnm ent has accepted this. T h e g ove rnment maintains that it cannot accept foreign jurisdiction over him that it has neither recognized by treaty nor through ratification of an internatio- nal legal instrument.

I approve of this approach because states are subject to international law even if it conflicts with my ideals. I also approve of it because I think the democratic transition is our business. I would like to see,in my lifetime,Chilean courts put Pinochet on trial for what he did and remove him from par- l i a m e n t . I would like to see the armed forces quietly accept and respect court decisions and see the pro- Pinochet right accept the requirements of the rule of law and representat i ve democracy. In sum, I would like to see judicial sovereignty in Chile fully deployed,as part of the rule of law in a strong and established democracy.

P i n o c h e t ’s detention has moved the C hilean justice system forward. Politicians have turned a spotlight on the crimes of the dictat 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 cosmopolitan society equipped with supra-national bodies based on freedom and the defence of human 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 UNESCO 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 sent into internal exile?

Most of all, we objected to its decision not to name those responsible for the cri m e s , which wo u l d have at least been symbolic justice. And the truth that the Commission established was only the ver- sion presented by the victims, their families and human rights organizat i o n s , since the main cul- p ri t s , the armed forces, refused to have anything to do 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 ommission’s bri e f, the gove rn-

ment recognized that the dictatorship had syste- m atically violated human rights on a massive scale. T his organized remembrance of the recent past was really an appeal for people to face the future bol- stered by a determination that such crimes must never happen again.

Later, fearing the clashes that digging up the truth and dispensing justice would inevitably pro- vo k e , the nine-year-old gove rnment coalition passed measures that removed the issue from the public arena.T he Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its successor,the Reparations and Reconcilia- tion Commission, were supposed to have settled the problem once and for all. But far from recognizing

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 , judicial and social dimensions of the problem, they reduced it to a search for the remains of those who disappeared, with the result that the nation’s ordeal was revived.

P i n o c h e t ’s arrest means the country cannot avo i d facing the events whose memory, h owe ver painful it m ay be, we have been fighting to keep alive .I n d e e d , over 40 complaints have been made against Pinochet before a judge which have so far led to the arrest and t rial of a dozen military offic e rs (see note page 25).

T he determination of the complainants, along with international solidarity, made possible an act of justice none of us had imagined: the imprison- ment of Pinochet in a gilded cage. As the former head of stat e , he is the chief perp e t r ator of what we regard as crimes against humanity committed under his rule inside and outside the country.T hese cri m e s should be tried by an international tribunal. Since such a tri bunal is still not functioning, P i n o c h e t ought to be tried in his own country.

But Chile has neither adequate institutions nor the political will for that . So far there has been no real move to repeal the 1978 amnesty law or end the system of appointed senat 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 parliamentary immunity 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 incompetent to handle the case and might send it to a military court , which obviously would not be inde- pendent enough. So P inochet should be tried in S p a i n .T his would be a big step towards ending impu- n i t y, and an exe m p l a ry act against the treachery and t y r a n ny of all dictat o rs h i p s.

Building a collective memory im plies know- 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 times in G eorgian filmmaker Te n gi zAbuladze’s 1986 movie Repentance. Stalin had a similar fate: he was symbolically exhumed d u ring the political “ t h aw ” of Nikita Khru s h c h e v ’s r e i g n , hidden away during the Brezhnev ye a rs , d i s i n t e rred again during p e r e s t r o i k a and is today more or less out of sight.

T hese ups and downs show how hard it is for Russians to perform acts of remembering and m o u rning as a prelude to accepting and coping with what happened in the dark days of Stalinist terror.

D u ring the thaw ye a rs ,b e t ween 1956 and 1964, Soviet society was confronted with its past for the first time when Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s c ri m e s. But the denunciation only went part of the way, and a thoroughgoing reappraisal of Stalinism was not possible. From 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 Nazi Germany.

But while the Soviet establishm ent offic i a l l y t ried to play down or make people forget about S t a l i n i s m , the m ost radical wing of the liberal i n t e l l i g e n t s i a , the dissidents, continued their scru- t i ny of the Stalinist era. T he high point of this s t ru ggle to remember cam e in 1974 with the p u b l i c ation in the West of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag 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 first thing the intelligentsia did was to turn to the past and try to make sense of it. In 1986 and 1987, h i s t o rical novels which had been written decades earlier and had either been unpublished in the Soviet Union or published only in the West turned the spotlight back onto Stalinism. Nearly 10 million copies were printed of the most popular of these nove l s ,A n atoly Rybakov ’s C h i l d r e n of the A r b at. All the key moments and events 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 and stat e - s p o n- sored anti-semitism.

In 1988, Vassili Grossman’s gr e at novel L i fe and Destiny, which had been published in the West in 1980, appeared in Russia, followed in 1990 by The Gulag A r c h i p e l a go.The circulation of the maga- zine Novy Mir in which these works appeared rea- ched two million.T he whole country was gripped with a reading frenzy.

When the Soviet people discovered the scale of the disaster it came as a terrible shock. A sense of shared responsibility spread throughout the country. People wondered whether the whole society should repent,and there was a call for a Nuremberg-type trial of Stalinism. It was no longer just a matter of contrasting an evil Stalin with good communists and comrades of Lenin, as had been done during the 1987 rehabilitation of the victims of the Stalinist show trials, but of asking what it was in Russian society that had made Stalinism possible. E s s ays and a rticles by historians took over from literat u r e . Most authors belonging to the liberal intelligentsia looked for the causes in Russian h istor y — i n serfdom, the absence of a civil society and demo- c r atic practices, and the huge size of the state sector. E s s ays and articles by historians took over where lite- rature left off.

Waning interest in the past

T he duty of remembrance was performed by groups which painstakingly sought out the names of the victims, as the young historian Dimitri Yu r a s ov did,or looked for mass gra ves.

T his movement led to the founding in 1987- 1988 of a M oscow-based human rights associa- tion called Memori a l , with member groups all ove r the Soviet U nion. It drew a m ap of the labour camps,set up a museum and compiled lists of vic- tims. In 1989, the Leningrad newspaper Vecherny published day after day the names of people who had been shot.

At first M em orial was a mass organizat i o n which planned to put up a monument to the vic- t i m s. But which victims? T he victims of Stalin ism or eve ryone who had been persecuted by the Sov i e t r e gim e? From 1988 on, c riticism was levelled not only at the Stalinist period but at the entire socia- list regi m e , and this encouraged the adoption of the second defin i t i o n .

But just as the monument project was being discussed,public opinion began to lose interest in the past. In 1996, the inauguration of a memorial called T he Mask of Sorrow in the Kolyma region, where the most terrible labour camps had been, passed largely unnoticed.

T here seem to have been several reasons for this public loss of in terest. F i rst the economic disaster and its social consequences are leading Russians to gi ve pri o rity to the present.T hey are also making people question the ve ry validity of the d e m o c r atic project. M a ny Russians 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 most “glorious” era, when the USSR was feared and respected, d u ring Stalin’s rule.

T he sense of national humiliation Russians have felt in the 1990s has weakened their desire to delve into the darkest ye a rs. Opinion polls show more and more people think there is too much talk about Stalinist crimes. For some Russians,as the French historian Maria Ferretti has shown, the desire to forget this period of the past has sprung from a rejection of the whole Soviet period as an unfortu- n ate interlude in Russian history and from the glo- ri fic ation of pre-1917 Russia. To d ay ’s Russia is coming to be seen as the direct heir 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 dictator remains the least popular figure in Russian history—though those with favourable opi- nions of him rose from eight per cent in 1990 to 15 per cent in 1997, while his disapproval rating fell from 48 per cent to 36 per cent in the same peri o d . T he proportion of the population which listed the mass repression of the 1930s among the main eve n t s of the 20th century fell from 38 per cent in 1989 to no more 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 , but it has gr e at l y changed their nature.During perestroika, research was a joint effort and a central part of daily life, bu t n ow it is confined to professional scholars. M e m o- rial has became mainly 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 most of their efforts to publishing official archive s ,p r ov i d i n g people with a less romantic and increasingly accu- rate view of what went on.But the task of remem- bering for society as a whole has again been inter- rupted before Russians have been able, at last, to reconcile themselves 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 Cambodia when I was 15 with a spiritual wound I knew would never heal. I had survi- ved the terrible ordeal of the Khmer Rouge

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

As soon as I reached the camp at Mairu t , in T h a i- l a n d , I stopped fearing for my life, but I felt a pro- found sadness, whereas I should have been happy. I felt my whole life was already behind me, t h at it belonged to those ye a rs of struggle for surv i va l .

I wanted to forget. Go somewhere else, where I’d have no memory and no recollections, where nobody would know what I’d been through. I’d seen and heard my relatives suffer. Our family had been deported from Phnom Penh to Chrey, a village in the middle of nowhere. One of my sis- ters was brought back to my parents, physically and psychologically exhausted after bu i l d i n g dikes and digging canals. Soon afterwards, my father died. H e was a peasant’s son who had become a teacher and then a primary 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 mother, my sisters and my 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 became almost the m a i n s p ring 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 language and rejected any link with Cambodia. I had been uprooted and I felt s o m e h ow incomplete, t o rn between forgetting and r e m e m b e ri n g, b e t ween past and present, a lways ill at ease. I lived with memories of my relat i ve s , w i t h the anxiety—the cert a i n t y — t h at the same tragi c s t o ry would repeat itself. It was bu rned into my flesh foreve r , as if with a branding iron, t h at this is w h at the world is like: a place where there’s a lot of indifference and hy p o c risy and little compassion.

When you come out of a wa r , yo u ’re not sure that yo u ’ ve left violence behind yo u .You are locked in a culture of surv i va l . And when yo u ’ ve surv 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 Primo Levi came back from the Nazi death camps, he said that “you feel others have died in your place, that we’re alive because of a privilege we haven’t deserved,becau- se of an injustice done to the dead. It isn’t wrong to be alive, but we feel it is.”

Long afterwa r d s , I learned to speak again and to accept what had happened to me. T hen I redis- c overed my memori e s , my ability to imagi n e , t o l a u g h , to dream, to rebuild my life. In Cambodia, they say people who’ve died a violent death can’t be reincarn at e d , t h at the souls of dead people who h ave n ’t had a religious funeral and bu rial wa n d e r the earth foreve r , haunting the living. T here are bones all over the place in the country s i d e . Pe o p l e find 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

Cambodian mother of a model family, well inte- grated in France, cut off her child’s head just as the Khmer Rouge killers had chopped off her fat h e r ’s. Similar cases have occurred in C a m b o d i a . At P reah Sihanouk H ospital in Phnom Penh, the only department that provides psychiatric treatment takes patients from all over the country. Sometimes there are 250 of them waiting in the corridor. You only have to see how many are depressive and destitute to realize that something must be done.T here is a massive col- lective wound.

T he ter rible thing about past wars and about the Cambodian genocide is not only the millions of dead, the widows, the orphans, the amputees and the depressed, it’s also our shattered identity, the ruins of our social cohesion.

T he first political decisions of the Khmer Rouge, after they won power on April 17, 1975, were unutterably violent. T hey emptied towns and hospitals, closed schools, abolished money, deported people en masse to the countryside, defrocked m onks an d looted old houses.2 “Absolutely everything belongs to Angkar [the communist party],” they said. “If the party tells you to do something you must 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 UN’s stricter definition, see page 20.

2. T he Khmer Rouge divided the Cambodian 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 UNESCO 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. My father, who had spent all his life trying to improve Cambodia’s public education system, was particularly worried about the deci- sion to ban teaching.“T he spade is your pen, the rice-paddy is your paper,” was the message Angkar drove home.

All social classes were affected to varying degrees by mass deportations to the countryside, forced labour, summary executions and famine. Paradoxically, all these absurd sacrifices were made in the name of restoring the glory of the Angkor era.All the roots of our culture and iden- tity, the basic social relationships and symbolic links which attached Cambodians to their world were methodically and deliberately attacked and destroyed.

Most of the detention centres were set up in pagodas, places of prayer and compassion, or in s c h o o l s , places of know l e d g e . A n g k a r was a machine for destroying identity and wiping out memory.

Before they executed their victims, the killer s tortured them and made them write hundreds of pages of false confessions dictated by Khmer Rouge officials. After being forced to denounce their families and friends, the prisoners were exe- cuted. “By eliminating you,” Angkar said, “we don’t lose anything. It’s better to wrongly arrest somebody than to wrongly let somebody go.”

One of the executioners at Camp S-21, in Tuol Sleng—Pol Po t ’s main torture centre— today only expresses his “regrets”; he doesn’t feel guilty. H e destroyed non-persons, people the Khmer Rouge had stripped of all humanity.

T his genocide was “ s i l e n t ” . T he Khmer Rouge imposed a reign of terror, and most execu- tions were carried out without witnesses and without noise.T he world let Cambodians die and didn’t seem to care. Not many people denounced the massacres.

When I arrived in France in 1979, I was ama- zed to find that the Khmer Rouge still occupied Cambodia’s seat at the United Nations. A few years later, I took the absence of the word “geno- cide” from the Paris peace accords as a refusal to allow the survivors to remember, as an insult to the victims’ 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 went back to Cambodia in 1990 after 11 ye a rs in exile. I wanted to find the surv i vo rs of my fa m i l y and recover the remains of the dead and gi ve them a proper bu ri a l , so their souls would stop wa n d e- ring the earth and could be reincarn ated in the cy c l e of life and deat h . I wanted at least to confirm they had died,so I could start to mourn properly.

I went to Tuol Sleng camp, which has been tur- ned into a “genocide museum”. I wanted to try to find a photo of my uncle among the hundreds of pictures of the dead pinned on the wa l l s. But I couldn’t bring myself to go in.I went back in 1991 to film the few surv i vo rs of the camp (only seven out of some 15,000 people who passed through it). I wanted to understand the banalization of evil and the dehumanizing machinery of the Khmer Rouge.

But we ’re afraid of this recent past. C a m b o d i a n s who dare to talk about it are divided. Some think we should forget and look to the future, t h at there’s no point in inflicting another ordeal on ours e l ves by try i n g to bring back memories and 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. Or else they generalize about Cambodians and say most of them are “ fat a l i s t i c ” and accept a history of war and genocide as their “ k a rm a ” .

T his approach was dismissed by a 30-year-old peasant called Torng, who was typical of many people I spoke to while I was filming. “T he Khmer Rouge didn’t just kill people,” he said. “T hey turned our generation into ignoramuses, animals, 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 Khmer Rouge should be put on trial. If they aren’t, people like me will be tempted 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 friends didn’t die in va i n .M o u rning wo n ’t be possible unless moral and political responsibility for the Cambodian 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 meaning to basic ideas of law and justi- ce in this country. In a democratic society, you can’t kill without being punished.

We must gi ve our memory a fair and dignifie d t rial in order to understand the past. I’m not bothe- red about the sentences that would be handed dow n . Only the truth can free us—the whole tru t h ,h owe- ver horri fic.T he other point of such a tri a l , which is just as import a n t , would be to restore our identity. The Khmer Rouge have plunged generations of Cam- bodians into a vicious circle of cultural loss.

N ot many C ambodians tell their children about the genocide, which is a fuzzy corner of their memory. But we can’t build our future by forget- t i n g .T he surv i vo rs must tell their stories and ensure t h at the memory of what happened is handed dow 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 monster that is fear and put behind us the collective guilt we feel as survivors unless we manage 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 bahaga ze— t h e living dead.T hey are the hundreds of thousands of surv i vo rs of genocide who have psychologi c a l

p r o b l e m s. In September 1994, I met one of them— a little girl called Élise, the only mem ber of her family who had survived. She was just under five years old,the same age as the civil war in Rwanda, which went on from 1990 to 1994.

Élise suffered from loss of memory and had a ve ry l ow attention span. She could never remember my first name. She had no recollection of anything that had happened more than 20 minutes before—it wa s as if she was trying to protect hers e l f. One evening I found a way of getting her to remember my name. She wore ove rsized pyjamas and I said,“Think of the word ‘ p y j a m a ’e ve ry time you see me—pyjama-Ben- j a m i n .” W h e n e ver she saw me after that , she wo u l d happily shout: “ H e y, wa i t ,i t ’s pyjama-Benjamin!”

Like that little girl clinging to an image,Rwan- dans should perhaps look for a com mon symbol which could unite them around their lost memory.

For centuri e s ,R wandan civilization rested on a pyramidal power structure which was rooted in my t h s. It shaped the economy and conditioned social relations. It built (and still builds) a tyranny based on hierarchy, but a hierarchy imbued with a sense of restraint.In an atmosphere of self-censor- ship and silence, things are left unsaid—betwe e n parents and children, husbands and wive s , s h e bu j a s (bosses) and their b a ga ra g u ( s e rvants) and betwe e n Tutsis, with their sense of superiority, and H utus, who feel inferior.

Severing links with the past But the establishment 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 memory. In 1931, t h e Church deposed Musinga, the Tu t s i s ’ last divine-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 Christianity would have undermined his legi- t i m a cy and destroyed the meaning of the magical and r e l i gious functions of the monarchy, the pillar of R wandan society.All the traditions which made up the c o u n t ry ’s social and spiritual fa b ric were dubbed pagan rites and banned, despite the fact that they fos- tered social cohesion by bri n ging together the three ethnic gr o u p s — H u t u s ,Tutsis and Twa s.

T he abolition of the A b i ru s, the royal committee of wise men that was the official guardian of the s o c i e t y ’s collective memory and its esoteric ri t e s , marked the end of the only high-level institution that acted as a counterweight because it was made

up mostly of Hutus. A proverb in the Kinya r wa n d a language was coined to describe this break with the esoteric past: Kerezia ya kuyeho kizira (the Church has forbidden the forbidden).

After independence in 1962, the new republic of R wanda tried to ove rt u rn the traditional pyramid- shaped power stru c t u r e ,d e s t r oyed even more of the traditional sense of national identity and wiped out the nat i o n ’s collective memory.The republic defin 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 basing its legi t i m a cy on the majo- rity ethnic gr o u p, the Hutus.

E ve rything with a Tutsi connotation was ban- n e d . T housands of words 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 .The ethnicization of the stat e ,s u p p o s e d l y to create a “social balance”, led to a quota system which limited the proportion of Tutsis in higher edu- cation and the civil service to nine per cent.It was based solely on numbers. Pe o p l e ’s ethnic affil i at i o n could be checked from their identity documents. T he new ru l e rs said they were redressing the social balance after centuries of feudal domination.

In the vacuum left by the collapse of the tra- ditional collective memory, ethnicity became the only point of reference.T his eventually led to the demonization of the Tutsis in order to justify their exclusion from society. T he Tutsis were dehuma- nized and dubbed inyenzi (cockroaches), just as the Nazis had called German Jews “vermin”. Many terms 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 new Rwandan republic began in 1959 with a bloody revolt by the H utus, involving the ter rible massacre of 20,000 Tutsis and the flight of thou- sands of others into Burundi and Uganda.T his irr e- parable act was the first step towards the descent into amnesia.But a past that is forgotten is bound to repeat itself because forgetting invo l ves a refusal to admit wrongdoing. In Rwanda, amnesia 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 pogroms against the Tutsis which began in the 1960s and ended in the genocide.T he coun- try lived for 35 years in a state of growing amnesia, d o m i n ated by the law of silence, of the unspoken, o f m e m o ries collectively repressed. Silence inevitably gave rise to impunity and impunity made amnesia acceptable.

I had a hard job interviewing Tutsi survivors in 1994 because the genocide divided Rwandans into two camps—H utus and Tutsis,the perpetrators of genocide and the rest. In Rwanda today, you are forced to be on one side or the other; there is no h a l f way house. Just after the genocide, the Tu t s i s who returned were suspicious of Tutsis who had e s c a p e d , presuming they had collaborated with the enemy to save their skins.

If you were a Hutu, you were automatically guilty of genocide, just as the Tutsis were from 1959 to 1994 considered guilty just because they happened to be Tu t s i . T he genocide was a crime committed bet- ween neighbours ;k i l l e rs and surv i vo rs of the at r o c i- ties still live side by side today.T he exterm i n ation of a million people in 100 days with crude weapons like m a c h e t e s ,c l u b s ,a xes and hoes, could not have taken place without the part i c i p ation of a massive number of people. A third of all Hutus are thought to have par- t i c i p ated in one way or another.

Fear of reprisals About 135,000 people suspected 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 ational Criminal Tri bunal for Rwanda (the A rusha Tri bu n a l ) , which has scant resources, is not get- ting ve ry far either. All this is keeping Rwandans from the task of remembering their past, especially since s t at e - e n d o rsed ethnic attitudes still condition the Hutu killers to think they killed their historic neigh- b o u rs to ensure the surv i val of their own ethnic gr o u p. To d ay, the guilty flatly deny there was any genocide.

So in one of A f ri c a ’s most densely 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 become tight-lipped since a number of s u rv i vo rs have been murdered by unknown killers. “ W h at ’s the use of giving evidence?” one victim asked me. “ T h e y ’re not being punished any way.” All Rwandans live in an atmosphere of ethnic mis- t ru s t . Fear of reprisals is still ri f e .

T he new Rwandan authorities may want to curb individual score-settling and encourage 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 out the 1994 massacres are still lurking in the forests of n e i g h b o u ring Congo and have not gi ven up 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 defend national frontiers , as shown by the on-going war in Congo.

T he present is still barring the way to memory. ■

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 another. By the wa r ’s end 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, the C roat and Serb politicians insist on remaining separat e . In fa c t , it is those ve ry groups res- ponsible for the wo rst crimes who insist most ve h e- mently on ethnic separat i o n .T he lack of consensus on a multiethnic society plays into the hands of Mus- lim extremists, who also practice a more subtle policy of ethnic exclusion. All three groups have formed their own school curri c u l a , which reinforce ethnic 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 begun religious instruction in the s c h o o l s , which often takes the most pri m i t i ve form of ethnic indoctri n at i o n . All this only serves to cement the wa rtime ethnic cleansing.

The sad truth is that four ye a rs after Dayton (see b ox ) , neither side is any closer to reconciliation than in late 1995. M a ny Bosnians of all nationalities will s t ate openly that they can stop hat i n g, but that they will neither forgi ve nor forget what happened duri n g the wa r.And many add that they wish to be left alone with their own ethnic gr o u p. After what the other groups did to them, they no longer wish to live with them any way. In a political climate that works against the emergence of any reliable non-nationalist refe- rence point, m e m b e rs of all communities still fear firs t and foremost for the surv i val of their ethnic identity and place group interests above all else.

R ather than work toward calming nationalist pas- sions and anger, local politicians use these fears to fur- ther their own political agendas.T his is seen part i c u- larly in the cases of the Serb and Croat populat i o n s , both of whom look toward a mother country outside the borders of Bosnia and Herzegov i n a , and dream of e ventually seceding and uniting their region with it. From Belgrade and Zagr e b , politicians continue to fa n the flames of nationalist desire.T he continued insis- tence of nationalist parties in Bosnia and Herzegov 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 . Until the outside forces live up to their obli- g ations under Dayton and stop pushing for “ gr e at e r ” n ational progr a m m e s , little progress will be made in the reconciliation of the country ’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 November 1995, Bosnia and Herzegovina signed the Dayton Peace A c c o r d s , a document designed to create a new unified state comprised of two multi-

ethnic entities. It would have a functioning central g ove rn m e n t , hold democratic elections and adhere to i n t e rn ational human rights standards. Displaced per- sons were to be allowed to return to their homes and indicted war criminals were to be arrested and turn e d over to the Intern ational Tri bunal of T he Hague.

To d ay ’s reality is dramatically different.The coun- t ry consists of three de facto mono-ethnic entities, t h r e e s e p a r ate arm i e s , three separate police forces, and a n ational gove rnment that exists mostly on paper. M o s t indicted war criminals remain at large. N ationalist poli- tical part i e s , including many of the ethnic cleansers who were responsible for the war in the first place, remain securely in powe r. N ationalist extremists— often backed by the ruling political parties—still bomb and torch the homes of returning refugees in cert a i n a r e a s.

C o n t r a ry to the pronouncements of local nat i o n a- list politicians or intern ational officials wishing to avo i d taking responsibility, the Serbs, C r o ats and Muslims l i ved together relat i vely peacefully in Bosnia and Her- z e g ovina for hundreds 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 common. But something changed when all sides committed gri e vous atrocities duri n g the wa r.These 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 UNESCO 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 bunals have been a spectacular innovat i o n . For the first time, the intern ational community has shown its concern not only with the short term— stopping armed confli c t — but also with the long term. It has noted that in the Balkans and Africa’s Great Lakes region there was very little hope of achieving lasting peace based on reconciliation 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 evidence of cri m e s prevents history from being falsified and the past from being distorted.

When the truth is told, the need to dispense jus- tice becomes obvious. I t ’s ve ry important to pin cri- minal responsibility for any crimes that have been committed not only on those who actually committed them but also on political and military leaders. In so d o i n g, the law at least recognizes that the victims h ave a legal status and to some extent restores their d i g n i t y. It also stops them from setting themselves on a course for reve n g e , an agenda which can be handed d own from generation to generat i o n .

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

T he ICT 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 some governments 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 did not have an imm ediate deterr e n t effect because the U N Security C ouncil didn’t use its resources to oblige Serbia (the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) to carry out the arrest warrants the ICT had issued.T his encouraged the criminals to feel that in practical terms they were going to enjoy impunity and immunity. T hroughout the Koso vo conflict, from January to June 1999, I repeatedly urged the intern ational forces there to arrest people

under indictment. I think this was the right deter- rent message to send to the parties in Kosovo.

It’s clear that those who committed crimes in K o s ovo were m ore aware of the risk of being indicted and that this influenced their methods. T he common gr aves in Kosovo dug up by ICT investigators have provided a lot of evidence, cer- tainly enough to make the authors of these crimes realize that the law can always find such evidence, whatever lengths the criminals may go to in order to cover up their crimes.

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 leaders , people accused of ve ry seri o u s responsibilities for the genocide, m i n i s t e rs and eve n the former prime minister (who has confessed his guilt) are awaiting trial in prison in A ru s h a , in Ta n- zania.T hey are no longer in a position to fan the flames of tension, so the risk of violence has been to some extent reduced. In Rwanda,even more than in Bosnia, the culture of impunity has existed for d e c a d e s.Violence goes in cy c l e s , but responsibility for it has not been proven.T he ICT represents a change of direction in this respect but it wo n ’t have an immediate impact.

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

Setting up the ICC is a huge and irreversible step for the world.When it’s up and running it will be able to respond fairly quickly to events and to indict suspected criminals before they can commit furt h e r m a s s a c r e s. ICT s were set up after crimes were com- mitted in Bosnia, C r o atia and Rwa n d a . But in K o s ovo, indictments were made at the highest leve l at the beginning of June 1999 for cr imes com - mitted between January and May. Such speed was possible because the ICT and its infrastru c t u r e were already in place.

So an ICC, if it has the necessary muscle, 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 indicted, e f f e c t i ve prevention of c rimes against humanity can be env i s a g e d . ■

Interview by Martine Jacot, UNESCO Courier journalist

December 1999 - The UNESCO 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 Monceau Castle ( B e l gi u m ) , 13 policem en from Charleroi,a town in the centre of the

country, have been divided into teams and are absorbed in a boisterous card game.T he officers, unarmed and wearing civilian clothes, are all men in their for- ties. Today, in early October, they are taking part in the fourth session of a workshop against racism and xenophobia run by the Centre for Equal Opportunity and the Fight Against Racism, a Brussels- based public institution founded in 1993.

Laugh ter erupts from the policemen and the Centre’s two instructors when the w i n n e rs of each game go on to the next round of the contest.T his time they will be playing a game 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 grants when “they arri ve in a country without knowing the rules and when the ru les they have back home are no use because they don’t work in the new society.”

For example,he says, rules for women in Islamic countries are ve ry different from those in the We s t .L ater on, d u ring a review of the session, Jean says he has never had the chance to talk about such things or discuss the relationship he has with immigrants in the course of his work.

T he workshop is one of 11 projects that nine European countries are carrying out under an international programme called N G Os an d Police Against Prejud ice (NAPAP), set up by the European Com- mission in 1997 to fight racism and xeno- phobia through workshops for members of the police.

Each country has its own pri o rities and m e t h o d s. As part of the British project m e m b e rs of minority ethnic groups are invited to take part in the training courses.

◗ UNESCO Courier journalist

T he Catalans hold day courses for their police run by local immigrant gr o u p s. F rance stresses the social integr ation of i m m i gr a n t s. In Germ a ny emphasis is laid on making police more aware of the problems that arise in a multicultural society.

In recent years racism and xenophobia h ave increased in many European coun- t ri e s , especially because of economic cri s i s , u n e m p l oy m e n t , a rise in the im migr a n t population and anti-foreigner propaganda by extreme right-wing parties who are get- ting more and more vo t e s1. In this situat i o n , police forces are in a particularly exposed position.

T he Centre, which records and pur- sues cases of racist behaviour, says that in Belgium more complaints about discrimi- n ation based on the ori gin of an individual are laid against the police than against any other gr o u p2.T he situation is also troubling

in other European countries. In Britain, a report by a former H igh Court judge, Sir William M acphers o n , said in early 1999 t h at there was “institutionalized racism” i n L o n d o n ’s M etropolitan police force. I n G e rm a ny, an official survey showed that police violence against foreigners was “ n o t just a matter of isolated cases”. Amnesty I n t e rn at i o n a l ’s 1999 report detailed abu s e s by the police in France, S p a i n , G reece and Switzerland against immigrants and mem- bers of ethnic minorities.

In a dem ocratic system , such things 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 prejudice do not affect the professional b e h aviour of the police. T his is not easy because police opinions and attitudes are developed at first hand in the front line of social confli c t , and are usually the result of an accumulation of personal experiences, frustrations and misunderstandings.

T he workshops run by the Belgi a n centre are special because they feature gr o u p work drawing on personal experience and incidents 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 extreme right in Austria and Switzerland illustrate this process. 2. Égaux et reconnus, bilan 1993-1998 et perspectives de la politique des immigrés et de la lutte contre le racisme, Centre pour l’égalité des chances et la lutte contre le racisme, page 16,Brussels, 1999.

Just speaking freely and openly about these issues is already a big step, she say s ,b e c a u s e “putting things into words and talking about them allows you to be more objective about t h e m , to realize their seriousness and impor- tance and to start thinking about them.”

T his was not happening when she s t a r ted the C entre’s workshops six ye a rs ago. At that time, training focused on the immigrant, not the police.T he aim was to

throw light on the culture of immigrants’ countries of origin, how they had come to B e l gi u m ,p o p u l ation statistics and the signi- ficance of religious festivals like Ramadan or practices like we a ring the chador, the shaw l or veil worn by Muslim women.

But the Centre’s officials soon noticed t h at this kind of inform ation session not only failed to make the police aware of cul- tural diversity but was even counter-pro- d u c t i ve .T he policemen got the impression t h at by explaining how immigrants live d ,t h e i n s t ru c t o rs were trying to justify behav i o u r that to them was unacceptable.T hey felt they were being made fun of and this gene- r ated gr e at hostility towards the cours e organizers.

T heir comments were bru t a l . “T he ins-

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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 Declaration of Human Rights, bu t c o n t ri butions from the policemen duri n g act ivit ies in clud ing card gam es, r o l e - p l ay i n g, and looking at photos and fil m e x t r a c t s.

M a risa Fe l l a , an instructor at the C e n t r e , s ays these “apparently simple” e xercises encourage serious reflection by the policemen about their professional beha- v i o u r. She rem embers one occasion when solving a puzzle opened up the subject of c o m m u n i c ation and aggressivity and eve n- tually turned into a debate about police b ru t a l i t y. “T hey discussed their own violent b e h aviour as policemen, when and why they had been violent or not violent, a n d h ow they dealt with violence by offic e r s under their orders.” A “ f o rum for talking and thin king” was opened and allowe d them to distance themselves from their j o b s , something which can be hard to do when you are in the thick of things.

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. For example, when one policeman said he cou ld not accept the position of women in Islam, t h i s was already a step forwa r d , because he wa s b e ginning to distinguish between whole- sale rejection of Muslims and his d isap- proval of one aspect of their culture.

Fella says the most heartening aspect of her work is to see that “behind the uni- f o rms there are hum an bein gs who ask t h e m s e l ves questions about their profes- sion and about how they do their jobs.”

t ru c t o rs think we ’re ignorant and therefore r a c i s t . . . .They gi ve us nice little talks about i m m i gr a n t s , as if they’re all nice and f ri e n d l y, but they’ve never patrolled the streets like we have.”

T hese days, such resistance has disap- peared or at least has subsided.The door to change has opened. But problems still exist. T he police say they do not know exactly h ow to put into practice what they have l e a rned in the workshops about confli c t management, non-verbal communication and handling 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 Centre has just five instructors, three of them full-time. Only about 300 of Belgium’s 36,200 police and gendarmes attended workshops like these between 1994 and 1998. A medium-term proposal to overcome this is to have the 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 more, the entire 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 exchange and discussion between instru c t o rs and police is encouraging.

Long-term effects One instructor tells a group that five

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

When the two policemen pass the gr o u p of “ i m m i gr a n t s ” , the policeman playing the p a rt of Fa b i o, an 18-year-old Belgian citizen of Mediterranean ori gi n , calls them “p o u l e t s” (chickens) a French slang word meaning “ c o p s ” . T he two policemen immediat e l y t u rn round to arrest the yo u t h s , while their f riends laugh at a nickname that , as police, they have all been called at one time or another.

When this episode is discussed after- wa r d s , som e of the policemen say they would have just kept on walking and not a rrested anyone for “such a trivial mat t e r ” . Another notes that a few ye a rs ago, t h e youths would have had their ears boxed.

T he instructor uses the episode to show how the idea of what constitutes an insult can change over the ye a rs , pointing out that this is not just a subjective matter 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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the studen ts gradually come to see the connection between what they learn in the classroom and real-life situations.

Before continuing, one of the instru c t o rs explains to the police that they were called “ c h i c k e n s ” because Pa ris police headquar- ters is built on the site of an old chicken fa rm .“ R e a l l y ? ”m u rm u rs one of them who had no idea of this, while his colleagues laugh.

François Delor, a psychiatrist and ins- t ructor at the Centre, thinks this reaction is i m p o r tant from a methodological stand- p o i n t .“ L a u g h t e r ,” he say s , “is a way of avo i- ding confrontat i o n . Laughing together is sharing a kind of intimacy and that makes it possible to work together in a climate of trust.”

T he instructor’s job is to monitor eve- rything that is said and done during the sessions and also to spot certain expres- s i o n s , put them in a broader context and use that to break down prejudices.

Fred,who has spent 17 of his 40 year s as a policeman, tells how he was once gi ve n what he thought was a “stupid” order to a rrest all the Gypsies in the market in C h a r- l e r o i . But a colleague supported the order, s aying that “regular checks, especially of G y p s i e s , will curb cri m e .” Fred retort e d t h at “ my job isn’t to arrest Gypsies just because they’re G ypsies” and said it wo u l d be better to d eploy plainclothes police

who could catch thieves red-handed, w h e- ther they were foreigners or Belgi a n s. F r e d ’s story about the clearly xe n o p h o b i c aspect of an order is more effect ive in c o m b ating racist attitudes than any speech because it does not come from one of the i n s t ru c t o rs but from a fellow policeman.

Amid jokes and friendly chat in a conv i- vial at m o s p h e r e ,s e n s i t i ve and serious sub- jects are raised quite easily. But how can we be sure these policemen will incorp o r at e

into their professional lives some of the things they have seen and heard in these workshops and behave more fairly towa r d s immigrants in general?

Delor is firmly convinced that exchanges like these have positive effects which may some day influence the minds of these men and change the way they act. “Words and exchanges which seem unimportant some- times have surp rising effects in the long term.” H e adds that people tend to absorb as a “potential cognitive resource” s c at t e r e d

elements whose utility may not be obvious at the time.

This seems to be confirmed by Chri s t i a n Raes, an assistant police commissioner in B ru s s e l s. In an in terview in the Belgi a n daily newspaper Le Matin in July 1999, he said that during the training at the Centre “bonds were forged between members of the group and somethin g of that has remained. I haven’t changed dramatically, but sometimes I look at things in a different way and also try to spend a bit more time lis- tening to my men.” T he Centre’s workshops are undoubtedly helping the fight against racism and xe n o- p h o b i a . But changing behaviour pat t e rns that are deeply rooted in a society is a long-haul job whch depends, as eve r , on the enthusiasm and determ i n ation of eve ryo 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.

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40 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

■ At midnight on D ecember 31, t h e world will enter the year 2000. Fo r months, sometimes years, plans have

been made to celeb rate this special N ew Ye a r ’s Eve , especially in the C hri s t i a n world.But what,if anything, does the date mean to non-Christians?

“December 31 may herald a new year, a new century and a new millennium, but for me it’ll just be a normal day,” says an amused P. B a l a s u b r a m a n i a n , the chief accountant of a large firm in the Indian city of Madras.

For a large part of humanity, the arri va l of the year 2000 will pass completely unno- t i c e d . But because globalization means fol- l owing trends or simply because there is money to be made, m a ny people have yielded to the temptation to join the festivities.

Marketing the millennium

In India, a d ve rtising razzmatazz orches- trated by millennium marketeers has rea- ched most of the populat i o n , thanks to satellite television. New Delhi is staging a “Millennium Night Celebration”.Railway s t at i o n m a s t e rs will blow their whistles to send trains off on prestigious trips around the sub-continent. In most of India’s major tourist centres,from Agra, Khajuraho and Jaipur,all the hotels are booked up.Yet for m a ny Indians, mostly H indus, there is really little to get worked up about.

According to the V i k ram Samvat, 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 Shaka , the coun- t ry ’s most widely used H indu calendar, only clocks up 1920. As Indian Catholics m ark the end of 1999, Buddhists will be e n j oying the year 2542 and M uslims the year 1420 of the H egira.A hundred years a g o, according to another ancient H indu c a l e n d a r , the sixth millennium of the K a l i y u ga era began, supposedly the wo r l- d’s last (see box).

When all’s said and done, only the we a l- thiest and most westernized Indians really feel concerned by the millennium celebra- tions. “It’s a legacy of colonial times and a product of m arketing,” s ays Bhupinder S i n g h , a practising Sikh who has retired from the higher civil service and become a bu s i n e s s m a n . But he admits he has gone along with it all. He is promoting Pa k i s t a n ’s most famous classical singer, S h a f q at A l i K h a n , in India with the slogan “T he Star of the Millennium”.

Another “ s t a r ” is the island of Kat c h a l l , one of the Nicobar Islands in the Bay of B e n g a l , which will be the first place in India to see the sunrise on New Ye a r ’s Day 2000.

T he ministry of culture is cashing in on the event (as well as making up for India’s lack of infrastructure) by inviting seven luxury ships from all over the world to anchor off the N icobar Islands for the big moment.

Other ships are being encouraged to go to Tonga, in the middle of the Pacific near the international dateline. To attract them, Tongan King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV has decreed a switch to summer daylight saving time on October 3, thereby gaining 14 hours over Greenwich Mean T ime (GMT ) and making the archipelago the first place on earth to enter the “third mil- lennium”. T his kind of thing has been done in the past. When Pope Gregory XIII shortened the year 1582 by 10 days as part of his reform of the Julian calen- dar, it meant that St Teresa of Avila died during the night of the 4th to the . . . 15th of October.

Weddings and marathons T he U. S . M a rine Observat 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 ry 1 a b ove the frontier between M ya n m a r ( B u rma) and Thailand and that this will be “the best place in the world to see in the mil- l e n n i u m .” But while the T hais have a front s e at for the big show, they may be giving it a m i s s. Like Laos, C a m b o d i a , M yanmar and S ri Lanka,T hailand is a country where T h e- r avada Buddhism is practised; it celebrat e d its third millennium 543 ye a rs ago. W h at ’s m o r e ,T hailand marks the new year in mid- A p ri l ,d u ring S o n g k ra n, the water festiva l .

All the same, some attempts are being made to stir up enthusiasm for the ye a r 2000.T he Tourism Authority of T hailand ( TAT ) is organizing events with a “new mil- l e n n i u m ” tag—millennium weddings for 2,000 couples, a millennium marathon and a big seaside concer t . But in Southeast Asia, which is struggling to recover from a t wo - year economic cri s i s , the “new millen- nium”is on the whole generating little real interest or extravagant projects. TAT says there has been a 30 per cent 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. ■

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December 1999 -The UNESCO Courier 41

hotel reservations for December compared with December 1998, but nearly all of them have been by foreigners.

Japan has followed the We s t e rn calendar since 1873, as part of the modern i z at i o n process it embarked on during the Meiji Era. Until then, the country had used the lunar-solar Ta i i n t a i yo r e k i calendar dat i n g from the N ara Era (645-794), Ja p a n e s e civilization’s golden age. For nearly a cen- t u ry, 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”New Year as well as the new o n e . And since tradition demands that time is m easured again from zero whenever a new emperor comes to the throne, the Ja p a- nese followed three different calendars at the same time.

T hese days the Ta i i n t a i yo r e k i is only o b s e rved by a few sentimental folk and N ew Year is celebrated on D ecem ber 31. But though calendars come and go, tradi- tions remain. And so the Japanese will be

marking the N ew Year as their ancestors d i d , with ancient games and decorat i o n s , f o rmal clothes and special “ l u c k y ” f o o d dishes.

One we l l - k n own restaurateur has announced grandly he will make a Tale of G e n j i m e a l , r e f e rring to a famous 1,000- year-old classic nove l . On the menu will be 35 dishes for four gourmets. All for a mere $8,000. More accessible will be the wildly popular television programme Kohaku Uta G a s s e n, a contest between the ye a r ’s best male and female singers,which most Japa- nese watch eve ry December 31—especially this year when the Y2K computer bug will encourage people to stay at home.

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 China.Beijing city council has gone to great expense, helped by generous donors in Hong Kong, to bu i l d a “Chinese Altar of the Century ” .T he bu i l- ding complex, which includes several exhi-

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 some $24 million and mobilized some 200 architects and art his- t o ri a n s.The rotating altar, 47 metres across, has a huge stage which can accommodate more than a thousand singers and dancers. You enter it through a 300-metre-long “ Tunnel of T i m e ” , d e c o r ated inside with bronze reliefs showing scenes from the country’s 5,000-year history.

But the older generation prefer to wait until February to celebrate the start of the Year of the Dragon, and remote provinces will mostly ignore the fuss about the third m i l l e n n i u m . Young people howe ver can’t wait for New Ye a r ’s Eve , and brush aside the rebukes of the ardent defenders of the C hinese calendar who publicly oppose this “biblical” anniversary, as well as the insis- tence of astronomers, who have taken the matter seriously and are trying to explain t h at the new millennium will not in fa c t arrive until a year later.

I n d e e d , in a calendar beginning with

S I GN S OF THE TI MES

42 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

the year 1, a new century does not strictly b e gin until the year 101, and so on until 2 0 0 1 . T he Gregorian calendar in its pre- sent form has only existed for 418 ye a rs , and it is really 2,044 ye a rs old when seen as a direct descendant of the Julian calendar. W h at ’s more, C h rist was actually born a few years before the official Christian date of his birth. So perhaps it’s not surprising t h at young Confucians, 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 istians and atheists have concluded that the year 2000 just repre- sents a worldwide desire to enter the new m illennium as quickly as possible—cele- b r ating and making m oney at the same time—and are keen to take part.

T he same enthusiasm can be found in the Jordan va l l e y. On the Israeli side there is “Nazareth 2000” and on the Palestinian 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 number of Chri s- tians among them, are doing up these sites, which date back to the dawn of Chri s t i a n i t y.

In a region with so many celebrat i o n s , there are countless welcoming banners. A f t e r c e l e b r ations to mark the 3,000th annive r- s a ry of Je rusalem and 50 ye a rs of Israeli his- t o ry have been played down because of the stalled peace process, I s r a e l ’s Lod intern a- tional airp o rt is building an extension cal- led “Ben G urion 2000” (after the country ’s first prime minister) to welcome the pilgri m s

w h o, b e t ween this Christmas and Easter 2 0 0 1 , will climb the Via D olorosa which symbolizes the life of C hri s t .

Will there be six million of them,as the Vatican predicts, or three to four million as Israel has provided for, or the 2.5 million foreseen by the pessimists, who are prepa- ring for only a 20 per cent increase in tou- rist numbers?

Storm in a wine-glass? For Bethlehem, the year 2000 is an eco-

nomically important one.Experts forecast t h at the influx of tourists will boost the income of the Palestinian population by $100 per capita during the ye a r.T he Wo r l d Bank has asked donor countries to beat the T hree Wise Men to it in Bethlehem, by pro- viding $85 million to do up the town.T he private sector has also come up with funds to build 6,000 extra hotel rooms.

But the millennium has also produced some inappropriate tidings. A world away from the rosari e s , the m erchants of the Temple have had the ultimate bad taste to offer a “ Je rusalem 2000” C a b e rnet wine. Its label shows the D ome of the Rock, Islam’s third most holy place (after Mecca and M edina) despite the fact that Islam prohibits consumption of alcohol. A storm in a wine-glass? T he matter has been taken up with the Arab League.

In the Arab wo r l d , Egypt has decided

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

to be the cham pion celebrant of the mil- l e n n i u m , and is avoiding any religious ove r- t o n e s.T he occasion coincides with the start of ancient Egypt’s seventh millennium, so the celebrations will naturally take place at the foot of the Giza pyramids. More than a thousand perform e rs will gather on a 20,000-square-metre stage and join Jean- Michel Jarre,a French composer who spe- cializes in mega-events, to present The 12 Dreams of the Sun.

T he producers are happy, as the $9.5 million spent on the project will be recove- red from some 50,000 people expected to attend with tickets ranging from $150 to $400 apiece. Such sums are beyond the reach of most young Egyptians, who will be able to have a “place in the sun” for a more modest amount.

T he concert will begin at dusk on the last day of 1999 and continue until dawn on the first day of 2000.When the first ray of the sun appears in the Egyptian sky, a nine- metre-high golden pyramid will be placed on the C heops pyramid to mark the birth of the “new millennium”.

H appy New 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

CON N EX ION S

■ In Budapest (Hungary ) ,B ri t i s h ,F r e n c h and German public radio broadcasters are making a joint bid to open an FM

s t ation in 2000.The venture is emblematic of the new world in which intern ational radios are nav i g at i n g . Almost ove rn i g h t , the fall of the Iron Curtain radically called into question the traditional mission of these broadcas- t e rs—to send an oxygen balloon of inform a- tion to citizens living in one-party states or under repressive regi m e s.

Not that this mission has lost its rele- va n c e . Afghanistan and China are among Voice of A m e ri c a ’s top five markets, and in the latter jamming is standard practice, a measure of the broadcaster’s undesirable i n flu e n c e , at least by C hinese gove rn m e n t s t a n d a r d s. In times of crisis such as the recent K o s ovo confli c t , audiences surge. Faced with the most drastic budget cuts in the history of G e rman public broadcasting in 1999, Deutsche We l l e ’s director general Dieter We i- rich remained adamant about the mission of an intern ational serv i c e : “ Two thirds of humanity live in countries without freedom of the press or inform at i o n .We regard it as our p a rticular 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 Cold War has taken a time-old ideologi c a l edge off the equat i o n , forcing intern at i o n a l b r o a d c a s t e rs to adjust rapidly to a radically n e w, more fragmented env i r o n m e n t . No lon- ger can they claim to be the sole altern at i ve to censored gove rnment broadcasts; no longer are they viewed as a freedom bu oy to some, a s u b ve rs i ve force to others. F u rt h e rm o r e , i n numerous developing countri e s , newly elec- ted gove rnments have 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 opening the way for a plu- rality of opinions to be expressed on new FM ( f r e q u e n cy modulation) stat i o n s.

“Because of a different political context, radios whose main goal was to provide infor- m ation to countries that didn’t have access to any outside news sources have had to change their tune and develop on trans- mission mediums other than short wave ,” explains Hugues Salord, director of inter- n ational affa i rs at Radio F rance Intern a- t i o n a l e . In a sense, they have had to learn to “sell them selve s ” on markets with enti- rely different cultures and expectat i o n s ,b e it in Europe, A f ri c a , Asia or Latin A m e ri c a . In short ,e x t e rnal broadcasters have had to become both local and international.

The process of adapting to open markets has been tantamount to an intensive immer- sion course for external broadcasters. In a d e r e g u l ated audiovisual landscape, the firs t m ove for all broadcasters was to strike up

p a rt n e rships with FM stations around the world for rebroadcast of their progr a m m e s ,o r to acquire FM transmitters to set up local fre- q u e n c i e s , a more expensive option. As a m e d i u m , FM represents a quantum quality leap over crackly short wave ,a l l owing broad- c a s t e rs to speak faster and insert music into p r o gr a m m e s.

T he BBC , according to the World Serv i- c e ’s European news and current affa i rs edi- tor Mark Bray n e , was “streets ahead of almost a nybody else” in building up FM netwo r k s , s t a rting with Finland in 1987. In 1990, t h e World Service was in Romania just after the fall of the C ommunist regime signing deals with emerging radio stations and has built up a network of 97 local rebroadcasters.A recent study shows that the British broadaster has captured 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 Romanian news in quite some detail but with BBC journ 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

CON N EX I ON S

values embedded into a solid analytical fa r e of intern ational news,” s ays Bray n e .

A f ri c a , where broadcast markets deregu- l ated faster than in A s i a , is a particularly cove- ted zone.W h e r e ver an external broadcaster can get onto FM, audiences shoot up. T h e BBC and RFI pull in huge audiences in their f o rmer A f rican colonies while Ethiopia ranks among VOA ’s top five markets. RFI has star- ted to open up FM relays outside West A f ri- can capitals, in the second and third largest c i t i e s , and is introducing locally produced pro- grammes in the Bambara language in Mali.

“RFI is practically perceived as a full-fle d- ged national radio serv i c e , with audience scores of up to 30 to 40 per cent of the French-speaking populat i o n ,” s ays Erlends C a l a bu i g, director of foreign languages.T h e French broadcaster is now trying to make inroads outside the francophone zone, w i t h the recent opening of an FM station in Ghana and one to follow in Lagos. “T here is a clear desire for countries in the region to break away from their zone of traditonal cultural i n flu e n c e ,” s ays Salord. “I think anglophone A f rica is taking a gr owing interest in the fran- cophone wo r l d , not only in a linguistic sense, but also from a political, economic and cul- tural standpoint.”

Demand for accurate information C l e a r l y, there is a strong demand for

e x t e rnal broadcasters , and not only as pro- v i d e rs of intern ational news. “T here is fa r gr e ater competition on a large number of m a r k e t s , but not always for accurate and i m p a r tial news,” s ays C aroline T h o m s o n , deputy chief exe c u t i ve of the BBC Wo r l d S e rv i c e . “In many countri e s , a lot of music s t ations have come on the air as a result of d e r g u l at i o n , but news is quite heavily regu- l ated or of ve ry poor quality and subject to considerable local interference.”

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- ging democracies for balanced and 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 criminal libel laws and all sorts of constraints on free flow of infor- m at i o n , reliable inform ation ve ry often has to come from the outside,” he affirm s. E v i d e n c e seems to speak for itself. Pointing to VOA ’s 400 affil i ate FM stations in Latin A m e ri c a , he asks: “ W hy are they signing up for this if there is no need, if they were confident that i n f o rm ation is being provided in their socie- t i e s ? ”

While all the major broadcasters are pre- sent on local FMs, they each have a mission to uphold.T he BBC World Service stands by its reputation for trust and quality, r e p e at e d l y singled out in its audience surve y s.Voice of A m e ri c a , which became an independent

federal entity in October, upholds its man- d ate to report on world news and on A m e ri- can politics, society and culture. RFI pri d e s itself on presenting a French reading of the news that reflects the dive rsity of opinion in the country. DW ’s director D ieter We i ri c h underlines the broadcaster’s role in “ f o rm i n g an intern ational awareness about the new m o d e rn Germ a ny.” But how this mission is c a rried out has changed, because FM calls for a more upbeat ,i n t e r a c t i ve style of pro- gramming than short - wave broadcasting. A n d because FM stations are locally based, b r o a d- c a s t e rs have to understand and cultivate their niche audiences.

“It is really a matter of zooming in,” explains RF I’s C alabu i g .“ We have move d away from reaching an indiscri m i n ate mass of l i s t e n e rs via one means of transmission span- ning the whole globe to a focus on prox i m i t y, which means cat e ring to the expectations of l i s t e n e rs.”While intern ational news remains the backbone of all the broadcasters ’ p r o- gramming and has been significantly expan- ded over the past few ye a rs to provide round- the-clock cove r a g e , menus have also become 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 .

From 1989 onwa r d s , the BBC start e d r e c ruiting younger people in the former Eas- t e rn bloc who were familiar with the target a r e a . In Bucharest and Sofia ,R F I ’s subsidiari e s broadcast a mix of locally produced pro- grammes along with others from Pa ris offe-

ring a more Franco-European angle on eve n t s. T here is a strong 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 Central and Eastern European coun- t ri e s , to offer an opening onto Europe,” a s C a l a buig puts in. And there is also a common responsibility towards building a unifie 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 reading of regional issues.

Local language broadcasting Broadcasting in local languages is one of

the keys to reaching new audiences. R F I ’s e f f o rts to break into anglophone A f rica will be stalled until the broadcaster can afford to m ove into local languages, namely Swa h i l i and Hausa, as VOA , BBC and DW have all d o n e .T he BBC has introduced several lan- guages spoken in the newly independent repu- blics of the form er Soviet U nion, 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 and Ky r- g y z . At the same time, it has shut down other language services—mostly ve rnacular lan- guages in We s t e rn Europe—which doesn’t n e c e s s a rily mean loss of influ e n c e .

T he BBC ’s strategy is to target elites, and more often than not this can be done in E n g l i s h . “When we have cut languages, i t ’s tended to be because we thought that they were no longer effective rather than because our budget had been slashed,” says T hom- s o n .T he BBC’s most recent decision to pull out of German was taken after studies sho- wed that most of the broadcaster’s audience in the German-speaking world listened to its programmes in English. In the U. S . ,t h e World Serv i c e ’s audience has even recor- ded growth in recent years.

Faced with cutbacks, DW is ending its p r o grammes in Japanese and Spanish, and is in the process of closing several other language s e rv i c e s , including Czech, S l ovak and Hun- g a ri a n ,j u d ging that the countries where these languages 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 expanding 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 major playe rs have intro- duced broadcasts in Albanian and Macedo- n i a n ,r e flecting the pri o rity they put on being on air as fast as possible when political cir- cumstances wa rr a n t .

Introducing new languages may be at the h e a rt of broadcasters ’s t r at e gies in emergi n g democracies and developing countri e s , but it costs money.While all broadcasters underline their editorial independence from gove rn- m e n t , they all rely on them for funding, 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

CON N EX ION S

none has been graced with a generous influ x over the past decade.VOA ’s director Sandy Unger 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.The World Ser- v i c e ’s budget has declined in real terms ove r the past eight ye a rs. R F I ’s has been stable. DW ’s budget for 1999 was reduced by DM 30 million ($16.6 million/4.7 per cent), a n d will be slashed by a further 10 per cent to DM 546 million ($302.3 million), up to the ye a r 2003—seemingly a turnabout from last ye a r , when the newly elected gove rnment promi- sed “an improvement in the way the country represents itself to the outside 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 cut.

In the early 1990s, Radio C anada Inter- n ationale (RCI), a smaller player on the wo r l d s t a g e , cut seven of its 15 languages and s h runk its staff, and nearly went off the air in 1996 when it was was saved at the eleve n t h hour by a federal gove rnment 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 ) , argues that the crisis reflected the g ove rn m e n t ’s lack of interest in intern at i o- nal culural relat i o n s. RC I now aims to put f o r ward the country ’s economic strength and cultural dive rs i t y, and is boosting broadcas- ting to China and A f ri c a .

In this belt-tightening env i r o n m e n t ,o n e of the dilemmas is how to be present on all f r o n t s. In politically sensitive zones, e x t e r- nal radios have to maintain a short - wave pre- sence in addition to their FM frequencies and satellite broadcasting. T hen comes i nvestment in new technologi e s. T he Inter- net is top pri o rity for all public broadcasters. “ I t ’s the short wave of the future,” a f firm s T h o m s o n . “T he trouble with FM is that yo u are ve ry susceptible to local pressures,” s h e c o n t i n u e s , noting that at any one time, t h e World Service has a couple of FM stat i o n s off the air because an item has offended the p owe rs in place. “If you are looking at how to maintain vibrant intern ational broadcasting in 20 ye a rs time, yo u ’ ve got to invest in the I n t e rnet now. I t ’s a much freer medium.”

Digitalizing short wave T hanks to the net, Indian and Pa k i s t a n i

communities in Britain can, for example, access programmes in H indi and Urdu.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 Worldspace—direct reception via satellite on individual dishes allowing for an exceptional quality—and the imminent digi t a l i z ation of s h o rt wave , which is likely to gi ve this medium a new lease on life. D i gitalized short wave will

not only ensure higher listening quality, bu t also reduce production costs, a l l owing for a bu rst of new stations to go on air and cater to increasingly specific audience segments.

M a ny of the countries where deregu- l ation is underway inherited state broad- casting services from their former impe- ria l powe rs. N ow, the lat ter are helping the liberalization process along, often by p r oviding training courses and technical a s s i s t a n c e . RF I recalls that its launch of the first FM station in Dakar (Senegal) in 1991 played a significant role in “ o p e n i n g up and enriching the radio landscape and r e i nv i g o r ating national public radio.” Fo r VOA ’s U nger, in a number of deve l o p i n g c o u n t ri e s ,“ i n t e rn ational broadcasters are s e rving as an exam ple of what can be d e ve l o p e d .” W h i c h e ver technology wins ou t—an d colossal investm ents are at stake—on ly conten ts can gi ve extern a l b r o a d c a s t e rs the cutting edge. T heir gr e a- test asset , for Salord, lies in their exper- t i s e , k n ow - h ow an d worldwide netwo r k of corr e s p o n d e n t s. “ I n t e rn at ional radio b r o a d c a s t e rs have a role to play in decry p- ting the com plexity of the world we live i n . T his is our job, not to gi ve value judg- ments or lessons but to provide facts and elements that help the listener in form i n g his or her own opinion.” ■

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

46 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

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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 environment you should protect the peop le firs t , because human 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 sometimes looks as if poor people are d e s t r oying the env i r o n m e n t . But they are so preoccupied with their surv i val that they are not concerned about the long-term damage they are doing to the env i r o n m e n t simply to meet their most basic needs.

So it is ironic that the poor people who depend on the environment are also p a rtly responsible for its destru c t i o n . T hat’s why I insist that the living condi- tions of the poor must be improved if we really want to save our environment.

For example, in certain regions of Kenya, women walk for miles to get fire- wood from the forests, as there are no trees left nearby. When fuel is in short supply, women have to walk further and further to find it. H ot meals are served less frequently, nutrition suffers,and hun- ger increases. If these women had enough resources they would not be depleting valuable forest.

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

Since the beginning of this century, there has been a clear tendency to cut d own indigenous forests and to replace them with exotic species for commercial e x p l o i t at i o n . We ’ ve now become more aware of what this invo l ves and have reali- zed that it was wrong to cut down indige- nous forests, thereby destroying our ri c h b i o l o gical dive rs i t y. But much damage has already been done.

When the Green Belt Movement (see box page 47) started its campaign in 1977 to plant trees, Kenya had about 2.9 per cent of forest cover. Today the forested area has further dwindled to around two

per cent.We are losing more trees than we are planting.

T he other important issue is that the East African environment 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 indiscriminately, since trees prevent soil erosion caused by rain and wind. By clea- ring remaining patches of forests we are in essence creating m any micro-Sahara deserts. We can already see evidence of this phenomenon.

We hold civic education seminars for rural people, especially farmers, as part of cam paigns to raise public awa r e n e s s about environmental issues. If you were to ask a hundred farmers how many of them remember a spring or a stream that has dried up in their lifetime, almost 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 most notable achievement of the GBM in my view has been in raising envi- ronm ental awareness among ordinary citizens, especially rural people. D ifferent groups of people now realize that the environment is a concern for everybody and not simply a concern for the

government. It is partly because of this awareness that we are now able to reach out to decision-makers in the govern- ment. Ordinary citizens are challenging them to protect the environment.

Secondly, the GBM introduced the idea of environmental con servat i o n through trees because trees meet many basic needs of rural communities. We started out by planting seven trees in a small park in Nairobi in 1977. At that time we had no tree nursery, no staff and no funds, only a conviction that ordinary country people had a role to play in sol- ving environmental problems. We went on from there and now we have planted over 20 million trees all over Kenya.

T he act of planting trees conveys a simple message. It suggests that at the very least you can plant a tree and impro- 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 ich is the first step toward greater participation in society. Since the trees we have planted are visible, they are the greatest ambassadors for our movement.

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?

Unfortunately, for many world leaders development still means extensive far- ming of cash crops, expensive hydroelec- tric dams,hotels,supermarkets,and luxu- ry items, which plunder human and natural resources. T his is short-sighted and does not meet people’s basic needs— for adequate food, clean water, shelter, local clinics, information and freedom.

As a result of this craze for so-called d e ve l o p m e n t , e nvironmental protection has taken a back seat.T he problem is that the people who are responsible for much of the destruction of the environment are precisely those who should be providing leadership in environmental protection campaigns. 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 multinational corpora- tions (MNCs). T he only aim of these MNCs is to make profit at the expense of the environment and people.

We also know that many world political l e a d e rs are persuaded by MN Cs not to pay attention to declarations made in intern a- tional environmental conferences. I stron- gly believe that as citizens we should refu- se to be at the mercy of these corp o r at i o n s. C o rp o r ations can be extremely merciless, 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 environmentalists today 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.

■

and trees alone. T hey know that it is not possible to keep the environment pure if you have a gove rnment that does not control polluting industries and deforesta- t i o n .

In Kenya , for example, real estate deve- l o p e rs have been allowed to go into the middle of indigenous forests and bu i l d e x p e n s i ve houses. As concerned indivi- duals we should oppose that . When yo u s t a rt intervening at that leve l , you fin d yo u rself in direct confrontation with poli- cy - m a k e rs and you start to be called an a c t i v i s t .

I was teaching at the University of Nairobi in the 1970s, when I felt that the academic rights of wom en professors were not being respected because they were women. I became an activist at the u n i ve rs i t y, insisting that I wanted my rights as an academic.

48 The UNESCO Courier - December 1999

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Meanwhile,I found myself confronted by other issues that were directly related to my work but were not clear to me at the outset, like human rights. T his direct- ly led me to another area, governance. As a result I was drafted into the pro-demo- cracy campaign.

I realized in the 1970s that in a young democracy like ours it was very easy for leaders to become dictators. As this hap- pened they started u sing nat 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 misuse official machiner y.

So I became involved in the pro- democracy movement and pressed for constitutional reforms 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- me an activist, but I have never regretted the fact that I decided to stay here and to contribute to the development of this country and my region. I know that I have made a little difference.

Many people come up to me and tell me that my work has inspired them.T his gives me great satisfaction because in the earlier days, especially during the dicta- torship, it was difficult to speak.

Until a few years ago, people used to come up to me in the street and whisper “I am with you and I am praying for you.“ T hey were so scared of being identified with me that they did not want to be heard. I know a lot of people were afraid of talking to me and being seen with me because they might 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 my coun- try should do this and that. By being here I encourage many more people.

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

Our men think A f rican women should be dependent and submissive , d e fin i t e l y not better than their husbands. T here is no doubt that at first many people opposed me because I am a woman and resented the idea that I had strong opinions.

I know that at times men in positions of influence, including President Daniel Arap Moi, ridiculed me. 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.

In 1989, for example, we had a big confrontation with the authorities when we were fighting to save Uhuru Park in Nairobi. I argued that it would be ridicu- lous to destroy this beautiful park in the centre of the city and replace it with a multi-storeyed complex.

Uhuru Park was the only place in Nairobi where people could spend time with their families 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 campaign oppo- sing the construction of the “Park-mons- ter“, as the project later came to be known, I was ridiculed and accused of not u n d e rstanding deve l o p m e n t . I d idn’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

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A member of Kenya’s Green Belt movement.

study development but I do know that you need space in a city. Fortunately other non-gove rnmental organizat i o n s and thousands of ordinary people joined our protests and finally the park was saved.

T he government, 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 me. 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 multi- party system was legalized in Kenya for the first time, I tried very hard with other

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

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

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‘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 clamouring for.

In the 1997 general elections, my idea wa s to persuade the opposition to unite and fie l d a strong candidate from one ethnic commu- nity against the ruling Kenya A f rican Nat i o- nal Union (KANU).1 But I was called a tri- balist by some opposition groups for proposing that idea.When all my efforts to unite the opposition fa i l e d , I decided to ru n for president.

But during the campaign I also came to realize that in this country it is ve ry diffic u l t to get elected without money. I didn’t have m o n e y. I realized that it doesn’t matter how good you are, h ow honest you are and how p r o - d e m o c r atic you are, if you don’t have mon ey to gi ve to the voter you wo n ’t get elected.So I lost.

All this gave me a new experience. Now I can speak as an insider. I also rea - lized that people here are not yet ready for democracy 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 became a ve ry impor tant issue 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 doubt.T h i s g e n e r ation of A f rican leaders will go down in history as a very irresponsible one that has brought A f rica to its knees. D u ring the past

three decades, A f r ica has suffered from a lack of visionary and altruistic leaders com- mitted to the welfare of their people.

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

T he new black administrat o rs and burgeoning elites enjoyed the same eco- nomic and social life-styles and privileges that the imperial administrators enjoyed. T he only difference between the two in terms of the objectives for the country was the colour of their skin.

In the process, the A f rican leaders aban- doned their people, and in order to maintain their hold on power they did exactly what the colonial system was doing, namely to pit one community again st another. T h i s internal conflict continued for decades in m a ny A f r ican countri e s , draining their scarce resources.

So what we need is to improve our 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 us that if you cannot protect w h at is your own somebody will come and take it. If our people cannot 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 former colonial masters of this region, have continued to exploit Africa and have continued to work very closely with these dictators and irrespon- sible leaders.T hat is why we are now deep in debt, which we cannot repay.

A f rica also needs assistance from inter- n ational gove rnments to improve its eco- nomic standing. For example, most foreign aid to A f rica comes in the form of curat i ve social we l fare programmes such as fa m i n e r e l i e f, food aid, p o p u l ation control pro- gr a m m e s , refugee camps, p e a c e - k e e p i n g forces and humanitarian missions.

At the same time, hardly any resources are available for sustainable human deve- lopment programmes such as functional e d u c ation and training, d e velopment of i n f r a s t ru c t u r e , food production and pro- motion of entrepreneurs h i p. There are no funds for the development of cultural and social programmes which would empowe r people and release their creat i ve energy.

I am hoping that in the new millennium a new leadership will emerge in A f ri c a ,a n d I hope this new leadership will show more c o n c e rn for the people and utilize the conti- n e n t ’s resources to help A f ricans get out of poverty. ■

Interview by Ethirajan Anbarasan, UNESCO Courier journalist

1.T he Kenya African National Union (KANU) was formed in 1960, won the country’s first 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 ITION LIVRE ET CD-ROM (PC/ M AC)

Le guide international de l’UNESCO pour tout savoir sur les possibilités d’études supérieures et sur les bourses offertes par les universités, les institutions spécialisées et les organisations internationales

| Une référence unique depuis 1948

| 2 600 cours dans 124 pays

Toutes les disciplines académiques et professionnelles au niveau supérieur | Adresses et références, y compris adresses électroniques et sites Internet | Conditions d’admission | Dates d’inscription | Frais d’études et coût de la vie dans chaque pays | Bourses et assistance financière | Statistiques sur les universités.

| Informations en anglais, français ou espagnol selon le pays

U N E S C O P u b l i s h i n g

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Éditions U N E S C O

Study abroad 2000–2001 3 1ST ED ITION BOOK AND CD -ROM (PC/ M AC)

The UNESCO international guide to higher-education study opportunities and scholarships offered by universi- ties, specialized schools and international organizations

| A reference since 1948

| 2,600 courses in 124 countries

All higher-education academic and professional disci- plines | Addresses and references, including e-mail and websites | Admission requirements | Application deadlines | Scholarships and financial aid | Fees and living expenses in each country | Various statistics concerning the institutions.

| Entries in English, French or Spanish according to the country

Estudios en el extranjero 2000–2001 3 1 .A EDICIÓN LIBRO Y CD -ROM (PC/ M AC)

La guía internacional de la UNESCO indispensable para informarse sobre las becas y los cursos universitarios ofrecidos por universidades, instituciones especializadas y organismos internacionales

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| 2.600 cursos en 124 países

Todas las disciplinas académicas y profesionales de nivel postsecundario | Direcciones e información general, incluido el correo electrónico y las páginas Internet | Condiciones de admisión | Fechas de inscripción | Becas y ayuda financiera | Costo de los estudios | Estadísticas sobre las instituciones.

| Informaciones presentadas en inglés, francés o español, según el país

In the next issue

The UNESCO Courier is available on the Internet:

www.unesco.org/courier

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