Silencing Hearings? Victim-Witnesses at War Crimes Trials
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12199517 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marie-Bénédicte Dembour (0000-0002-3270-4067, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 151-177 |
| Publication date | 2004-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of International Law (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0938-5428 • E-ISSN: 1464-3596 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ejil/15.1.151 |
| OpenAlex | W2065804718 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 48 |
It is commonly accepted that war crimes trials should provide a space for victims to tell their stories. A close reading of the transcripts of victim-witnesses’ testimonies in the Krstic trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia suggests, however, that war crimes trials effectively silence, rather than hear, victims. In this particular trial, victim-witnesses predictably governed neither the agenda nor the pace of the hearings. More problematically, we argue that incongruously optimistic judicial remarks unnecessarily denied their suffering. On a different plane, victims’ testimonies were only vaguely connected to the person of the accused; they related to facts the relevance and proof of which are debatable. This article aims to generate a debate about victim-witnesses’ testimonies at war crimes trials. It seeks to identify both the demands that the legal process imposes on victim-witnesses and the tensions that arise out of their participation in it. In the light of the fact that legal proceedings cannot produce the definitive collective memory of the events with which they deal, the article finally stresses the need to foster a variety of collective memories outside the judicial platform
Criminal trial · Criminology · International law · Political science · Relevance (law · Silence · Sociology · Tribunal · War crime · Witness · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · International Law and Human Rights · Law in Society and Culture · Law
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The expressive turn of international criminal justice
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The burden of memory
The concept of the civilian
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Containing testimony
Gender Justice or Gendered Justice? Female Defendants in International Criminal Tribunals
Recognition of Gendered Experiences of Harm at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
Shifting Accounts of Justice
Hearing the Right Gaps’
On Silence, Sexuality and Skeletons
Victims and Transitional Justice
Collective Memories and Legacies of Political Violence in the Balkans
What We Know About Transitional Justice
The Burden of Bearing Witness
Les femmes et le droit (pénal) international
Testemunhar o trauma
Mass Atrocity, Mass Testimony, and the Quantitative Turn in International Law
Accountability, affect, and the political unconscious
"Afterword to "Anthropology and Human Rights in a New Key
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| Unique citing works | 48 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,4 |
| Citation span | 2006 - 2026 (21) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 48 |