TRUTH-TELLING: Humanizing the Victims
In her book, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, Martha Minow affirms her belief in truth
commissions’ comparative potential to contribute to reconciliation due to their power to aid
societal healing: “When the societal goals include restoring dignity to victims offering a basis for
17individual healing, and also promoting reconciliation across a divided nation, a truth commission
again may be as or more powerful than prosecutions.” One of the three commissioners on the
United Nations-led Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, Thomas Buergenthal, reported in
his assessment of the experience that
many of the people who came to talk to the Commission to tell what happened to them or their
relatives and friends had not done so before. For some, ten years or more had gone by in silence
and pent-up anger. Finally, someone listened to them, and there would be a record of what they
had endured. They came by the thousands, still afraid and not a little skeptical, and they talked,
many for the first time. One could not listen to them without recognizing that the mere act of
telling what had happened was a healing emotional release, and that they were more interested in
recounting their story and being heard than in retribution. It is as if they felt some shame that they
had not dared to speak out before and, now that they had done so, they could go home and focus
on the future less encumbered by the past. 45
Jacques makes two important points. The first is that “People turn to memory in the search
for elements to help them to situate themselves in the present and to project themselves into the
future.”46 Accordingly, she then states that “Everyone’s memory is selective. Each of us builds
on an interpretation of what he or she remembers.” 47 If people identify themselves based on the
horrifying, dehumanizing experiences of human rights abuses and atrocities that dominate their
memories, they will feel of degraded status and begin to dismiss their essential human worth.
These victims suffer the psychosocial problems of negative self-image, hopelessness, and fear of
the violence recurring in their memories that perpetuate pain even further. John Paul Lederach
addresses these issues in the passage below, explaining that reconciliation involves coming to
terms with the reality of one’s past and reconsidering one’s own identity visa vis society.
Reconciliation … orients its energy toward understanding the deeper psychological and subjective
aspects of people’s experiences, not just in connection to their recent past but often based on
generation of pain, loss, and suffering. Reconciliation requires that people not only decide what to
do about particular issues, but also address and reconsider their understanding of self, community,
and enemy. 48
18This deeply personal reprocessing of identity and reconciling with the “other(s)” is relevant to all
sides of the conflict. For victims, it is significant that their defining image of themselves does
not remain a restrictive “victim” identity with the help of an individual reconciliation process.
Kimberly A. Maynard identifies in her essay, “Rebuilding Community: Psychosocial
Healing, Reintegration, and Reconciliation at the Grassroots Level,” five phases of psychosocial
recovery for societies that are rebuilding after internal conflict. She lists:
1) Establishing safety
2) Communalization (the act of sharing traumatic experiences, perceptions, resulting
emotions, etc. in a safe environment) and Bereavement
3) Rebuilding trust and the capacity to trust
4) Reestablishing personal and social morality
5) Reintegrating and restoring democratic discourse. 49
Given these guidelines for reconciliation, truth commissions are an appropriate model. Truth
commissions aim to provide a safe space where the fear-dominated, victimized, and hidden
members of society can reappear and unload the trauma they have been carrying on their backs.
By listening to these victims and validating their experiences as nothing less than inhumane, the
commission helps to humanize the desperate and degraded. Rehabilitating the confidence and
security of individuals, as the truth commission does one at a time, is essential. These individual
members of society are the building blocks of greater communities on which the possibility for
reconciliation hinges.
One occasionally controversial issue of truth commission proceedings is the potentially
painful emotional and psychological personal impact of truth-telling. If one learns the true story
of a loved one’s death or torture, including the identity of the one responsible for their agony, the
emotional burden can be intense. Individuals’ reactions to the experience of truth-telling vary
greatly. Re-hashing the painful memories forces some people to slide back into wrenching
nightmares, flashbacks, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Given this, some critics of
19truth commissions believe that it is better to “leave the past behind than reopen old wounds.”5°
When the sense of resolve is founded on high expectations for the consequences to the
victimizer(s), and the victimizer(s) is neither prosecuted, suspended from his political position,
nor even mentioned in the truth commission report, justice ignored means no resolution and yet
another defeat for the victim or witness. Still, the simple opportunity to speak and be heard can
be a cathartic experience for many victims. Truth commissions, not trials, are official bodies that
finally give primary attention to the victims. The overall consensus is that truth commissions
offer significant psychological reward long-term and do much more good than harm for the
victimized and for society at large
Tags: community, Psychosocial, retribution