Flowers in the Square

Twenty years after the end of the war, the legacy of atrocities committed during the conflict continues to shape Bosnia’s present and the future. The long form multimedia piece “Flowers in the Square” depicts the struggle of citizens of Prijedor, a community devastated by violence in 1992, to overcome this legacy and the continued denial perpetrated by the political establishment in the ongoing war for the truth about the past.

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AFRICA

Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) declared Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Côte d’Ivoire, fit to stand trial for crimes allegedly committed after the country’s disputed election in 2010. The ICC issued four new arrest warrants for individuals suspected of interfering with witnesses in the crimes against humanity trial of William Ruto, Deputy President of Kenya, during which several prosecution witnesses have recanted their testimony. The ICC criticized Sudan for failing to arrest rebel leader Abdallah Banda, who is set to face trial for an attack on African Union peacekeepers in Darfur. About 100 anti-government protesters were released from jail in Burundi, where tensions have many concerned over the potential for mass violence. Ladislas Ntaganzwa, one of the top nine remaining fugitives from the Rwanda genocide, who is accused of orchestrating the massacre of thousands of ethnic Tutsis, was arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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AMERICAS

In Colombia, the government and the FARC reached a final agreement on victims and transitional justice. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission presented its final report on the legacy of the country’s residential school system, which separated native children from their families. Meanwhile, Canada’s new indigenous affairs minister promised that victims’ families will play a key role in an impending national inquiry into violence against native women. The remains of 34 villagers massacred in 1992 by Maoist fighters in Peru were removed from a communal grave and given proper burial. In Chile, a former soldier was arrested and charged with the 1973 murders of two members of the Chilean Socialist Party after confessing on a live radio program. Independent investigators said that they have discovered new evidence that contradicts the government’s account of the disappearance of 43 college students from Ayotzinapa, Mexico last year.

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ASIA

Nepal’s National Human Rights Commission pressed the government to amend the transitional justice law to exclude provisions for amnesty, as ordered by the Supreme Court. Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi met with outgoing President Thein Sein and agreed on a smooth transfer of power, and Suu Kyi warned her party not to seek retribution against the outgoing government for past oppression of pro-democracy activists. Despite government resistance, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia charged a former Khmer Rouge official with genocide. A newly discovered document shows that Australia may have been aware of Indonesia’s plans to execute independence leaders in Timor-Leste after invading in 1975. Bangladesh executed two opposition leaders who were convicted by the country’s controversial International Crimes Tribunal of war crimes during the 1971 civil war.

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EUROPE

Appeals judges at the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) overturned the acquittal of two former security officials from Serbia accused of orchestrating ethnic cleansing and ordered that they be detained and retried. Crowds and top officials in Serbia welcomed a former Yugoslav army official convicted for his role in the mass deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in 1999, after he was granted early release by the ICTY. The high representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina said that the Bosnian Serb leadership must respect a recent Constitutional Court ruling that the annual public holiday commemorating the founding of the Republika Srpska is unconstitutional because it discriminates against other ethnicities. Meanwhile, Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik warned that Bosnian Serb representatives will withdraw from government if a law reforming the Constitutional Court is not adopted within 120 days. Authorities began exhuming a mass grave in central Croatia containing the bodies of dozens of Croatian Serb civilians and soldiers killed in August 1995.

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MENA

Four human rights groups from Palestine delivered evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Israel to the ICC. A delegation from the ICC is set to visit Palestine in February 2016 as part of an inquiry into crimes allegedly committed on Palestinian territory. In Egypt, a court ordered the retrial of dozens of Muslim Brotherhood members convicted helping to organize protests after the military overthrow of former president Mohamed Morsi. Seven journalists and activists in Morocco were charged with “threatening national security” and put on trial after using a smartphone app training program for citizen journalism. Journalist groups in Tunisia criticized the government for using the Anti-Terror Act to prosecute reporters.

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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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Squaring Colombia’s Circle: The Objectives of Punishment and the Pursuit of Peace

This paper weighs the possible modes and competing policy objectives of punishing FARC members for serious crimes in the context of Colombia’s ongoing peace negotiations. It argues that punishment has to occur in a way that does not damage one of the underlying objectives of the peace process, transforming the FARC from an insurgent group into a political actor.

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