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NEW EMPHASIS SHOULD BE ON MAKING UP, NOT BREAKING UP THE NATION'S PEOPLE (This
article, first published in Focus Vol.2 No.5, is reproduced here for the benefit of forward
planning and to help those who are interested in the life afterwards) |
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With peace coming more and more tantalisingly close, many
issues that impact on our internal relationships should be addressed now, not
later. One such is the way we are going to treat those whom we
currently look upon as villains, that is to say those who have hurt us and
whom, despite the bland references to peace, we nonetheless continue to look
upon as enemies. Peace means we will have to live together, hopefully, in
harmony, and share with them the common soil of Sierra Leone, which has been
blistered by a senseless fratricidal war of devastating proportions. But the question will inevitably be asked whether "they
are going to get away with it, without account" or we should exact
"an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", to quote the biblical
refrain. The answer lies somewhere between the two. If we are going to learn anything from what has happened and
why it did, then they - at least the principal offenders - must be made to
give account. We have previously argued the case for a Truth Commission. However,
the question then should not be how do we punish these offenders - whoever
or on whichever side they are - but how do we repair the damage done by them.
This is the idea of Restorative Justice. We believe that it is the philosophy
which must govern our internal relationships, henceforth, as we embark on the
hazardous trail to reconciliation. It will help towards the strengthening of
family bonding and national cohesion the day after peace is promulgated in
our country. Restorative justice embraces a wide range of human emotions,
including healing, mediation, compassion, forgiveness, mercy and
reconciliation, as well as punishment when and where appropriate. It enables
the best virtues of human interaction to occur. It gives practical
interpretation to the generally accepted view that we are all interconnected
and that what we do - good or evil - whether as ordinary citizens or military
rulers, armed combatants, rebels, etc, has an impact on others. This idea is not new because when you think of it, it has
underpinned our own cultural and traditional laws for generations - only now
it has been pushed into the background in the face of the desire for
retribution by modern materialistic societies. In our original traditional
systems, everyone was bound to work towards the common good. The crime and
violence that we have in our country militate against this common well-being.
Restorative Justice will therefore provide us the opportunity whereby those
affected by the war, and during the last military rule or, even before that,
under the APC - whether they were victims, offenders, families or the wider
community - all have a part in resolving the issues that flow from these
events. The way it works is that victims and offenders assume central
roles and the State takes a back seat. That is why even now it must be
stressed that the present government must not nurture any belief that government
edicts and functionaries will solve this problem. The greatest enemy of peace
is authoritarianism. It was most disappointing, and a serious miscalculation
by government, that representatives of the civilian peace groups were not
involved in the actual negotiations that took place in Abidjan. This is a
people's affair. Therefore, policies for peace, reconciliation and healing
must emanate from, and be placed firmly, among the people. Bureaucracy will
be the wrong medium for this purpose. The goal, always, is to heal the wounds of every person
affected by the war. No easy task, mind you, but surely it is a more
honourable aim than merely focusing on punishing the offender under the
system of retributive justice, as obtains under our present adversarial court
systems. This is where a Truth Commission may be useful. In this case we do
not have to ape Truth Commissions in other countries although we can draw on
their experiences. For examples, South Africa and Rwanda come to mind. The
main point is to have people admit to what they have done, ie to their guilt,
and apologise for their actions. If they claim innocence then the matter can
proceed in court in the usual way. The full implications of the offence need to be spelled out
and confronted as the offender faces the causes of offending so that they
understand the effect their crimes have had on their victims. Having admitted
their guilt and apologised, they then get a chance to explain their
behaviour. Their own friends and relatives, if present, can add any
mitigating background information to fill out their personal circumstances.
This is offered not as an excuse but simply to help fill out the picture. The
victim is then asked to express their feeling on the matter. Then they work
towards a consensus and recommend a package to an adjudicator. Restoration could involve community service, helping the
victims rebuild their homes which the offender(s) destroyed, take the
amputees every day to hospital for their treatment, rebuild community
facilities, e.g. the schools, hospitals, court houses, churches and mosques
that were destroyed by the offender(s) and their comrades. The victims of
course have feelings and these will play a key factor in such proceedings.
But the restorative process helps victims to see that their own victimisation
will be intensified by feelings of retribution against the offenders. The community's role therefore is to create the conditions
most favourable to the restoration of both victim and offender. The community
will aid the healing process by providing counsellors, mediators, judges, and
the like. Provided there is cooperation, the parties can reach agreement
about repairing the damage where that is possible. Obviously, not in the cases of rape and murder, or various incidents
of mutilation. You cannot reverse the rape, you cannot restore the dead from
their grave, and you cannot replace the severed arms although in the latter
case, with the help of modern science and the availability of resources,
something can be done to qualitatively improve the functionality of the
victim through, say, prostheses. The truth, though, is that the more serious the offence the
more numerous are the secondary victims, e.g. family and friends. In a
country like ours, with foundations buttressed in the extended family - it is
bound to affect the core elements of our communities' well-being. Our present
system of retributive justice, i.e. that which obtains in our courts
currently, totally ignores them. After a murder, the deceased's family and
friends remain to feel the hurt of losing a loved one. Restorative justice
ensures that the victim is not alone. The community will share in their
grief. Ambrose Ganda |
