Machar’s Apology To Dinka Bor A Tradeoff:
"There are a lot of entrenched political, economic and social factors,
reinforce by tribalism, bad governance...that account for the
impossibility of successfully bringing to trial, least convicting them
of the alleged crimes, without instigating a civil war in South
Sudan."
13 August 2011
Dr. Machar’s Apology to the Dinka Bor Community: A Tradeoff Between
Long-lasting Peace and Social Justice."
By PaanLuel Wel,
(Washington DC, USA)
GURTONG:- Moral obligation demands that there could not be real peace
and permanent reconciliation between warring parties without proper
justice. Yet, the realization of any genuine social justice is only
feasible with deeper understanding of the complexities and adequate
resolution of the conflict beforehand.
Since social justice require that each suspect of war crime should be
treated according to the level and severity of his culpability and
each victims compensated based on the extent of his or her suffering,
the plausible solution, according to the foundational principle
guiding ethical judgment, lie in a combined application of retributive
and restorative justice so as to hold the perpetrators of violence
accountable for their actions and just compensation is rendered to the
afflicted victims of the violence.
Many war-ravaged countries in Africa and across the world who had
embraced and implemented that premise did so only in the hope that a
successful prosecution and conviction of those high public figures
would break the cycle of impunity and hence the cyclical violence bred
by the impunity among the hitherto untouchable political class or
domineering tribal warlords. This is so especially the case in various
countries where impunity has entrenched itself among the ruling class,
with politicians becoming politically reckless and ethnically
provocative, uttering words meant to brew and instigate ethnicized
violence pitting one tribe against the other.
In those countries, it is feared that those deep-rooted cultures of
unaccountability and state sanctioned impunity would breed political
complacency on the part of country leadership wherein any future
political dispute among the ruling gurus would be seen as the norm
rather than the exception. The unavoidable outcome, were no concrete
arresting measures are taken, would have been, it is argued, a vicious
cycle of periodic violence in the country such as has been constantly
witnessed in different countries in the Sub-Saharan African countries.
Justification for the persecution:
In those countries, the Cambodian persecution of the Khmer Rouge
ringleaders or the Arusha-based persecution of the Rwandan genocide
suspects, for instance, has been justified by the theories of a
retributive, restorative and compensatory justice as outlined in Kit
Christensen book: “Nonviolence, Peace and Justice: A Philosophical
Introduction”
Retributive Justice is a process whereby wrongs done by one party or
person against the other are made right. The importance of this
approach is that it also dissuades people from further involvement in
the conflict and hence helps to prevent future crimes and thus break
the vicious cycle of deadly violence.
The principles of just retribution is “the ethical idea that those who
have wrongfully harmed others deserve to be harm in return, and that
the amount of harm they deserve should be proportionate to the amount
of harm they inflicted on those others.” This, according to
Christensen, is call retributive justice because “crime must be
punished, and the punishment must fit the crime” committed.
Restorative Justice, on the other hand, is a “way of dealing with
wrongs done to people by others within their community, whereby
offenders are confronted with their personal responsibility in causing
harm to someone and subsequent necessity to make some kind of
restitution to the victim.” The goal, as was done and achieved in
post-Apartheid South Africa, is the breaking of barriers built during
animositic periods between and among various then warring camps or
tribes and the ushering in of the beginning of genuine forgiveness and
true reconciliation that would spell the end of the cycle of racial or
ethnic hatred and violence in the country.
Compensatory Justice demands that “those who have been wrongfully
harmed deserved compensation for that harm, and that the amount of
compensation again be proportionate to the degree of harm suffered.”
It is in the principle of just compensation that major focus is placed
on the victims of wrongdoings and what they deserve as measure by
their losses.
What does this mean for the Republic of South Sudan?
For the republic of South Sudan, this would mean that, in order to
halt the cycles of violence, save lives and property, and bring peace
and development to the country, suspected wrongdoers of all kinds of
war-time atrocities, must be punished and justice must be delivered to
the victims of the indiscriminate violence meted out upon innocent
civilians either by the SPLM/A or the Nasir camp. The argument being
that only when the rule of law is upheld could there be real
reconciliation and long lasting peace among the people of South Sudan
as fairness would only be achievable in the course of delivering
justice and in deterring would-be future perpetrators of violence.
Thus, were we to trace that trail undertaken in Rwanda for the sake of
long lasting peace and to break the cycle of impunity and relentless
violence in the country, the principle of restorative, retributive and
compensatory justice both inform and oblige us to pursue the action of
seeking justice for the victims of the violence and to hold the
culprits fully responsible for their actions.
The main argument is that the cause of justice must be allowed to run
its full course lest impunity would take over the new country. This
would be so because any failure to successfully prosecute suspected
politicians or army officers believed to have organized or
participated in the violence crimes would tantamount to the
embracement of impunity. And with impunity, the vicious cycle of
violence would go on forever as currently the case with the recent
massacre of civilian in Fangak by George Athor's forces.
But can South Sudan Afford successful persecution of her top leadership?
Yet with the deeply entrenched and highly tribalized political system
still pervasive in South Sudan, however, any authentic call for
justice to take its natural course of action would inevitably threaten
the fragile political stability and limited peace currently prevailing
in the nascent nation.
There are a lot of entrenched political, economic and social factors,
reinforce by tribalism, bad governance, corruption and entrenched
impunity among the ruling cliques, that account for the impossibility
of successfully bringing to trial, least convicting them of the
alleged crimes, without instigating a civil war in South Sudan.
First is the highly tribalized and individualized politics where
political clouds are based on tribal support and around personality
cult. In such atmosphere, the democratic principle of fair play in
politics becomes a zero sum game where any slimmest chance of losing
face is seen as an existential threat to the tribes and the
personalities battling for political supremacy.
These suppressed economic and political frustrations are likely to
burst into the open whenever any opportunity, like the 2010 disputed
election results, avail itself as an outlet through which pent-up
anger and disillusionment is expressed by the long depressed and
oppressed public. Consequently, it is natural to expect South Sudanese
suppressed anger and frustration exploding uncontrollably leading to
possible trial or election violence across the country similar to the
situations in which Kenya or Zimbabwe or Ivorians found themselves in.
Secondly, there are cocktails of other age-old ethnic feuds that date
back to the pre-colonial era between the Nuer and the Dinka Bor
communities which were rekindled, fuelled and exacerbated by the 1991
split in the SPLM/A that unfortunately went along tribal lines. The
introduction of modern weapons, unlike traditional spears, only added
to the intensity and the gravity of the conflict. Hence, what would
have been an otherwise healthy politico-ideological contest among the
political leaders was used as a pretext and a window of opportunity to
settle old scores between the Dinka Bor and the Nuer communities.
Therefore, any plausible solution to these problems must address each
and every one of these issues since they are intertwined in such a way
that no one solution can fit them all. Yet, solving one problem, like
Dr. Machar reported apology to the Dinka Bor community, won’t mitigate
the situations at all since other aggrieved communities, with the same
kind of grievances, would demand others to apologize or even to
compensate them.
Thus, one could rightly claim that any pursuit of a retributive,
restorative and compensatory justice, especially the one being
conducted at The Hague for the case of post-election violence in Kenya
or in Arusha, Tanzania, for the case of Rwandan genocide, would lead
to more conflicts and violence in the new republic of South Sudan.
South Sudan is still highly polarized along tribal lines just as it
was during the war for independence. Any reckless measures, even if
meant for the overall betterment of the nation, would just but revive
and reignite the bitter memories of the war time antagonism.
Justification for not pursuing the persecution of war-time atrocities
in South Sudan:
But if South Sudan can’t achieve meaningful peace without first
addressing the question of real justice for the victims of war-time
atrocities, how then could it possibly reconcile the dilemma of
bringing justice to the victims of the violence and thus attain real
peace and true reconciliation without destabilizing the country?
We may not be entirely under the same political and socio-economic
circumstances as the rest of the African countries but the prudence to
learn from their blunders and to emulate their successes is an
imperative stride to prioritize as we deal with our own messes. There
are many highly contestable approaches that can be applied to help
tackle the problems of war time atrocities committed by various
players and participants of the war.
The most practical and reasonable approach is to apply logically
consistent, peace-enhancing, and pluralistic approaches that would
apply to and address each and every problems in South Sudan so as to
prevent or reduce the chances of any future conflict. Secondly, the
approaches must not only be seen but also believed to have delivered
social justice to the victims since there can’t be genuine peace and
meaningful, permanent reconciliation without proper justice.
The new unprecedented political reality ushered in by independence,
supplemented by these peace-enhancing measures and aided by sustain
political goodwill from above, would change the game. By so doing,
nothing would remain as usually the case in our presently acrimonious
South Sudanese political arena in years to come.
The principle of utilitarianism and the concept of care might,
perhaps, allow us to eat our cake and still have it: postpone justice
by not persecuting potential perpetrators of war crimes and abuses but
still achieve genuine and permanent reconciliation among our
communities, long lasting peace and sustainable development in South
Sudan.
The principle of utility as advanced by John Stuart Mill decrees that
we act so as to maximize the benefit and minimize harm for everyone
affected. That is to say, any state or Hague persecution of our
potential leaders implicated in the war crime would be morally
justified if only it appears to lead to more good consequences and
fewer bad consequences for all contending parties whose interests are
at stake, compare to the alternative choices. It is unjustified; on
the other hand, if it appears it will lead to less good and more
bad/evil for all concerned, compare to alternatives.
In the theory of utilitarianism, it is always the case that the end
justifies the means. As South Sudanese, we would do or don’t do
certain actions based on their consequences. For the case of bringing
justice to the victims of the war-time atrocities and realize long
lasting peace in the country, the consequences of not pursuing justice
and for pursuing justice, both for the short term and in the long
term, must all be weighed and analyzed before any action is taken or a
certain courses of policies are deemed pursuable.
The concept of care, meanwhile, “requires us to actively take
responsibility for the welfare of others with whom we are in relation,
protecting them from harm while maintaining the viability of the
relationship itself, and acknowledging everyone’s needs as exclusively
as possible.” This is to say that the government of South Sudan, under
whose care the welfare of South Sudanese people rest, must take
responsibility for their wellbeing, protect them from any ramification
of pursuing persecution against war criminals and ensure that the
viability of cordial mutual relationships are established among and
between feuding tribes. (Dinka and the Nuer in this case, though there
are numerous others.)
Therefore, even though it might be the case that there could never be
real peace and genuine reconciliation without proper justice for the
innocent victims of the war-time atrocities committed by and on South
Sudanese themselves; it is equally truly the case that for South Sudan
to realize and relish long lasting peace and meaningful development,
South Sudanese must be prepared to trade off proper social justice for
long lasting peace and sustainable development.
That is the dilemma of delivering justice without killing the peace or
achieving genuine peace without delivering social justice to the
victims and avoid appearing as if you are condoning impunity.
Therefore, as we go about debating the meaning and the possible
implications of Dr. Machar reported apology to the Dinka Bor
community, let's us remember that it is not only the question about
forgiveness as much as it is about what is practical and of more
benefit to our country and its people.
You can reach PaanLuel Wël at
[email protected]
Posted in: Opinions
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