South Africa: Impunity, Political Interference Emerge Below Veneer of a Celebrated Reconciliation Process

After 33 years in the relentless pursuit of truth and accountability the family of anti-apartheid activist Nokuthula Simelane will finally see justice done. On 8 February 2016, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) announced that it will charge four former apartheid security policemen with her murder and kidnapping.

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AFRICA

In South Africa, prosecutors announced that they will charge four former members of the Apartheid-era security forces with the 1983 kidnapping and murder of Nokuthula Simelane, a courier for the African National Congress. Kenya’s Vice President William Ruto faces an ongoing trial in which he is accused of committing crimes against humanity during the violence following the 2007 elections. Laurent Gbagbo, former president of Cote d’Ivoire, pled not guilty during the opening of his International Criminal Court (ICC) trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in the aftermath of the contested presidential election in 2011. Meanwhile, ICC prosecutors presented 70 charges against former Lord’s Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen, who is accused of war crimes committed in Uganda. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said that the recommendations of Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission are in an advanced stage of implementation. The final stage in the torture trial of Hissene Habre, former dictator of Chad, began in Senegal. South Sudan has also been urged to form a unity government by the African Centre for Transitional Justice.

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AMERICAS

The UN Security Council approved the creation of an unarmed mission to Colombia to oversee a bilateral ceasefire, if FARC rebels and the government sign a peace agreement. In Guatemala, the trial of two former military officers charged with sexual slavery against indigenous women during the country’s civil war began. The University of Saskatchewan partnered with Canada’s National Center for Truth and Reconciliation to help provide the students and the public with information past abuses committed against the country’s Indigenous Peoples. Argentina’s cabinet chief met with national human rights organizations to discuss the newly elected government’s stance on human rights issues, including truth, memory, and justice. A UN panel recommended that the United States consider reparations for African-American descendants of slaves. A team of Argentine investigators released a report disputing the official account of what happened to 43 students from Ayotzinapa, Mexico who disappeared in 2014.

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ASIA

Nepal’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) urged the government to cooperate with the commissions in order to investigate civil war-era crimes, while the CIEDP forwarded a bill to parliament that would retroactively criminalize enforced disappearances. Before Myanmar’s newly elected parliament opened its first session, outgoing lawmakers passed a law providing lifetime immunity to former heads of state, while the government began releasing the first of about 100 political prisoners. In the Philippines, parliament extended the mandate of the claims board for victims of human rights violations under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. During a visit from UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, Tamil leaders called for the UN to help uncover the fate of over 4,000 missing civilians from Sri Lanka’s civil war. In Bangladesh, the special war crimes tribunal sentenced two more people to death for crimes committed during the country’s war of independence with Pakistan.

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EUROPE

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, citizens commemorated the 22-year anniversary of a mortar attack on a Sarajevo market that killed 68 people. Meanwhile in Serbia, a court sentenced a former Bosnian Serb soldier to 10 years in prison for participating in the Srebrenica genocide, while a Serbian activist was charged for commemorating Srebrenica. European Union judges sentenced a Kosovo Serb politician to nine years in prison for war crimes. ICC judges authorized the opening of an investigation into the 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia. The family of a union leader believed to have been killed during Spain’s civil war filed a suit asking Mexican authorities to investigate his disappearance.

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MENA

Protests over youth unemployment spread throughout several towns and cities in Tunisia. In Libya, opposing factions proposed the formation of an 18-member unity government. The foreign minister of Egypt denied that his government is cracking down on dissidents. Lawmakers in Algeria passed a package of reforms that included the reinstatement of presidential term limits.

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More Than Words: Apologies as a Form of Reparation

This report explores many of the issues and challenges likely to be faced by those considering a public apology as a form of reparation for victims of serious human rights violations.

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Opening Up Remedies in Myanmar

This briefing paper calls on the soon-to-be-established NLD-led Burmese government to seriously consider taking steps to deal with Myanmar’s troubled past as a way to help end the cycle of violence and human rights violations in the conflict-torn country.

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