Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Everyone of us has a right, the right to live a decent life
for himself and for his children this right is usually protected by law
It is the state that usually protects its citizens' rights
when the people have to gain their rights back and are forced
to start a revolution, the regime transforms
into a murderer and denies people's rights even right to life
he starts to kill, shell, destroy and torture, therefore people
start taking their rights with their own hands
and they also start killing and torturing
And as time passes, things get complicated,
and there will be a lot killings, disappearances, torture & war crimes
We the people have the right to know who got killed, why,
how and what is going to happen to the disappeared?
who committed these war crimes? who committed torture?
who gave the orders and who executed them?
Also the rights of the victims and their families to be compensated
morally and materially for what happened to them
The right of the people who were killed to be remembered
and for their stories to be told and to remember everything
that happened in Syria to ensure preventing this
from happening again in the future
In order for that to happen, there are a group of measures
that are taken, in order to first: reach out to the truth,
secondly to ensure the justice and accountability, and to avoid
revenge and replace it by tolerance to prevent
destroying what's left of the country.
These measures are called transitional justice.
Transitional justice is similar to the fairy that connects the
two banks of the river through the storm and it also takes society
to safety during the storm and the high waves. In order for the
fairy to move to the safe side many steps should
be taken to reach transitional justice:
Truth commissions:
They are committees of people who have nothing to do neither
with the regime nor with the revolution and their mission is
to document violations and crimes committed to reach the
truth, to expose the ones involved in the massacres and killings whoever
they are and the reasons and motives behind their involvement
in order to prepare for their prosecutions
Criminal prosecutions:
Prosecuting the persons involved in the crimes against civilians whether
by national lawsuits or international courts or conjoint courts which means
a national court but under the supervision of UN, to hold
criminals accountable by conducting fair trials.
Reparations:
Compensating people who suffered during the crackdown,
either materially like reconstruction of destroyed buildings, compensation
of stolen property and rebuilding hospitals, or morally by commemorating
the martyrs and building museums for remembrance
Institutional reforms:
After the involvement of the army and the security agents
in killing demonstrators these institutions must be restructured
to avoid practicing this violence in the future and we make sure that
these institutions are under the control of the state and not the
control of certain people and also combating corruption.
Conciliation and forgiveness:
There are many people who were involved in the violence
and were dragged to participate or to be part of revengeful acts,
so in order to keep the door of vengeance closed and to start
rebuilding the country, we must forgive and flip the page
and to give the people who didn't get involved in the killings
chances to ask for forgiveness, these people would either talk
on TV, radio or in public places about their mistakes and to
seek forgiveness from people. Transitional justice is very
similar to the reconciliations that take place in neighborhood
fights When a third party interferes and tries to solve the problem and
to hold accountable the one who committed mistakes, and for the
society to regain its position, to start rebuilding and developing.
Although transitional justice is not simple reconciliation
where we forget the mistakes committed,
it is justice, accountability and forgiveness
that takes us from the painful bloody past to the new future
where we will prevent what happened in the past to happen again.