Desmond Tutu's Renewed Call for Peace

By Nathan Gardels, New Perspectives Quarterly. Posted March 15, 2002.

[Editor's Note: Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end apartheid in South Africa. He recently spoke with Nathan Gardels about war crimes, September 11, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war against terrorism]

NATHAN GARDELS: South Africa was able to heal the wounds of hatred and achieve justice after apartheid through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission you headed. Is that a better way to achieve justice than the kind of international trials going on now in The Hague for war crimes in the Balkans and in Arusha for genocide in Rwanda?

ARCHBISHOP TUTU: These trials by the U.N. tribunals are steps along the way to establishment of an International Criminal Court. My reservation about this approach is that it risks disrupting fragile situations of transition from repression and conflict to a more democratic dispensation.

To try to take this concern into account, a statute of the proposed ICC states that its jurisdiction would apply only if a country had not dealt effectively on its own with the atrocities of the past. Those who support the ICC are mainly concerned with accountability and putting an end to impunity for human rights crimes. They have said they would avoid intervention, as in the case of Chile, when it might disrupt an ongoing process of reconciliation if, at the same time, accountability for crimes is established.

In the case of the Arusha tribunal, I am fearful that the Hutu will say that, although they have been found guilty in open court, their trials were instigated by the Tutsis. Far from ending the spiral of hatred, revenge and violence between the Hutu and Tutsi, the trials there may fuel yet another cycle.

GARDELS: In other words, international tribunals may hinder, not help, reconciliation?

TUTU: Such tribunals may well ensure accountability and show there will be no impunity. That is fine as far as it goes. But you need something other than retributive justice for healing. In and of itself, the judicial process is handicapped. It alone cannot be effective in reconciling a society divided by hatred.

What we found with our Truth and Reconciliation Commission was that it was enormously therapeutic and cleansing for victims to tell their stories. In a judicial process you have to prove guilt of the perpetrator by cross-examining witnesses on specific acts. The court must be objective and, legally speaking, equally hostile to the victim and the perpetrator.

In our commission, the sympathy for the dignity of the victim was assumed. And instead of being proven guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt, the perpetrator had to confess in order to get amnesty. That was the beginning, not the end, of the process. This combination of storytelling and confession put it all out in the open. With full disclosure, people feel they can move on.

GARDELS: The South African reconciliation and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process began about the same time. Yours succeeded, but the process in the Middle East has totally collapsed.

You have said that "there is no future without forgiveness," prompting the suggestion that what the Old Testament antagonists of the Middle East might need is a little dose of the New Testament -- that is, forgiveness instead of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

TUTU: There is no way peace and stability can come to the Middle East through the gun of vengeance. That is true. The Christian notion of forgiveness, let's not forget, arises out of a Judeo-Christian tradition. In the book of the prophet Hosea, God asks him to take as his wife a woman who had become a prostitute. This was a parable illustrating that God would not abandon even the unfaithful, but would keep them and cleanse them. This idea of forgiveness is central in the Biblical faith.

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