At a juncture when the debt and poverty-ridden Pakistan direly needs to probe the corruption of its ruling elite since its inception in 1947 and at a time when the nation unanimously wants to see conspiracies like the East Pakistan tragedy getting unearthed and the guilty identified, time perhaps has come to learn lessons from the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions formed in 19 countries till date.

These 19 nations which opted to form such commissions in recent times are South Africa, Canada, El Salvador, Fiji, Ghana, Guatemala, Liberia, Morocco, Panama, Sierra Leone, South Korea, East Timor, Peru, Chile, Australia, Solomon Islands, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Argentine.

Truth commissions in these countries were established to investigate issues ranging from abductions of dissenting faces by dictatorial regimes, illegal imprisonments, forced disappearances, genocide, corrupt practices of those at the helm of affairs, extra-judicial murders, suppression of political rivals and crimes committed during the apartheid era in the case of South Africa.

Such commissions were set up under various names by these states haunted by massive plunder of their exchequers, internal unrest, civil war, gross human rights violations and ills of dictatorships, etc.

In Pakistan, which is also plagued by a few above-mentioned issues like forced disappearances of people, extra-judicial killings in the NWFP and Balochistan, persecution of key foes in politics, rampant and unabated corruption, non-judicial bodies such as the Ehtesab Bureau and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) were formed in the past by Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf regimes, but they ended up victimising their opponents only as was the case in post-World War II Nuremberg Trials which prosecuted Nazis and their sympathizers only.

Just a couple of dozens of people were charged with corruption and looted money was recovered in a few instances, but these farced accountability drives have largely been selective and widely condemned since.

Pakistan also holds the distinction of pardoning people involved in robbing its exchequer through misuse of positions and their involvement in other criminal offences during Gen Musharraf’s time.

The general had come up with the idea of promulgating the infamous National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) in October 2007 and consequently signed deals with his political adversaries like the PPP and allies like the MQM, etc., in an extremely crude manner, instead of operating the way Hong Kong, Australia and Malaysia did to tackle corruption-related issues. Even a handful of PML-N members also benefited through the NRO.

And now when the Supreme Court has declared the NRO null and void, the incumbent regime’s claim that President Asif Zardari enjoys the executive privilege continues to be the bone of contention between the judiciary and the executive, having already led to a couple of constitutional-cum-political impasses in not-so-distant past.

A study of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions formed by 19 countries cited above reveals that even families of the incumbent heads of state had to appear before these bodies formed in the larger interest of these nations.

Lessons can thus be learnt from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established by President Nelson Mandela after the end of apartheid. This commission is popularly considered a model of Truth Commissions as the First Lady Winnie Mandela was also called in court to testify along with powerful Chief Military Commander De Kock, who admitted sending three black policemen on a false mission in an explosives-laden car. The widows of the murdered cops eventually bestowed forgiveness upon De Kock.

Headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African commission was set up in 1995 and its mandate was to record witnesses, and in a few cases, grants amnesty to those who had committed abuses during the apartheid era as long as the crimes were politically motivated, proportionate and there was full disclosure by the person seeking pardon.

The Human Rights Violations Committee investigated human rights abuses that occurred between 1960 and 1994 and consequently, while a total of 5,392 people were refused amnesty, some 849 persons were granted amnesty out of the 7,112 petitioners. About 22,000, who had suffered, were about $4,000 apiece by President Mbeki.

Interestingly, hearings were initially set to be heard in-camera, but the intervention of 23 non-governmental organisations eventually succeeded in gaining media access to the hearings.

In April 1996, the South African National Broadcaster televised the first two hours of the first human rights violation committee hearing live. With funding from the Norwegian government, radio continued to broadcast live throughout. Additional high-profile hearings, such as Winnie Mandela’s testimony, were also televised live.

Movies like Facing the Truth (1999), Forgiveness (2004), In My Country (2004), Red Dust (2004) and Zulu Love Letter (2004) were made from stories narrated in the South African commission hearings.

Lessons can also be learnt from countries like Canada in this regard, where a former Canadian Supreme Court justice had entered into an agreement in 2005 for the largest and most comprehensive settlement package in the Canadian history that involved investigation of the forcible separation of aboriginal children from their families and their alleged placement in church- and state-run institutions that sought to remake the children’s cultural identity.

The schools had allegedly punished cultural expression and subjected these children to widespread patterns of psychological, sexual and other abuse.

The Canadian authorities in 2006 had agreed to pay more than two billion Canadian dollars to compensate the estimated 80,000 survivors and took other steps to address the legacy of the residential schools by contributing to the healing and commemoration efforts.

Although a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is yet to be formed in the US, there have been calls from the likes of Senator Patrick Leahy and Representative John Conyers to set up a ‘Truth Commission’ to investigate, but not prosecute the alleged crimes of the Bush administration.

The Sierra Leone commission was established in the wake of the 11-year long Civil War there, with a mandate to create an impartial historical record of human rights abuses from the beginning of the conflict in 1991, in a bid to address impunity, to respond to the needs of victims, to promote healing and reconciliation and to prevent a repetition of the violations committed and abuses inflicted. The Liberian commission was created in 2005 in order to investigate gross human rights violations that occurred in Liberia between 1979 and 2003.

The Peruvian commission was established in June 2001 to examine atrocities committed in the 1980s and 1990s, when Peru was plagued by the worst political violence of its history.

This commission focused on massacres, forced disappearances, human rights violations, terrorist attacks and violence against women, committed by both rebel groups and the military of Peru.

It made recommendations for reparations and institutional reforms, after having estimated that 69,280 people had lost lives during the unrest.

The Solomon Islands commission, the first of its kind in the Pacific Islands, was established in April 2009 to investigate causes of ethnic violence that gripped the country between 1997 and 2003, killing over 100 people and leaving over 20,000 humans displaced.

By: Sabir Shah