Reconciliation Vs. Reparations
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How easy it is to put people against eachother. How easy it is to pull the ranks close and together. It suffices for an international court, under the banner of justice, to read a judgment for two full hours, for rhetoric of animosity to resurface, self-assured, unstoppable and rising.
Innocent – under effective control Didn’t prevent genocide – genocide in Srebrenica
The one side screams foul and protests dishonour, the other side sighs in relief and raises its head up proudly. There, we have a spent out and deflated institutions that the UN has become, risking to use its truth to get all of us involved as a party of a litigation which, as social opposition, always excluded us, which was beyond the limits for us as social alternative. We, that were systemically ignored every time we attempted to stop, prevent, restrict or, as it is now, improve. There is a trap for those on the Serb side to feel triumphant, explaining why was such a decision just. On the other hand, those who feel Bosnian and Herzegovinian face the trap to have to deny and utterly negate the judgment, to charge it with injustice as representative of the dead. This game of sides includes horrible violence that can put us all in the same pile: activists, resisters and critics of all ages, regardless of where they are. As the audience that has to follow the patterns of a talk show. Taboo The decisions such as the one just adopted by the International Court of Justice have the effect of a bomb that, once exploded, creates a circle of insurmountable silence. That is the taboo of death, its existence before and after the bomb. The noise that follows it is made by politicians. Maladjusted and organized, sophisticated and populist, created to cover the silence of contemplation of thousands of people that attempt, because they need, to create their own position on this judgment. They seek it in their own lives, they see it in the eyes of their friends – sad as we are or happy as they are. The noise serves to cause more noise, to think that there is nothing after the judgment except talk, support or opposition. Our silence becomes a taboo and has to end. A taboo is a strong social prohibition (or ban) against words, objects, actions, discussions, or people that are considered undesirable by a group, culture, or society. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent. That is the very reason why taboos have to be broken. We need to say it loud, what is it about this judgment that hurts and what is it that offers consolation. In a word, to go on and cross out of the circle of silence. To talk to the other, noted in this international judgment, held hostage, as we are, by the taboo of his/her own community. The day of judgment was, for me, just another Monday. It was a colleague that reminded me what was happening that they, it was imposed on me. Its effects were and will remain painful. I had to leave my work, take a deep breath and then listen, read, listen some more, talk, talk extensively and then remain silent again. The wound doesn’t sting because of the ruling – it was, after all, a “chronicle of a death foretold”. The real wound, surprising in its perceived normalcy, is that my colleague and I don’t feel the same thing. In spite of everything, we are separated by the thin line of lives created along unclear but very much in place boundaries of our communities, languages, families, feelings. My wound is not caused by the judgment, but it is one of the wounds that international institutions, the presumed guarantors of whatnot, inflict on the citizens. The real wound is inflicted by what the ruling creates: a logic of symmetry, a whirlpool that turns the reparations, or lack of it, the centre of debate. Reconciliation In this particular race, the conflict between the symbolic, being a citizen of one country – Serbia, and the death of one non-state such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, erupts and we all take positions. It is civilized by unavoidable. I am hear, on the side of death, he is on the other side, citizen that risks to be marked by shame. My pain and his sigh of relief appalled me and helped me see the trap. The judgment was not made by me or him. The more I think about it, the more it seems that the B&H – Serbia match is like a football finals game – after extra time and penalty shootout, the winner is decided by a flip of the coin. However, after the coin-flip, when players have retreated to the locker rooms and are paid for their play, the people in the stands live the whole game through once again, trying to remember this or that action only to ultimately, desperate and mad, watch the coin as it falls to the ground, to remain their forever. Ok, I don’t want to be in the stands, I don’t want to be a fan in this game. I don’t want to be forced to watch the coin flip forever in its last flight, I won’t debate for hours, days, months how the coin should have or could have landed. I know that my friend doesn’t want to do that, either. We talked in details. We admitted and recognized our differences. That boundary will remain, has to remain until melted down because of our abilities. Or our negligence, for that matter. My taboo was broken and now I can say that the ruling doesn’t concern me. It belongs to one way of perception of the world and people that doesn’t belong to us. It is a part of the world of reparations. To me, a regular person that lives a regular life, it means little apart from making me become a part of the mob. I need more than that. I need to leave this double-faced logic managed so well by politicians, both local and international. I need to get out of the vicious circle and try to realign my ideas with those of my friend, starting not from who is right but from ourselves. Starting from the fact that we want to be friends, from the fact that we are both aware of our identities and that we don’t make much of them. To realign us again with the other. To leave the spiral of who is right issue and propose a new paradigm. Without the ecumenical approach, the fashionable pacifism or goodness, but through declaration of intentions: the practice of civic politics. We have had it enough with this logic of reconciliation imposed by society that only fakes capacity to manage justice, demanding from us to be a party in the process only to turn us... against each other. Wars kill, destroy and separate. No court could bring back the time before death and destruction. The power to compensate doesn’t reside in a decision of a judge who believes that he/she is the superior party. The compensation lies not in the ruling, but in recognition and condemnation of damages. The only court that managed to offer a justice of a sort was the South African Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. A court in which testimony and voluntary surrender become public, symbolic and legal admission of the things that took place, but a court that also has the power to declare amnesty within its competences. That was a court that aimed at the truth, the reconciliation of people, not condemnation or clemency drawn from the abstract rules of the law. Such a court, led by conciliation and not compensation, will probably never appear in the Balkans, a place suffocated by cruel and sophisticated westernization. Regardless of it all, this is our bridge, my bridge, that will allow us all to talk to each other. Talk without hatred. |
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