Their Voices

1. Introduction

What is justice? Since long before Socrates posed this pivotal question, it has sat at the very heart of our political institutions, laws, social relations, and theistic beliefs. While it seems there are recurrent interpretations of the term across history, there are also major divergences. Indeed, these divergences bear a critical impact on how laws and societies are constructed. This project centres on the idea that those best equipped to define and understand justice are those who have the greatest right to seek it. For this reason, I decided to go straight to the extremes of human suffering, interviewing survivors of the Cambodian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, and the Holocaust. Gravely affected by the worst of human evil, these survivors have considerable authority in communicating the meaning and end of justice. Aside from providing conceptual insight, their answers serve an important practical function. Our ability to understand how survivors interpret justice allows us to have the most effective possible response to mass atrocities: one which includes, rather than excludes, the subjective will and experience of those most directly affected.

This essay will begin by discussing the research questions of this project, as well as laying out why they are important. It will then explain my qualitative methodology. Subsequently, in accordance with two sets of research questions, I will lay out my findings. Ultimately, survivor interviews provide a profound insight into the nature and practice of justice.

2. Research Question and Purpose

The purpose of this project was to understand the views of survivors from different genocides. The main topic was justice. It was my intuition that survivors of these mass atrocities would have unique perspectives on justice given their firsthand experiences: they would speak from a position of true authority.

The research questions which motivated this project fall into two sections. The first and main category is conceptual: What does ‘justice’ mean in the eyes of survivors of genocide? To which type of justice do survivors most commonly refer? Is justice understood as a personal or legal process?

The second category is evaluative: Understanding survivor conceptions of justice allows us to evaluate previous international responses to genocide through the eyes of survivors themselves. It allows us to take a fresh look at whether or not these responses were just and effective.

3. Significance

There are many reasons a project like this is valuable. First, for survivors of genocide, justice has extremely high stakes. Therefore, their conceptions of justice are perhaps far richer than those of outsiders, who might examine the issue through a less emotional and more ‘robotic’ viewpoint, without fully acknowledging the costs that lie in the balance. In other words, there may be serious issues with considering justice in a purely objective light, given that justice bears such extreme subjective implications. Similarly, there may be issues with applying generalisable notions of justice in context-specific cases. We can recognise common aspects of justice across cultures and contexts, but if we limit ourselves to these generalisations, we relinquish the more detailed and localised notions of justice sourced in individualist perspectives. This is also true if we seek to apply notions of justice that originated in only one religious context.

Furthermore, there is considerable pragmatic purpose to this project. If the purpose of justice is ultimately to restore peace between groups, then this purpose is only going to be fulfilled if the conception of justice being used is one which satisfies the groups in question. In this way, even pragmatism can motivate subjectivity. This project provides a qualitative path forward for deconstructing existing notions of justice and rendering them more pliable to the subjective experiences of those for whom the stakes of justice are highest. With this new knowledge, we may be equipped to handle the concept of justice better, to adapt our institutionalised notions of justice to the subjective experience, and to produce outcomes for justice that are satisfactory and durable.

Thankfully, the importance of this project was a feeling shared by the interviews. Ada Willenberg (91), a Holocaust survivor, praised the project, emphasising the importance of investigation into these experiences even long after the events take place. In the case of the Holocaust, this is truer than ever: The age of survivors means our window for primary qualitative research is closing. Scholars carry an obligation to gain as much understanding as they can before this happens.

4. Methodology

This study adopted a qualitative methodology, interviewing the survivors of historical genocides. The genocides I chose to compare and interview survivors from, were the Holocuast (1939-1945), the Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979), and the Rwandan Genocide (1994). Though in some cases survivors lack academic expertise, their subjective experiences more than compensate. This method afforded maximal specificity, compared to books or previous interview collections. One limitation of this methodology, noted by Fujii, is that memories are often imperfect or shaped by the political context in which they are recalled (Fujii, 2008: 577). Yet, Fujii’s method for managing this limitation is admirable. Speaking of her own interview experiences with Rwandan perpetrators, she noted: “The trustworthiness of their narratives, however, did not depend on the accuracy or truthfulness of their answers, but on the shared meanings and logics contained within them” (Fujii, 2008: 578). I sought to mimic this “meaning-centred approach” which embraces the limitations of memory and plays into them. (Fujii, 2008: 578).

5. Theory: The Types of Justice

This paper focuses on how survivors believe that the perpetrators should be brought to justice. Justice has many meanings, but according to Michelle Maiese and Heidi Burgess, there are four main types of justice, which are distributive justice, procedural justice, retributive justice, and restorative justice (Maiese and Burgess, 2013: 1).

Distributive justice focuses primarily on distributing wealth and other resources. In the context of genocide, if a survivor emphasises distributive justice, this would mean that they feel post-genocide justice is achieved if the survivors are given some sort of compensation economically.

A second type of justice is procedural justice. This type of justice is relevant when dealing with genocides, or any other criminal case, as it is simply about the process of a free and fair trial. In the context of genocide, a survivor would not so much care about the punishment given to the perpetrators, but would feel that justice is satisfied merely by a fair trial against them, through unbiased, likely international courts. This form of justice is not outcome-oriented.

Retributive justice centres on the punishment of wrongdoers; it brings them to justice through an ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ response, inflicting on them a pain which is similar to (or warranted by) the pain they inflicted. It focuses on what perpetrators ‘deserve’. Survivors who emphasise retributive justice would most likely favour capital punishment or a harsh prison sentence – punishments which more closely approximate the crime of murder.

The final type of justice is one that has two sides to it, and this is restorative justice. Retributive justice is about ‘restoring’ an individual, whether this be the perpetrator or the victim. A survivor may feel as though the perpetrator is brought to justice if they realise and accept their wrongdoings, and that they should be helped to be reintegrated and restored in society. The same can be said for the victims: some victims might only feel that justice has been achieved if they have been helped to overcome the horrors that they had experienced throughout the genocide.

The different types of justice are not mutually exclusive. Given survivors may not be knowledgeable in these academic categorisations of justice, their responses are all the more compelling. This is because the survivors answer these questions ‘blindly’, i.e. not categorising their answers, rather speaking from their raw experience. These answers can afterwards be analysed and parsed academically.

6. Survivors and the stakes for Justice

The first observation afforded by these interviews was the unbelievably high stakes these survivors face for the achievement of justice. The pain experienced is vast, and this pain is worsened by their version of justice not being achieved. Paul Rukesha (42), a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide, lost his parents, siblings, and many extended family members. He emphasised: “So many. So many. Healing was not easy. It was not easy.” He further asked: “Have I really stopped feeling scared? I don’t know, I don’t know […]. On a personal level, you never stop feeling scared”. The pain Paul experienced is blatant; the atrocities still haunt him today. As we shall see, this pain is exacerbated by the international and national community’s failure to satisfy his personal conditions of justice. Claver Irakoze (36), another Rwandan survivor, was only 10 when the genocide happened. He too, like Rukesha, lost both of his parents in the genocide, having to grow up without their support and guidance. Like Rukesha, he still feels afraid to this day.

Chum Mey (90), a Cambodian survivor, had an equally visceral experience. He was one of just 15 out of 12,000 to survive the infamous S-21 prison, established by the Khmer Rouge. He survived extremely narrow odds, witnessing his wife, child, and friend perish in front of him. When Pol Pot’s army opened fire on him, he fled on foot. He went “six days and nights without any food or drink.” Like Chum Mey, Norng Chan Pal (51) was also a survivor of S-21 prison in the Cambodian genocide, but was just 9 years old when arrested with his mother. Upon his arrival, he was separated from his mother, and survived by eating ‘old rice’. The traumas of losing his parents and being in a prison at such a young age still affect him to this day. This durability of the suffering in survivors of genocide makes justice a “live” issue for each of them.

Ada Krystyna Willenberg (91), originally from Poland, was the lone Holocaust survivor interviewed for this project. Krystyna Willenberg, like many of the survivors mentioned, lost much of her family, including her parents. At a very young age, she was forced to hide with a family of strangers to conceal her identity. The place where she hid was a tiny house with only one room: she would have to hide in corners whenever someone visited. Every time she went onto the street, she was scared that other Poles, who might recognise her, might denounce her to the Nazis. Before, and even after the war, she experienced anti-semitism, and still hid her identity with false documents.

These tales demonstrate the extremely high stakes which the conceptualisation and achievement of justice has for survivors of mass atrocities. Their suffering approaches the very apex of what human cruelty has to offer. From this, we can draw two tentative conclusions: First, survivors of genocide are likely to find justice extremely important. Second, they are likely to have strong ideas about what it is, whether it has been achieved, and how it might be achieved in the future. That is what the following sections will examine.

7. Survivors and the meaning of Justice

My first research question regards how survivors understand the meaning of “justice”, and furthermore, which types of justice they are most inclined to invoke when speaking about their experiences. The answers survivors gave were telling, particularly in that they were unaware of the distinctions between types of justice and often combined them in unique ways. One type of justice invoked was procedural. Chum Mey, for example, praised the fact that procedural justice had occurred in the perpetrator trials. He remarked:

“I agree with the processing of the Khmer Rouge because they had international lawyers and judges. This is very good that they had local and international lawyers.”

Chum Mey appears to believe that a coalition of local and international lawyers is more inclined to produce an objective or unbiased process. The fairness of this process is what brings about justice. Claver Irakoze also noted the importance of procedural justice, seeking fair process in a trial, but also in further aspects of life: equal treatment under the law should be given to all. Particularly in the Cambodian case, the lauding of the most basic, skeletal form of procedural justice was in some ways jarring to the Western observer, since in many cases such processes are taken for granted. Justice, one might assume, goes far beyond process, instead concerning outcomes for both victim and perpetrator.

Restorative justice also made a showing in survivor responses. Paul Rusheka, for example, emphasised that former perpetrators should be educated, in order that they realise their wrongdoings. Having fully internalised this educational process, he argued, they should be reintegrated into society as far as it is possible.

Yet, Rukesha’s response promoted a hybrid form of justice, and his central element of restoration had both retributive and distributive auxiliaries. Rukesha was highly supportive of retributive justice in cases where the restoration of the perpetrator appeared impossible. In this way, retributive justice was treated as a conditional, second-best option. This form of justice was targeted particularly at perpetrators who had fled to neighbouring and European countries after the genocide. In these locations, he emphasised, perpetrators remained unrepentant: some continue to publish denial material across the West, while others stoke factional hate in the Congo and further afield. These perpetrators were also regularly instigators, rather than merely joiners, who partially participated but did not act in a recruiting capacity. These two factors – instigation and unrepentance – seemed, for Rukesha, to make restorative justice difficult or impossible. At this point, he invoked retributive justice. First, he felt that these perpetrators should be found: “I will track them down. I [would] track them down until the last one is captured.” Second, he felt that they should be given long prison sentences, “where they can perhaps think about how they destroyed the society, and how at the same time they realise that they do not deserve to live in that society.” Claver Irakoze, also emphasised this conditional restorative justice, noting that he believes in “a second chance if someone is remorseful”.

Interestingly, Rukesha does not support capital punishment – the most direct form of retributive justice in the case of murder. His reasoning for this demonstrates his persistent emphasis on restorative justice: he believes capital punishment would not be beneficial to the younger generations who observed it, “in terms of their education and both personal and collective development.” His reasoning for imprisonment also has restorative elements, since he seems greatly concerned with what the prisoners come to believe during their incarceration. Claver Irakoze did support capital punishment, however – again, conditionally.

The combining of these forms of justice created a kind of internal conflict for Rukesha, in which he felt both “pity” and “anger” for the perpetrators. Since he had the opportunity to personally interview perpetrators, he was excellently positioned to articulate this balancing process. In particular, he expressed real anger at perpetrators who clouded or denied their involvement: honesty seemed an important determinant for selecting between a retributive and a restorative approach. When asked about the experience of interviewing perpetrators, Rukesha responded insightfully:

“It’s tough. It’s very tough. Because sometimes I can categorise them in a number of categories. There are some perpetrators who really are remorseful; who regret what they did. And then they really want to be reintegrated into society. Really they feel like they want to be part of the society again. Those people speak freely and then with remorseful attitudes. There are other people – other perpetrators – who tell their stories but with some hidden spots where they want you to think they participated, yes, but in a very small, negligible part; their participation is not that considerable. And then they said, you know I was only carrying weapons but I didn’t kill anyone. I was part of the attack, but I didn’t personally touch. You know, that kind of dodging of… avoiding blame, and then it is difficult to discuss with them, because, at one point you need to keep this distance… also to make them comfortable. At the same time, as a survivor, you feel like, you want to explode. You know what they did. You know what they are hiding in their speech. You are reading behind the lines. But you need to keep professional. Understand? And it’s difficult.”

Beyond this, he also invoked a form of distributive justice, noting “Justice also means reparations”. In this respect, he felt survivors should be economically restored and exist in a position of equality with those around them.

Ada Krystyna Willenberg, a Holocaust survivor, believed that more should have been done to punish perpetrators through retributive justice, by putting them in prison. She believed that only the leaders of the Nazi Party were punished, but that there were thousands of other perpetrators who went unpunished, and went on to live completely normal and free lives. Krystyna Willenberg said:

“A lot of Germans they ran away. They ran away. They only found them after many years. I’m sure that [is] no longer [true] today, because most of them have died, but a lot of them lived in very good conditions after the war, in several places [across the world].”

Yet, in the case of the Holocaust survivors, as Kyrstyna Willenberg notes, many of the perpetrators are deceased. Therefore, survivors today are not able to advocate for harsher prison sentences or capital punishment.

Beyond the “types” of justice discussed here, it is worth noting a discrepancy between whether survivors view justice as fundamentally legal or fundamentally personal. All forms of justice, especially procedural, can be assisted through legal channels. Yet, while Willenberg, Mey and Rukesha each gave examples of justice being achieved through law, this is not always satisfactory. Some forms of justice are internal processes, such as self-awareness, education, growth, and healing. In other cases, the law can in fact act as an obstacle to a survivor’s conception of justice. For example, in Rukesha’s view, there are perpetrators who live as fugitives in foreign countries, who ought to be returned to Rwanda and imprisoned – he cites the UK as the worst culprit for harbouring these fugitives. Yet, these fugitives are often protected through human rights laws, he notes, and thus the law actually forms an obstacle to justice here. Moreover, if, like Irakoze, one supports the capital punishment in a country where capital punishment is illegal, then that form of survivor justice is also extra-judicial. It is useful to be aware of the ways in which the law can either enable a survivor’s form of justice, inhibit their form of justice, or be entirely neutral with respect to it. It is a pressing question whether the law itself should track justice as defined by survivors, for whom the stakes for justice are highest.

8. Evaluating the Past

Naturally, whether the international response succeeded, depended on how the survivors defined justice. The Cambodian survivors had a somewhat positive view of the international community’s response. In one case, this was because the survivor emphasised procedural justice, a criterion which was partially met by the international response. In another case, the survivor associated the international community with their rescue as a child: the Vietnamese were understood as those who had saved his life, independently of whether or not they had helped to achieve his conception of justice. Pal further noted: “I think the Khmer Rouge tribunal did not bring 100% justice, but I do feel it was acceptable.’”

Contrarily, the Rwandan survivors had a far more negative view of the international community. This was directly tied to their strong and detailed conceptions of justice, which had many facets and made many demands. Arguing that Rwandans were “victims of disinterest”, Rukesha lamented:

“They did nothing […] it was not even discussed […] The UN failed Rwanda. The UN failed, miserably.

Here, he refers to the failure of the UN to note many early warning signs from as early as the 60s, as hate spread virally through Rwanda. Moreover, the Rwandan survivors did not view the failures of the international community as a historical event, but as something ongoing. Rukesha emphasised that Western countries continue to harbour perpetrators, fail to compensate victims, continue in their ignorance of similar ethnic crimes in sub-Saharan Africa, and pursue only their vital interests. For example, he noted:

“France is lagging behind… But [the] UK… [the] UK is the worst. [The] UK is harbouring genocidaires – perpetrators. The most notorious ones. The planners. And I don’t know why. So we are still advocating for the UK to prosecute and judge and try those people”.

These opinions against the international community, rooted in his conception of justice, were very strong – Rukesha used an expletive to describe the West’s claim that they care about human rights at all. Irakoze echoed these sentiments, querying a double-standard, whereby human rights are protected for perpetrators, but were not protected for victims during the genocide.

In the case of the Holocaust, many of the perpetrators have already deceased over time. This may have a retroactive effect in shaping their views on justice, but it is clear that Willenberg supported tougher forms of retributive justice, and punishment for more perpetrators whilst they were alive. Willenberg further emphasised that many of those who were denouncing people to the Nazis did not receive an adequate punishment. She noted, “Whoever they denounced was killed. They did not receive the punishment that they should’ve received.” A more expansive, retributive view of justice is in some ways harder to satisfy, especially where the number of perpetrators is large, their geographical spread is wide, and much time has passed.

9. Conclusion

Uncovering how genocide survivors view justice was as impactful as it was fascinating. The survivors had unique perceptions of justice, though there were similarities and common themes. Procedural justice was particularly emphasised by the Cambodian survivors who praised it at length. Both prongs of restorative justice were discussed, but the Rwandan survivors most strongly emphasised the restoration of victims. This is understandable, since the Rwandan genocide is the most recent, and many of the survivors and perpetrators have many decades ahead of them, often side-by-side. Most survivors also mentioned retributive justice, but few were in favour of capital punishment.
Overall, most survivors felt as though justice had been achieved partly, but they differed in their evaluations. Often, international bodies, such as the UN, simply failed to listen. However, true justice can only be achieved in consultation with survivors for whom the stakes are highest. To avoid these mistakes repeating and echoing through history, we must not just tell the stories of survivors: we must communicate their perceptions of justice. In this way, we might achieve outcomes that restore societies to their original wholeness and prevent mass atrocities in future times.

10. Biography

• Fujii, Lee Ann. “The power of local ties: Popular participation in the Rwandan genocide.” Security Studies 17.3 (2008): 568-597.
• Maiese, M., Burgess H. “Types of Justice”. Beyond Intractability. (2013). Accessed online at: link