Victims and press after the war: said and unsaid lessons
María Paula Ángel January 29, 2018
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In countries transitioning from war to peace, the search and exhumation of bodies create a tension between the victims’ right to privacy and the public interest of reconstructing the collective memory. Given this, how can events related to armed conflict and the transition to peace be narrated without violating the right to privacy of victims?
In countries transitioning from war to peace, the search and exhumation of bodies create a tension between the victims’ right to privacy and the public interest of reconstructing the collective memory. Given this, how can events related to armed conflict and the transition to peace be narrated without violating the right to privacy of victims?
When in 2002 there was a huge discussion on what to do with the numerous mass graves of those executed by Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, a group of associations issued a statement manifesting:
“We do not want to see pathetic scenes but scenes of dignity, we do not want to see utilitarian heroics but profound values and meanings, we do not want them to show on television old men that weep, but people who claim with dignity and who know how to cry silently to their dead, prisoners and exiled”.
In contrast, on July 11, 2003, during the burial of 282 recently identified victims of the Srebrenica massacre perpetrated in Bosnia and Herzegovina, emotional scenes, including loud crying, were recorded and published by journalists. Indeed, despite religious and cultural sensitivities of this painful event, the media were present operating cameras and microphones to capture the sights and sounds of the religious service.
Often part of the wishes of victims to be able to mourn and to give a dignified burial to their relatives, the search and exhumation of bodies should be considered part of their private lives. However, in the context of processes of transitioning to peace, these procedures are also of public interest and must therefore be narrated by the media, as they contribute to the reconstruction of the collective memory that commemorates the victims and promotes the non-repetition of violent acts. Given this, how can events related to armed conflict and the transition to peace be narrated without violating the right to privacy of victims?
In the book Victims and Press After the War. Tensions between Privacy, Historical Truth and Freedom of Expression, launched today, a group of Dejusticia researchers of addresses this question. We examine the tensions between rights that can arise from narrating the transition to peace as part of the journalistic profession. We argue that although certain interferences in the private sphere may be considered abusive or illegitimate and should therefore be limited, this cannot serve as a basis to ignore freedom of expression and the historical truth. In other words, not every limitation is valid. So in an effort to clarify such a complicated issue, we indicate a group of criteria and a set of sub-rules to help identify when a specific interference with a person’s right to privacy is arbitrary, and which limitations to the rights to freedom of expression and historical truth are legitimate.