[TimorLesteStudies] New Article : Local Memory Practices in East Timor: Disrupting Transitional Justice Narratives

[Bu Wilson]

Kent, Lia. 2011. Local Memory Practices in East Timor: Disrupting Transitional Justice Narratives, International Journal of Transitional Justice., doi:
                                    
                                    10.1093/ijtj/ijr016
                                    
                                 
                              
                              
                              
                                 
                                 First published online:
                                 
                                 September 2, 2011
                                 

Abstract
Transitional justice discourse is underpinned by an assumption that 
trials and truth commissions will assist individuals and
                     societies to ‘come to terms’ with, and move on 
from, complex legacies of violence. This article considers how local 
practices
                     of memorialization and commemoration, and the 
activities of victims’ groups in East Timor, disrupt these assumptions. 
It highlights
                     how individuals and local communities in East Timor
 are attempting to ‘remake a world’ in ways that may differ markedly 
from
                     the priorities of UN-sponsored transitional justice
 institutions and their nation's leaders. In addition, it explores how
                     some survivors are embracing the language of 
victims’ rights to appeal to the state to respond to their experiences 
of suffering.
                     These developments, which indicate that survivors 
are in various ways embracing, resisting and transforming ‘official’ 
justice
                     discourses, highlight that the pursuit of justice 
in post-referendum East Timor is far more dynamic, locally grounded and
                     open-ended than the narrative of transition 
implies.
                  

--
Dr Bu V.E. Wilson
T: Australia +61  0  407 087 086
T: Timor-Leste + 670 744 0011
E: buvewilson at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/easttimorstudies/attachments/20111011/d134a12a/attachment-0001.html