President Bush issued an executive order earlier this week allowing him the option of trying non-US citizens suspected of terrorism before a military tribunal instead of a traditional civilian court. The decision - applauded by some and derided by others - represents one of the latest attempts by the US to affect international justice.
This decision was one of the many aspects of post-war justice in Bosnia and Rwanda that Boston Globe senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Neuffer discussed in a discussion at the Cabot center on Wednesday night. She opened her talk by reading the day's newspaper headline concerning Bush's decision, later referring to it as "one option" in the search for justice after war atrocities.
Neuffer, who is soon leaving the US to cover events in Afghanistan, has previously reported on the Gulf War, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Her experiences in two of these countries prompted her to write The Key to My Neighbor's House: Searching for Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda, which was published earlier this month.
The book follows the stories of seven individuals over the course of ten years - from the chaos of genocide to the first war crimes tribunals since Nuremberg.
It is these tribunals, or UN-created international law courts, that Neuffer focused on during her hour-and-a-half discussion. The need for them, she explains, comes from an undying hope for justice among those affected by the crimes. But the healing process is not as easy as throwing a few judges together.
"What is justice after a truly terrible event?" Neuffer asked.
Neuffer has been among those reporting from lower Manhattan after the planes hit on Sept. 11. All she was hearing, she said, were calls for justice on all sides. "Then someone turned to me and said, 'How can you have justice after something so terrible?'" she remembered.
The situation is even more difficult in countries like Bosnia and Rwanda, Neuffer explained. Since the concept of trial judges imparting punishment to criminals may be relatively unknown to local citizens, this form of justice isn't always apparent to them. Instead of having international tribunals, Neuffer said that countries sometimes choose a more community-based system of justice, which leads to another sticky point - war crimes tribunal judges are prohibited from death sentences.
Yet another problem with war crimes tribunals, at least current ones, is that they are located far away from the countries and the people they need to interact with. Bosnia's tribunal operates at The Hague, Netherlands, while Rwanda's is in Arusha, Tanzania. Neuffer likens the importance of the trials to a group of judges at the Boston Federal Courthouse (where she used to work), who would talk to journalists at nearby bars after work hours. "You need to bring trials to the people," she said, adding that court decisions would be useless otherwise.
As for the reactions of the affected people toward the tribunals, Neuffer describes them as polar opposites - some believed the hearings were the ultimate form of justice; others say they didn't even come close.
One of those who felt the tribunal was appropriate was a Tutsi woman from Rwanda whose story was detailed in Neuffer's book. Neuffer detailed the woman's misery: she was gang-raped and threatened with death by members of the Hutu ethnic group. After managing to survive the attacks, the woman eventually returned to her home. She was later approached by Westerners who were interested in having her testify before Rwanda's war crimes tribunal.
The price of her testimony was high. The woman would receive no compensation for her time in court, where she would indict the mayor of her village in the genocide. She would also have to return to her village and continue to live among Hutus who were responsible for her torture. But she went anyway and detailed her assailants' actions against her.
"I feel like a burden has been lifted from my heart," she later told Neuffer. The woman's sense of justice was fulfilled, Neuffer said, simply because she was able to tell others what had happened to her. "She had a chance to tell her story to the world."
But a young Bosnian man whose family was killed at Srebrenica had a different view of justice. He had witnessed UN soldiers at the Srebrenica base allow 8,000 Muslim men and boys - his family included - to be handed over to Serb soldiers who would murder almost all of them mere hours later.
The war crimes tribunal was not interested in the man's testimony, and he is not satisfied with its proceedings so far. Until he sees the UN workers on trial for handing over his family to the Serbs, Neuffer says, he will not believe that justice has been served.
"You can't deny people from saying, 'We've suffered, and we're victims," Neuffer said. "But at what point do you draw the line?" She added that the tribunals could not possibly accommodate everyone who had suffered.
Neuffer feels that despite the problems inherent in the war crimes tribunals, they can be very useful in helping a society move past the horrors of war and genocide. But she stressed to the Cabot audience that they've got a long way to go - and there's other options to be explored.
Neuffer closed with a few comments on the challenge of being a journalist and remaining impartial in such extreme circumstances. "You cannot be impartial, and your job is not to take sides," she said. "But those are two different things."
To illustrate her point, she spoke of e-mails she had been receiving from younger Boston Globe staff currently in Afghanistan. Neuffer says they felt they couldn't cover the war properly, telling her they were only able to see this battle or that battle.
But Neuffer believes there is no way to really cover a war, and that journalists can only hope to describe what they are able to see accurately and completely. "I tell them, 'Well, that's OK - it's only one piece of the puzzle,'" Neuffer said.
