Transitional Justice After Pinochet: Human Rights Trials and Democratisation

in the Southern Cone

Cath CollinsUniversidad Diego Portales, Chile

IPSA, Sao Paulo febrero 2011

Starting point1990s→ ‘reirruption’ of demands for justice

for past human rights crimes in LatinAmerica

• Particularly noticeable, and local, in the Southern Cone

• More ‘transnational’ for Central America

• Focused on formal justice, as the main previously ‘missing’ dimension

• But also important advances in truth recovery and memory politics

Post-transitional justice?

Main differences from earlier TJ• Driven by civil society actors, not the State

• Usually a minority interest

• Occupies judicial terrain: judicialisation of politics

• Internationalised and globalised in repertoire

• Most successful where there have been substantial advances in institutional democratisation and judicial reform?

• BUT – the relationship is not exact (ES), AND late justice can be an independent variable in democ ratic deepening?

Transitional Justice

(Amnistía)

Reconciliación

Verdad

Suppositions• Fragility of new democracies• High risk of authoritarian reversal • Need to compromise with outgoing regime• HR legacy can be closed quickly and definitively

““““NosNosNosNos dijerondijerondijerondijeron quequequeque era era era era necesarionecesarionecesarionecesario optaroptaroptaroptar: : : : justiciajusticiajusticiajusticia o o o o democraciademocraciademocraciademocracia””””- Juan Méndez

Post-transitional justice

Justicia

Reparación y Memoria

Verdad

Suppositions• Successful democratisationrequires ‘normalising’ justice (no more ‘special justice for special circumstances’)• And (re)normalising the idea of democratic politics as contestation• There is some kind of link between past accountability and the quality of present rights protection

• The question of justice is broken open

• The link between truth and its consequences is restored

Implications for transitional HR settlements

Post-transitional justice is commemorative...

…but also confrontational

CausesInternational context, the justice cascade, norm

convergence, the ‘age of accountability’?

But in a post 9/11 world the idea of an international normed space is on the retreat

In any case, Southern Cone change has been mainly domestically driven and the distribution of change in the region is very patchy (LA vs CA)

So we need more local explanations for change

The need for more truth: unanswered questions

Peru: 40.000 dd ‘demás’– y nadie se dió cuenta

Centroamerica: muchos dd y epen zonasrurales nuncaexistieronsegún registrosestatales

Chile: más de 1.000 ddaún sin encontrar. 1a Comisión de la Verdad no consideró a sobrevivientes

Argentina: apropiación de menores operócomo un ganchointergeneracional

Emblematicanniversaries

Argentina 1996

Chile 1998

‘Incidents and accidents’

• Pinochet flies to London

• Fujimori flies to Chile

• Castresana sees coverage of the Spanish 1996 anniversary on Spanish TV

‘Hints and allegations’: revelations leading tonew demands

Archivos del Terror Vuelos de la muerte Banco Riggs

‘Superjudge syndrome’

The Pinochet Effect

The Garzón Effect… and now the Cóndor effect?

Third country litigation

Judicial reform- Democratic engineering does matter, but so does judicial culture

- Unrelated reforms can be determinant for TJ change- Question: is judicial reform a precondition or a consequence of late

justice?

Military reform

Transparency measuresAccess to information laws

US State Dept declassifications

Opening of military archives in Guate, Paraguay, Argentina

Political replacement and the ‘rise of the left’

Awakens expectation and action from civil society even when eventual public policy change is actually minimal

Does post transitional justice change anything?Impact has included:

• Reaction• Solid proof that late justice isn’t destabilising• Advances in guaranteeing victims’ rights• Due process has generally been exemplar: rehabilitation of judicial system (Peru)• ‘Virtuous cycle’ of judicial sensitisation on international law • Fact that justice has largely been national has increased potential legitimacy with national populations (vs ICC)• (Some) broader reopening of questions of social repudiation, remaining authoritarian legacies

Specific achievementsArgentina

• Truth trials led to revocation and annulment of amnesty

• Clear symbolic repudiation, political will thrown behind trials

Chile

• Fragile consensus now recognises and rejects HRVs

• Second truth process and extended reparations

Uruguay

• Colorado Partidocracia in decline

• Both living ex presidents currently in jail

Peru

• 1st head of state extradited & successfully tried for HR crimes

Guatemala

• Cases in Spain for genocide and at home for massacres

LimitationsJuridical• Unevenness of decisions to prosecute and of results• Amnesty still exists and is still applied. Use of loopholes not legislation• Real practical problems: complex investigations, low investigative capacity• Use of special judges reduces systemic learning

Human• Too little, too late for many• Civil claimants tend to be stigmatised• Innovators pay the price: survivors are bearing the burden• “What happens if I lose?” Re-victimization AND possible steps backward in previous repudiation or lustration (presumption of innocence)

Polítical• Absence of political will and/or open hostility (Peru) • Trials establish individual guilt, don’t necessarily indict state practice• Repudiation of authoritarian crimes DOESN’T seem to lead automatically torepudiation of authoritarian government

10 December 2006

Pinochet dies:

• under charges in 3 HR cases

• discharged for medical reasons in 3 more

• under charges in a major corruption case

12 December 2006

Pinochet’s funeral, Escuela Militar

According to Carlos Huneeus:

• Hardline ‘Pinochetismo’ has only dropped by 8% en Chile since 1996

• Outright rejection of Pinochetismo has gone up by less than 1%, and because of corruption not HR revelations

So late accountability doesn’t guarantee repudiation even of the individual, much less of their political project

Peru

2010His daughter Keiko leads the polls as candidate for the presidency in 2011. Her main campaign platform is a promise to pardon her father. Fujimoristas attack a victims’ memorial in Lima

200925 year sentence against Alberto Fujimori confirmed by Supreme Court

Opinion poll work

UDP 2009 Public Opinion Poll:

Segment on Perceptions of Human AccountabilityPERCEPCIONES SOBRE DERECHOS HUMANOS

(BASE: TOTAL MUESTRA)

% TOTALES

En Chile se han discutido una serie de opciones par a resolver el tema de las violaciones a los derechos humanos durante el gobierno de Pinochet, ¿ Con cuál de las siguientes opciones Ud.se considera más de acuerdo?

59.6

29.5

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Seguir investigando hasta que se juzgue a todos los

responsables

Cerrar pronto los casos aunque no se juzgue a los

responsables

*Los NS/NC completan el porcentaje total (100%) con un 10,9%

Procesamientos a militares

(BASE: TOTAL MUESTRA)

% TOTALES

Tomando en cuenta el alcance de las violaciones a l os derechos humanos cometidos en Chile durante el régimen militar, ¿cree usted que el actu al número de condenados es muy bajo, muy alto o correcto?

44.4

7.9

19.0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Muy bajo Muy alto Correcto

(BASE: TOTAL MUESTRA)

¿Está usted de acuerdo o en desacuerdo con las sigu ientes afirmaciones?

% TOTALES

7.3

14.4

14.7

24.4

10.3

9.2

68.3

75.4

76.1

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Chile requiere dar vuelta la

página en el tema de los

DDHH y mirar hacia el

futuro

Los civiles que participaron

en el gobierno militar

también son responsables

por las violaciones a los

DDHH

El General Pinochet

siempre supo de las

violaciones a los DDHH

De acuerdo

En desacuerdo

NS/NC

Web page: case statistics

Causas activas

32

514

Por ejecución y desaparición

Por torturas y exhumación

ílegal

Agentes

147

71

568

Condenados con sentencia

definitiva, l ibres por

beneficios o cumplir

sentencia

Condenados en prisión

efectiva

Procesados o condenados

sin sentencia definitiva

Total de agentes procesados y condenados desde año 2000: 786

Bulletin- Regional coverage (Cono Sur y Perú)

- Bilingual

- Judicial and sociopolitical news

www.icso.cl/observatorio-derechos-humanos

Socios regionales:

CELS Argentina www.cels.org.ar

IDL Peru www.idl.org.pe

AcknowledgementsMany of the images used here belong to the author. Others have been used with permission or accessed

from open sources.

None should be reproduced for commercialpurposes

If any permission or credit has been overlooked, please contact cath.collins@udp.cl