Screenings of Two Indonesian Films

The lastest screenings "Screening Violence" project took place in Dungannon on 16 January 2020, with the support of the Dungannon Film Club, showing two Indonesian films followed by a discussion with participants. The films were Sowan (The Visit) which documents the friendship of two young women, Mien and Murti, who end up on different sides of the political troubles of the mid-1960s. The second film Provocator Damai (Peace Provocateur) is short documentary charts the experiences of Christians and Muslims residing with families of the opposite faith. The second film, in particular, raised an important discussion about the impact of cross-community work in Northern Ireland, with a range of divergent views.

Scene from The Visit (Sowan)

The AHRC Project "Screening Violence: A Transnational Study of Post-Conflict Imaginaries" is undertaken with partners in Newcastle and Bristol University, and works with co-investigators and partners in Algeria, Argentina, Colombia, Northern Ireland and Indonesia.

Screening Violence: Argentinian Films

The lastest screenings of the Screening Violence Project took place in Dungannon on 7 November 2019, with the support of the Dungannon Film Club, showing two Argentinian films followed by a discussion with participants.

The films shown were "Padre/Father" (Director Santiago Bou Grasso), a short stop motion animation piece that portrays the day-to-day life of a woman who looks after her bedridden military father. The second film was "Who am I?/Quién soy yo?"(Director Estela Bravo), a documentary about the stolen babies of the 1976-83 military dictatorship in Argentina who have recovered their true identity. Needless to say, the films provoked an interesting discussion.

The Argentinian animation can see below, and if you further questions on the project or want to participate contact me.

PADRE from opusBou on Vimeo.

The Chair has continued work on AHRC Project "Screening Violence: A Transnational Study of Post-Conflict Imaginaries" with partners in Newcastle and Bristol University, and works with co-investigators and partners in Algeria, Argentina, Colombia, Northern Ireland and Indonesia.

Exodus at New Gate Fringe Festival

The "Screening Violence" project partnered with the New Gate Fringe Festival in Derry/Londonderry, which included a screening of the film "Exodus" and focus group discussion after on 31 July 2018. A panel discussing the movement of Protestants from the City side of Derry was then undertaken and filmed in the evening including panelists Gregory Campbell, Eamon McCann, Pauline Gardiner, Niall Gilmartin, and Adrian Grant.

Panelists Gregory Campbell, Eamon McCann, Pauline Gardiner
Niall Gilmartin, and Adrian Grant

This event was part of the AHRC Project "Screening Violence: A Transnational Study of Post-Conflict Imaginaries" with partners in Newcastle and Bristol University, and works with co-investigators and partners in Algeria, Argentina, Colombia, Northern Ireland and Indonesia.

"Falsos Positivos" Second Screening

I have been continuing work on AHRC Project "Screening Violence: A Transnational Study of Post-Conflict Imaginaries" with partners in Newcastle and Bristol Universities, and works with co-investigators and partners in Algeria, Argentina, Colombia, Northern Ireland and Indonesia. Further data collection was undertaken in the summer, including the screening of the Colombian film "Falsos Positivos" in partnership with the Dungannon Film Club and a focus group following the film to engage the "social imagination of violence" on 14 June 2018. Film trailer below.

Screening Violence: "Falsos Positivos" in Northern Ireland

The field work from the AHRC Project "Screening Violence: A Transnational Study of Post-Conflict Imaginaries" with partners in Newcastle and Bristol Universities, and works with co-investigators and partners in Algeria, Argentina, Colombia, Northern Ireland and Indonesia began this month. Data collection was undertaken in partnership with the Nerve Centre which included the screening of the Colombian film "Falsos Positivos" (see details). A focus group discussion took place following the film to engage the "social imagination of violence".

Screening Violence Project

I am delighted to be part of the Screening Violence Project. Screening Violence is a four-year research and documentary filmmaking project sponsored by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The project is based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Bristol and Ulster University, and works with co-investigators and partners in Algeria, Argentina, Colombia and Indonesia. Screening Violence is an innovative engagement with communities that have experienced prolonged and entrenched violence of different kinds: from guerrilla warfare, to state sponsored persecution of particular groups, to mass murder, to sectarian conflict. It aims to achieve a new understanding of how social imaginaries shape civil conflicts and transitions to peace. This project recognises visual culture as a key imaginary space where meaning is made about conflict and violence. We therefore engage with communities that have experienced violence through the medium of cinema and documentary film.

For more detail on the project visit the website.

To see all the posts related to this project and ongoing activities, click here.

Truth Commissions Online Resources

General Databases

Truth Commissions.Org
USIP Truth Commission Database

Country Specific Truth Commission Final Reports

• Argentina
• Chile
• East Timor 
• El Salvador
• Ghana
• Guatemala
• Liberia
• Morocco (English Summary)
• Peru 
• Sierra Leone 
• South Africa

When should society tire of the voices of the past?

The kitchen of a small house in downtown São Paulo, Brazil, is the meeting place of the Comissão de Familiares de Mortos e Desaparecidos Politicas (Commission of the Families of Political Murder Victims and the Disappeared), an organisation of family members whose loved ones were killed during the military dictatorship in Brazil.

The kitchen is lined with filing cabinets that contain information collected by the families on some 400 cases of murder and "disappearances".

Unlike in South Africa, there was no official investigation in Brazil following the military regime. Without any governmental support, it has been these families and human rights activists who have had to try to find information on the "missing" and the dead.

Some 20 years since the "disappearances" the relatives are still trying to establish the truth about what happened to their loved ones.

During the period of military rule in Brazil (1964 to 1985) thousands of citizens were persecuted, forced into exile, murdered and tortured. The official lists compiled by human rights organisations report thousands of cases of torture, 240 people murdered and 144 missing. Relative to other countries in South America, these numbers are negligible.

Rafael Rabello de Barros, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Comparisons to the 30 000 "disappeared" in Argentina are of little comfort to the relatives who feel that the atrocities committed by the Brazilian government have received little attention since the passing of a general amnesty in 1979.

Although a civilian government was instated in 1985, the families of the "disappeared" have continued to seek the truth and draw attention to the numerous atrocities carried out by the past government.

Groups of this nature are not uncommon around the world, and such organisations have emerged in at least 16 countries. Most of these organisations have developed spontaneously.

Their roots lie often with relatives who have met as a result of their common experiences. Stories of meeting one another at government offices and police stations while seeking information about their loved ones are common.

Groups exist in almost all Latin American countries and have also been established in African countries such as Chad, Ethiopia and Morocco. Similar groups also operate in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Turkey, Croatia and in China.

These groups are diverse in membership and objectives, but generally share three common aims: a demand for information about what happened to their loved ones; a need for official acknowledgment; and a quest for justice in respect of those responsible.

In Latin America truth, social and psychological rehabilitation, and acknowledgment are generally placed before the need for compensation. As most of the groups have developed in the context of blanket amnesties, there is an ongoing demand for justice.

Impunity for crimes committed under military regimes is the issue that sits hardest with relatives of the murdered and "disappeared" throughout the world.

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is one of the boldest international efforts to try to meet some of these needs. Unlike a "blanket amnesty", the commission trades full disclosure or "truth recovery" for amnesty - thus potentially meeting victims' needs for truth and public acknowledgment.

In South Africa, amnesty is justified as being necessary to ensure peace. It is considered that prosecutions could not have been guaranteed due to inefficiencies in the criminal justice system and a lack of access to information necessary to sustain successful prosecutions.

Most victims would probably agree that an investigation like the truth commission is a necessary first step to uncovering the truth. However, the onus is not on victims to accept any amnesty agreements. Rather, the commission has the responsibility to explain amnesties and has to be prepared for the angry responses.

It is critical that it is not demanded, either implicity or explicity, that victims are expected to forgive the perpetrators. Families' anger or other emotional responses to the granting of amnesty to perpetrators has to be legitimised and space provided for people to express their feelings.

The lessons from other countries are that amnesties are always unpopular. Ironically, if the truth is uncovered, this may stimulate rather than eliminate families' demands for justice.

Even with the efforts of the truth commission, the varied nature of the cases and the impossible search for the truth means that the issues of the past can be expected to remain on the agenda for many years.

Despite the Chilean Commission of 1991 being reported as the most successful truth commission to date, today people still seek to report past cases and many are unaware that the commission even took place.

In South Africa we need to guard against the attitude that once the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is over, the chapter on the past is closed. For the victims of past abuses, the chapter only closes when they are personally ready.

This can be more challenging than it sounds. Take one faction of the victims' group the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, for example, who refuse any form of reparation and compensation. They will not even participate in any official investigations or bodies, and insist: "You took them away alive, we want them back alive".

Perhaps they only want others to experience the frustration thay have felt and are determined to offer constant reminders that, in reality, there is nothing that can ever be done to replace their "missing" loved ones. As bizarre as this extreme position sounds, if we are to truly sympathise with victims we are required to understand it. 

In Brazil, the government has recently agreed to compensate the families for the murdered and "disappeared", but the relatives say compensation was never their goal. They see this as the government's final attempt to buy their silence and close the book on the past, but without disclosing the facts of what happened. 

As a result, the families of the "disappeared" in Brazil are referred to by both those from the left and the right as "dinosaurs". They are seen as harping on the past. The society is tired of these mothers who will not be appeased or who cannot forget.

The real question is: at what point does a society become tired of hearing the voices of the past? In South Africa, despite even the most valiant efforts of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, we can expect to hear the voices of victims long into the future.

The challenge to all South Africans is to learn to cope with, and accept as legitimate, the ongoing anger and even impossible demands of victims who will continue their struggle for an ever-elusive truth.

Originally published by Brandon Hamber in Mail and Guardian, 24 March 1997

Brandon Hamber is a clinical psychologist and at the time was the co-ordinator of the Transition and Reconciliation Unit at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation