Suchergebnisse

This article explores the relationship between truth commissions and gendered citizenship through a case study of Timor-Leste. It examines how, 10 years after the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) has completed its work, women's citizenship remains constrained by, and negotiated within, deeply gendered narratives of nation-building that are informed by historical experiences of the resistance struggle. The power of these narratives—which foreground heroism rather than victimisation—underscores the need to situate truth commissions as part of an ongoing politics of memory. Despite the power of political elites to shape this politics, the continued marginalisation of sections of society within official narratives is also providing an impetus for alternative truth-telling efforts that seek to broaden public perspectives on the past. By promoting new narratives of women's experiences of the conflict, these projects might be understood as attempts to negotiate and transform gendered conceptions of citizenship in the present and for the future.

This article explores the relationship between truth commissions and gendered citizenship through a case study of Timor-Leste. It examines how, 10 years after the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) has completed its work, women's citizenship remains constrained by, and negotiated within, deeply gendered narratives of nation-building that are informed by historical experiences of the resistance struggle. The power of these narratives—which foreground heroism rather than victimisation—underscores the need to situate truth commissions as part of an ongoing politics of memory. Despite the power of political elites to shape this politics, the continued marginalisation of sections of society within official narratives is also providing an impetus for alternative truth-telling efforts that seek to broaden public perspectives on the past. By promoting new narratives of women's experiences of the conflict, these projects might be understood as attempts to negotiate and transform gendered conceptions of citizenship in the present and for the future.

Since the 1999 referendum for self-determination brought the repressive twenty-four-year Indonesian occupation of East Timor to an end, multiple transitional justice mechanisms have been established to address the violence of the past. These have included two prosecutorial mechanisms: a serious crimes investigations and prosecutions process (Serious Crimes Process) based in East Timor and a Jakarta-based Ad Hoc human rights court set up by the Indonesian government; and two truth and reconciliation commissions: a Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) established by the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), and a bilateral East Timorese and Indonesian government-initiated Truth and Friendship Commission (CTF). Despite these efforts to �deal with the past�, no member of the Indonesian military has yet been tried for 1999-related violence, and the East Timorese leadership has progressively promoted a narrative of forgiveness, forgetting and �moving on� from the past. After providing a brief background to the conflict during the Indonesian occupation, this chapter traces the competing imperatives that have shaped the transitional justice agenda since the 1999 referendum and have underpinned the East Timorese leadership's increasingly anti-prosecutorial stance. In particular, I acknowledge that, in a context in which powerful members of the UN Security Council have increasingly prioritised the maintenance of relations with Indonesia over the establishment of an international criminal tribunal to prosecute senior members of its military, it is not surprising that the East Timorese leadership has implored its population to forgive and forget. In addition, I suggest that the leadership's forward-looking reconciliatory narrative has served internal nation-building purposes, and reflects preoccupations with building national unity and establishing political legitimacy during a fragile and formative nation-building era. Anxieties about these issues can be seen in the attempts by some East Timorese leaders to orient the justice debate towards social justice rather than retributive justice and the ongoing parliamentary discussions about amnesties and pardons for convicted East Timorese perpetrators of serious crimes.

War crimes trials are claimed to hold the capacity to contribute to a range of ambitious justice goals in post-conflict societies, such as the public recognition of victims' experiences, the promotion of respect for the rule of law, and the fostering of reconciliation. This article unsettles these claims through a case study of the UN-sponsored Serious Crimes Process in East Timor. It charts the practical and political constraints upon the Serious Crimes Process which undermined its ability to achieve its own goals. In addition, it draws on interviews with East Timorese survivors to demonstrate the difficulties faced by the Serious Crimes Process in fully meeting locally grounded demands for justice. This analysis illustrates the inherent limits of war crimes trials in responding to calls for justice, which transcend the possibilities of the criminal law.

War crimes trials are claimed to hold the capacity to contribute to a range of ambitious justice goals in post-conflict societies, such as the public recognition of victims' experiences, the promotion of respect for the rule of law, and the fostering of reconciliation. This article unsettles these claims through a case study of the UN-sponsored Serious Crimes Process in East Timor. It charts the practical and political constraints upon the Serious Crimes Process which undermined its ability to achieve its own goals. In addition, it draws on interviews with East Timorese survivors to demonstrate the difficulties faced by the Serious Crimes Process in fully meeting locally grounded demands for justice. This analysis illustrates the inherent limits of war crimes trials in responding to calls for justice, which transcend the possibilities of the criminal law.

War crimes trials are claimed to hold the capacity to contribute to a range of ambitious justice goals in post-conflict societies, such as the public recognition of victims' experiences, the promotion of respect for the rule of law, and the fostering of reconciliation. This article unsettles these claims through a case study of the UN-sponsored Serious Crimes Process in East Timor. It charts the practical and political constraints upon the Serious Crimes Process which undermined its ability to achieve its own goals. In addition, it draws on interviews with East Timorese survivors to demonstrate the difficulties faced by the Serious Crimes Process in fully meeting locally grounded demands for justice. This analysis illustrates the inherent limits of war crimes trials in responding to calls for justice, which transcend the possibilities of the criminal law.

This article examines how East Timorese women's contributions to the resistance against the twenty-four-year Indonesian occupation ("the Resistance") have been marginalized within the veteran's valorization scheme (veterans' scheme) established in the post-conflict period. Drawing on interviews with politicians, veterans and members of women's organizations, we show that although women played significant roles within the Armed, Clandestine and Diplomatic fronts, for the most part they have not been recognized as veterans within the veterans' scheme. Instead, the scheme has reinforced perceptions of women's roles as wives, mothers, homemakers and widows, rather than as political actors, suggesting that the return to "peace" in Timor-Leste has been accompanied by the strengthening of patriarchal traditions and the expectation that women return to "traditional" roles. We argue that the failure to recognize women as veterans is problematic both for East Timorese women and society as a whole. It represents a lost opportunity to recognize women's agency and potentially to improve their social status in society. It also narrows the way in which the independence struggle is remembered and represented and further promotes a culture of "militarized masculinity" that elevates and rewards men who show the capacity to use violence.