I was celebrating the justice that the victims got

Exploring irreconciliation among Bangladeshi human rights activists in London

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2254141
AutoresJacco Visser (0000-0001-9473-2963, Aarhus University, autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume28
FascículoS1
Páginas65-78
Data de publicação2022-04-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1359-0987 • E-ISSN: 1467-9655
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-9655.13754
OpenAlexW4225400547
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas31

This essay investigates transnational human rights activist networks seeking justice for war crimes committed during the Bangladesh War of 1971, especially in light of the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Focusing on activists in London, it demonstrates the need to engage with transitional justice initiatives discursively and ethnographically in order to avoid losing sight of the ways in which uses of human rights concepts can veil power dimensions through universalist legalistic abstractions. The essay explores engagements with atrocities of the war by mapping the travel and uses of human rights tropes to articulate claims of justice. It showcases how in addressing the violence of the Bangladesh War, victor justice and punishment are emphasized while futures are imagined in which enemies no longer exist. In the examples, a language of justice is employed to call for prosecution, but justice is reframed so that it is equated with the impossibility of reconciling people on opposing sides during the war

Criminology · Economic Justice · Human rights · Impossibility · Political science · Power (physics · Sociology · Transitional justice · Tribunal · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Bangladesh Politics, Society, and Development · Law · South Asian Studies and Conflicts