My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity

Much has been written about the effect of the criminal justice system on society and how it relates to balancing the need for an alleged perpetrator to be served due justice with the need for reconciliation with those who have been wronged. But what happens when an entire nation goes awry and engages in acts of civil war and genocide? What happens when these acts become the source of inquiry in the realm of international criminal tribunals? How is it possible for justice to be delivered on an international scale in these so-called crimes against humanity? Is universal justice an achievable goal? This is the problem explored by Eric Stover and Harvey M. Weinstein in My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity.

This book, aptly divided into three parts, attempts to explore the effectiveness of the international criminal tribunal system and its noble goals of instituting societal change and reconciliation within the war-torn societies of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The authors use a triad of approaches. The first perspective is an investigation of the effectiveness of the trials themselves and how they relate to the citizens of the nations being investigated. The second is an attempt to measure the level of reconciliation that is being achieved in these nations now that these trials are being conducted. The third looks at how individuals within each of these societies believe that reconciliation and justice have been achieved. Ultimately, Stover and Weinstein conclude that international criminal tribunals may appear to be making right what has been wrong, but, in reality, they have very little effect on the nations and peoples whom they were created to serve.

The authors introduce the book’s chapters with an explanation of the Rwandan and Yugoslavian conflicts, creating an effective painting of the atrocities and the cities and villages where they occurred. In Yugoslavia, they illustrate the cities of Mostar, Vukovar, and Prijedor and their inhabitants through three distinct ethnic groups: Orthodox Christian Serbs, Roman Catholic Croats, and Moslem Bosnians. They all had lived in peaceful coexistence from the end of World War II until the fall of Communism in the early 1990s, when the groups resorted to raising arms against each other in the quest for independence. The authors explain the plight of Rwandans by discussing the war between their two ethnic groups, the Hutu, or landed farmers, and the Tutsi, nomadic cattle ranchers. These two groups had lived peacefully together until they were enslaved by European colonialism. After the colonies dissolved, they were forced into an unnatural rule of first a Tutsi-, then a Hutu-dominated statehood. The Hutu then sought to eradicate the Tutsi as they both struggled for a voice in the leadership of their nation in the wake of colonial abandonment.

In the two opening chapters of Part One, the creation and jurisdiction of the International Criminal Tribunals of Yugoslavia and Rwanda are discussed and critiqued from the perspective of legal professionals within the respective nations. Through these interviews, the authors explain and judge the jurisdictions of the courts and their overall successes. The two tribunals were to prosecute the most important perpetrators in each conflict through trials before the world, each with the goals that justice would be served and that a process of closure and reconciliation would be achieved within each nation. The writers find that dissatisfaction runs high among Yugoslavians and Rwandans because these trials are held in foreign countries, far removed from the sites of the atrocities, and do not necessarily reflect the societal values and practices of justice unique to the respective nations. Fairness in the eyes of the former Yugoslavians and Rwandans varies on the basis of ethnicity. While the tribunals tend to view ethnic groups such as the Croats, Bosnians, and Tutsis as victims of Serbian and Hutu aggression, the Serbs and Hutu believe that the tribunals do not do enough to bring to light the aggressions that were carried out against their own people by the opposing sides.

In response to the sentiments of isolation in regard to the ownership of the trials, the third chapter investigates a novel experiment of local justice supported by the Rwandan tribunal that engages traditional Rwandan courts known as Gacaca. In Gacaca, individuals are brought to justice at the community level, and resolution is made between victim and perpetrator through the guidance of a popularly elected court. Often, a simple apology and the begging of forgiveness along with some form of service to the community such as repairing a war-torn school becomes the final sentence, while others are remanded to higher regional courts or even the tribunal for a more formal trial and sentencing.

The final chapters of Part One discuss the collection of evidence, the treatment of witnesses during the criminal tribunals, and the concept of victim reparations. In the case of admitting evidence for mass genocide, much of it comes from the exhumation of mass graves. What seems to be a simple task of collecting information becomes daunting when the examiners must also balance the needs of survivors and relatives of the dead. Most of these forensic investigations are aimed at counting the number of dead rather than identifying them, the desire of many of the survivors who yearn for the deceased to be returned to their families for burial.

For those victims and witnesses who testify in the criminal tribunals, the writers report that trials are an avenue to justice: giving perpetrators a fair trial and seeing them serve their sentences, giving voice to the dead, and allowing confrontation with perpetrators. Although these may be noble pursuits, the authors state that the witnesses are not always made to feel welcome at the trials nor are they prepared adequately for the rigors of cross-examination or the psychological implications of reliving the past. There is also no protection afforded them on their return home. Lesser war criminals still walk free in their homelands and can easily antagonize witnesses through acts of vandalism and threats of violence. While witnesses have been offered the opportunity to testify without making their identities known to the defendants, concerns arise in regard to allowing defendants the opportunity to be confronted by their accusers. Part One closes with a discussion of the concept of the victims’ seeking reparations from offending nations. Although this task is tackled in too few pages, the chapter effectively uses rhetorical questioning to further the cause of victims as well as chronicle the general lack of support on the part of the tribunal to enforce their judgments against the aggressors of war.

The second part of the book takes a different turn by investigating the reintegration of populations that had once been at war. Schism and divide are the main problems facing the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, as the land has been divided on the basis of ethnic groups. The opening chapters portray the difficulties faced by the people within the city of Mostar, a town straddling a river with banks that were once connected by a stone bridge built in the 1500s and destroyed in an act of war in the 1990s. The Bosnians live on one side of the river and the Croats on the other. Once a year, the Bosnian children commemorate the end of the war by dropping flowers into the river in the hopes that they reach the opposite bank only to find that there are no Croat children waiting on the other side. Reconstruction of the bridge connecting the two halves of the city has yet to be completed.

It is in Chapters 10 and 11 that the reader is introduced to a dazzling array of charts as the book moves from prose to statistical analyses. The overall goal of this statistical venture is to chart the attitudes of Rwandans and former Yugoslavians in their beliefs about the effectiveness of the trials, their overall attitudes about these pursuits of justice, and their general thoughts on reconciliation. Perhaps, the more seasoned social scientist would appreciate the magnitude of detail that is encompassed in these passages.

The closing chapters of Part Two are a refreshing return to the literary narrative established at the start of the book. The authors discuss the techniques and curricula that are part of the education of students in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. While the peoples of the former Yugoslavia have chosen to educate their children in schools segregated on the basis of ethnicity, Rwandans are attempting to create a society that focuses on commonality rather than diversity. First year university students attend “Truth and Unity” camps to learn about the unity that is supported by the Rwandan government and to dispel the myths of differences that had fed the war. There appears to be an overemphasis of unity supported by the Rwandan government as it attempts to shape a collective memory to ensure everlasting peace. While the tribunals may bring a show of justice before the world, the daily trial of neighbors living with neighbors turned to enemies and back to neighbors would most likely be borne in utmost obscurity if not for the exhaustive research and interviews of Yugoslavian and Rwandan students and educators reported in this section of the book.

Part Three, the shortest section of the book, investigates in three chapters how individuals within these two postwar societies have come to view reconciliation and belief in whether justice has been achieved now that war is ended and the trials are under way. The opening chapter examines visual artists in the former Yugoslavia and how their work allows them an outlet to express their feelings about the war. Unfortunately, it is hard to identify any concrete connections to the tribunals and the pursuit of justice, but it is an interesting account of how artists reflect their feelings about war through their art. Nothing is mentioned of musicians, writers, and poets, who no doubt are recording their own unique impressions through their work. Perhaps, these perspectives can be explored in a future edition or second volume.

In the penultimate chapter, questions of reconciliation are investigated within the city of Vukovar. Serbs and Croats were asked individually about their feelings on the current status of interethnic friendships. While the war may be over, both sides have found it hard to return to prewar friendships because there is much resentment on both sides, and feelings ranging from entitlement to bitterness about the past are considered acceptable. The concluding chapter goes one step further to gauge the actual feelings of reconciliation individuals experience in forgiving their enemies as an entire ethnic class. The conclusion is reached that reconciliation can be achieved only when an individual is able to humanize the perceived enemy and understand their feelings of loss and betrayal. The book comes full circle and uses the work of the tribunals to bring individuals to trial for their crimes against humanity to humanize the impersonal aspect of the wars. Unfortunately, the evidence presented in this closing chapter shows that there is still a long way to go for individuals to attain such enlightened perspectives, thus becoming beneficiaries of the justice offered by the tribunals.

Overall, this book is an interesting read, although, at times, it is difficult to trace the connections between the tribunals and their overall effectiveness. This confusion, however, may have been the goal—to show that justice is not a simple black-and-white matter of bringing perpetrators of atrocities to justice, but rather a myriad of gray issues in need of resolution, both inside and outside the courtroom. The book will hopefully serve as a catalyst for further works on the topic.

• American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law