Dealing with the Violent Past: Transitional Justice and Political Culture in Liberia and the Czech Republic in a Comparative Perspective
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Abstract
The Liberian civil war left the country destroyed and its population traumatised by violence and atrocities on an unprecedented scale. There were efforts supported by the international community to deal with the past through the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2005, and indirectly through the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Both initiatives brought rather ambiguous results. The Czechoslovak communist regime’s record of violence and repressions, starting with the “show trials” of the 1950s, was followed by the persecution of dissidents and other groups. After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, national reconciliation, rather than radical decommunisation was at the order of the day. Soon, the focus of activities moved from criminal investigations to a historical reconstruction of the regime’s past. Although different at first sight, both cases have a number of features worth comparing. The present article analyses similarities and differences in the strategies of dealing with the violent past and their results. Secondly, it focuses on the implications of the latter for the political culture in both countries. It argues that the failure to address the legacy of past injustices has serious consequences for the legitimacy of the state, the rule of law, and the nature of democracy in both countries.
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