1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:05,640 Full house to have the seating for the first of the Centre for Criminology, also seminar series. 2 00:00:06,060 --> 00:00:10,680 And if there are people in the audience who aren't on our seminar list or our 3 00:00:10,680 --> 00:00:14,400 events list and therefore don't know about the rest of the seminar series, 4 00:00:14,700 --> 00:00:23,010 there are some handouts at the end on the fall table which tells you about the other seminars and if you want to get on to the list, 5 00:00:23,400 --> 00:00:27,750 just give me your email at the end of the seminar and I'll get you access to it. 6 00:00:30,570 --> 00:00:36,330 So welcome to the first seminar. Welcome to the MSI students who are new and we hope you enjoy the series. 7 00:00:36,570 --> 00:00:43,710 We have our first speaker, Professor Willem de Haan from the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology in the Free University of Amsterdam, 8 00:00:44,190 --> 00:00:48,360 but also groaning university too. I think it's speak for people, 9 00:00:48,930 --> 00:00:56,850 people who has enormous expertise over the years in various different criminology and criminal justice topics around the field of violence, 10 00:00:56,850 --> 00:01:04,650 crime prevention, particularly around criminality and violence in the public domain, and how environmental factors affect that. 11 00:01:05,070 --> 00:01:08,959 But today and I think this is partly why we have such a large audience, 12 00:01:08,960 --> 00:01:14,850 he's going to talk about problems of anachronism and judgement of past international crimes. 13 00:01:15,420 --> 00:01:21,570 So I think that would be of interest to our criminology students and to the transitional justice students who I think are also here. 14 00:01:21,750 --> 00:01:28,230 So thank you very much for coming quite a way. And then we have technology as well. 15 00:01:29,540 --> 00:01:35,940 That's fine. Thank you very much, Carolyn, for your were nice words of welcome. 16 00:01:37,140 --> 00:01:42,220 I'm absolutely delighted and honoured to be invited to this place. 17 00:01:42,270 --> 00:01:48,630 Excellent. And to see such a large turn up today. 18 00:01:48,660 --> 00:01:52,559 I don't think it's for me, it's for the series and it's the first time. 19 00:01:52,560 --> 00:01:55,560 And you're probably curious what it's going to be like. 20 00:01:56,190 --> 00:02:04,679 And what I'd like to do is to share some thoughts of you on a problem we as 21 00:02:04,680 --> 00:02:11,040 criminologist and criminal lawyers face when we're dealing with international crimes, 22 00:02:11,460 --> 00:02:17,160 crimes against humanity that were committed in the past, even in the distant past. 23 00:02:18,400 --> 00:02:26,140 Generally, the past is not something that criminologists care to think about very often. 24 00:02:27,490 --> 00:02:33,069 We usually study contemporary problems of crime, security, criminal justice, 25 00:02:33,070 --> 00:02:40,270 etc. And of course we talk about that and we think about that in the works we have. 26 00:02:40,300 --> 00:02:46,260 And like I said, we don't give that very much thought, talk, thought. 27 00:02:46,480 --> 00:02:52,030 It's it's self-evident evident, however, when we study. 28 00:02:52,510 --> 00:02:55,900 Oh, that was too far away for you. 29 00:02:56,350 --> 00:03:01,720 Okay. This was the purpose. 30 00:03:01,750 --> 00:03:12,940 Now go to the next one. When we do research on atrocities that happened in the past. 31 00:03:14,170 --> 00:03:18,280 Our research focus on state crimes of previous regimes. 32 00:03:18,940 --> 00:03:22,900 We study old crimes from new perspectives. 33 00:03:22,930 --> 00:03:35,919 These are titles from articles and books written in this field, and all crimes from new perspectives already signals what the problem is, namely, 34 00:03:35,920 --> 00:03:45,639 that we have to be aware of some methodological issues implicated in the use of contemporary concept, 35 00:03:45,640 --> 00:03:52,210 criminological concept to describe and explain historical events. 36 00:03:54,650 --> 00:04:03,830 Next one, please. There's going to be a lot studying atrocities that were committed in the past. 37 00:04:04,460 --> 00:04:07,970 Inevitably confronts us with questions like, 38 00:04:08,390 --> 00:04:16,850 Can we legitimately ascribe meanings to actions they did not have at the time that these crimes were committed? 39 00:04:17,840 --> 00:04:21,260 Or are we then culpable of anachronism? 40 00:04:21,950 --> 00:04:28,940 And I'll explain later what that means, because we are applying contemporary concept to describe and explain historical events. 41 00:04:30,110 --> 00:04:41,380 Is it, for example, acceptable to use a concept like Crimes of Obedience developed to explain a massacre committed in 1968 42 00:04:41,390 --> 00:04:47,480 during the Vietnam War by American Sergeant William Kelly and his platoon in the village of M.I. 43 00:04:48,620 --> 00:05:00,050 To describe and explain a similar event, a massacre that took place during the colonial war in the former Dutch East Indies in 1894. 44 00:05:01,470 --> 00:05:15,740 An explanation. In April 1998, it became publicly known that Hendrik Colon, Dutch prime minister from 1925 to 1939, 45 00:05:16,580 --> 00:05:24,260 had been involved in killings killings of civilians during the military expeditions into former East Indies. 46 00:05:25,480 --> 00:05:32,500 Historian Herman Lagerfeld in his biography of Caroline Maxwell, 47 00:05:34,210 --> 00:05:41,440 quoted from letters in which the 25 year old Lieutenant Caroline tells his wife and his 48 00:05:41,440 --> 00:05:50,650 parents about a raid on the palace of the Raja in the town Shotgun Haggadah in 1894. 49 00:05:50,980 --> 00:06:04,740 On the island of Lombok. That's one that was the opening picture and an imagination of the atrocity. 50 00:06:04,750 --> 00:06:13,240 While it wasn't seen as an atrocity when this picture was made, this is a picture for schoolchildren, and it's from the Colonial Museum. 51 00:06:13,990 --> 00:06:17,530 But this is the scene that I'm talking about and an excellent piece. 52 00:06:18,670 --> 00:06:21,250 So Caroline writes to his wife, 53 00:06:22,210 --> 00:06:31,240 I have seen a woman with a child of about six months on her left arm and a long lance in her right hand storming at us. 54 00:06:32,230 --> 00:06:37,810 One of our bullets kills mother and child. We were not allowed to show mercy. 55 00:06:38,890 --> 00:06:44,290 I had to have nine women and three children who were asking for mercy. 56 00:06:44,890 --> 00:06:50,950 Rounded up and shot. It was unpleasant work, but there was no other way. 57 00:06:52,090 --> 00:06:55,110 It was terrible. I'll stop now. 58 00:06:57,160 --> 00:07:05,170 In a letter to his parents, he goes on. After. After the attack, the few remained who were asking for mercy. 59 00:07:06,190 --> 00:07:11,260 13. I believe the soldier's questioning lay at me. 60 00:07:12,550 --> 00:07:18,330 I turned around to light a cigar. There were some heartbreaking cries. 61 00:07:18,330 --> 00:07:22,440 And when I turned around again, those 13 were dead to. 62 00:07:24,980 --> 00:07:33,250 Next one, please. Disclosure of these passages led to what historian John Blocker called a war on colon. 63 00:07:34,820 --> 00:07:40,040 Fellow historian John O'Brien argued that Lagerfeld, the biographer, 64 00:07:40,310 --> 00:07:48,170 by accusing Klein retrospectively of war crimes, had committed a form of a historic moralism. 65 00:07:49,310 --> 00:07:58,460 From a historical perspective, he argued, it is not allowed to apply contemporary values and norms to events that took place in the past. 66 00:08:00,960 --> 00:08:04,620 Even if we find that according to contemporary standards. 67 00:08:05,750 --> 00:08:16,850 The Dutch colonial army acted unacceptably. We should take into account that a century ago, public opinion looks at this differently. 68 00:08:18,400 --> 00:08:26,920 From a historical perspective, Caroline should thus not be seen as a war criminal, but as a child of his time. 69 00:08:28,670 --> 00:08:35,180 Next one. A case in point is that Colin was knighted with the military. 70 00:08:35,180 --> 00:08:38,870 Dellums order for courage, prudence and fidelity. 71 00:08:41,140 --> 00:08:42,969 In reaction to the Brown, 72 00:08:42,970 --> 00:08:53,500 historian John Blocher argued that the acts of historical figures might have been considered immoral or criminal by their contemporaries, 73 00:08:53,860 --> 00:09:10,910 even at the time they were committed. Lagerfeld in his biography, in fact, showed that at least one eye witness, a captain in the Army. 74 00:09:12,500 --> 00:09:22,310 Called Class Acts, cold blooded murder, and noted that Colon had a reputation for being one of the worst attack killers. 75 00:09:24,210 --> 00:09:28,080 Therefore, I cannot accept one cannot maintain, like the brand did, 76 00:09:28,800 --> 00:09:39,060 that what we today consider crimes of war were necessarily seen as normal and acceptable at the time these events took place. 77 00:09:40,620 --> 00:09:46,230 One cannot maintain that these were not war crimes just because they were not labelled as such. 78 00:09:46,920 --> 00:09:50,290 At the time, they were committed. I'm ex-wife. 79 00:09:51,020 --> 00:10:00,380 Oh, we were looking very hard. I was fine. Yeah. A professor of literary criticism argued that the brand's claim. 80 00:10:01,710 --> 00:10:10,080 That forest from a historical perspective could and should be seen as a child of his time revealed a double standard, 81 00:10:10,980 --> 00:10:18,090 if only because, quote, no one ever said that of Iceman or Carol Sheets in her view. 82 00:10:18,090 --> 00:10:22,920 Therefore, Cullen is a criminal in the context of any time. 83 00:10:27,260 --> 00:10:35,450 In an interview with collapsed biographer, it was suggested that following the standards of the Contemporary Yugoslavia Tribunal, 84 00:10:35,750 --> 00:10:38,570 he Coghlan would have been a war criminal. 85 00:10:40,300 --> 00:10:52,840 Even though the claim is clearly, if not intentionally anachronistic, we could consider this as an hypothesis and also hypothetically, 86 00:10:53,020 --> 00:11:01,780 hypothetically verify whether Lieutenant Cullen would have been convicted by the ICC to why. 87 00:11:03,600 --> 00:11:09,210 Such a legal thought experiment could, however, be conceived in two different ways. 88 00:11:10,110 --> 00:11:20,910 First, as if the historical atrocities in which Lt Col was involved have taken place within the contemporary context of former Yugoslavia, 89 00:11:21,810 --> 00:11:30,450 or as if the city had hypothetically jurisdiction over crimes committed in the past. 90 00:11:32,540 --> 00:11:35,840 In the first case, the question to be answered would be, 91 00:11:36,530 --> 00:11:43,670 is there sufficient evidence and are there sufficient legal grounds to conclude that Caroline, 92 00:11:44,030 --> 00:11:49,989 or rather someone contemporary, behaving like him, would indeed be convicted by the US? 93 00:11:49,990 --> 00:11:56,709 Should she asked you why? To answer this question. 94 00:11:56,710 --> 00:12:00,190 Most relevant is the jurisprudence of the ICC. 95 00:12:00,200 --> 00:12:03,519 Why that under certain conditions, 96 00:12:03,520 --> 00:12:14,140 superior military commander or civilian leader can be held criminally responsible for international crimes committed by his subordinates? 97 00:12:16,230 --> 00:12:23,250 Now I won't go into into the detail of the jurisprudence of the to why, 98 00:12:23,880 --> 00:12:32,700 but we'll just say that on the basis of the facts and circumstances and supposing the evidence were beyond reasonable doubt, 99 00:12:33,600 --> 00:12:39,300 Caroline would have been held responsible for crimes committed by his subordinates. 100 00:12:40,770 --> 00:12:43,920 And. Been guilty of war crimes. 101 00:12:45,200 --> 00:12:51,770 On the basis of the jurisprudence of the ITC. Why? Lieutenant Colonel Lang as a superior commander. 102 00:12:53,300 --> 00:12:56,720 Would have been convicted for knowing that his subordinates, 103 00:12:56,960 --> 00:13:03,440 subordinates were going to commit these crimes, given that they had already committed similar crimes, 104 00:13:03,440 --> 00:13:05,090 possibly under his command, 105 00:13:05,780 --> 00:13:15,410 and for failing to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent these crimes or to punish the perpetrators for committing them. 106 00:13:16,100 --> 00:13:18,710 This is all asantewaa jurisprudence. 107 00:13:20,560 --> 00:13:27,400 In the second case that hypothetically the answer to why I have jurisdiction over crimes committed in the distant past. 108 00:13:28,860 --> 00:13:36,419 It is arguable that the acts to which my admitted in his letters were unlawful under 109 00:13:36,420 --> 00:13:43,980 international law at the time of their commission and violated international humanitarian force. 110 00:13:45,360 --> 00:13:51,480 We're done talking about The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, 111 00:13:52,050 --> 00:14:00,780 and about the Martens clause prohibiting human rights violations out of legal details. 112 00:14:01,170 --> 00:14:11,580 But even when we look at the distant past, there are juridical grounds to consider these acts as war crimes. 113 00:14:17,170 --> 00:14:31,570 If anything, the legal thought experiment makes clear that this Lieutenant Caroline cannot simply be considered or excused as a child of his time. 114 00:14:33,100 --> 00:14:39,010 From a contemporary perspective, he may be seen as a criminal in the context of any time, 115 00:14:39,850 --> 00:14:46,360 and the events in which he was involved may retrospectively be seen as crimes of war. 116 00:14:48,150 --> 00:14:52,830 Yet. I think we have to move on now that we have to at. 117 00:14:54,810 --> 00:14:57,660 Yeah. Yeah. Historians. 118 00:14:58,620 --> 00:15:09,690 Historians consider it senseless to judge events that received a moral meaning in a specific historical context on the basis of what we know now. 119 00:15:11,310 --> 00:15:15,930 To some, it is a matter of a historic moralism if we've seen. 120 00:15:16,500 --> 00:15:21,150 To others, it is a matter of senseless anachronism. 121 00:15:23,660 --> 00:15:31,850 Like a historic moralism. The accusation of senseless anachronism could be brushed aside as merely rhetorical, 122 00:15:32,510 --> 00:15:43,820 an effort to disqualify moral criticism and to protect the moral reputation of Prime Minister cool by his historical legacy. 123 00:15:44,330 --> 00:15:54,230 I think that this, in part with the War on Kaline was about about his historic allegedly legacy in his reputation. 124 00:15:55,070 --> 00:16:06,380 However, if we take the accusations seriously, the accusation of senseless anachronism, it raises the question what exactly is anachronism? 125 00:16:06,980 --> 00:16:10,790 And what's the problem with it? And that's what I'll be talking. 126 00:16:11,150 --> 00:16:16,960 No. Anachronism. 127 00:16:18,250 --> 00:16:30,370 And against Chronos, time has been defined as the impropriety of depicting past phenomena in terms of present values, 128 00:16:30,610 --> 00:16:34,330 assumptions or interpretive categories. 129 00:16:35,970 --> 00:16:45,240 This is a fallacy which shows a lack of awareness that the past difference differs in fundamental ways from the present. 130 00:16:47,170 --> 00:16:55,450 Next one. An example of anachronism is the use of the word holocaust. 131 00:16:56,980 --> 00:17:11,050 It was introduced in 1948 and the Declaration of Independence of Israel to capture the special character of the genocide of European Jewry. 132 00:17:12,730 --> 00:17:23,200 But only became generally known to the public following the Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning American TV series entitled Holocaust in 1978. 133 00:17:27,320 --> 00:17:37,520 In 2001, the German Israeli historian Dan Deiner observed that, I quote, well into the 1970s, 134 00:17:38,210 --> 00:17:46,940 wide ranging portraits of the A park would grant the Holocaust a modest, if any, mention at all. 135 00:17:47,960 --> 00:17:54,410 By contrast, it now 2001 tends to fill the entire picture. 136 00:17:55,340 --> 00:18:05,180 So just to show one example that we now tend to believe that what happened during the Second World War 137 00:18:06,110 --> 00:18:14,149 that the kill and mass killing of the Jews had always been seen as and talked about as the Holocaust, 138 00:18:14,150 --> 00:18:15,380 which is simply not true. 139 00:18:15,860 --> 00:18:29,780 The Holocaust is a fairly recent concept in in public discourse, even though it was mentioned one time in the Declaration of Independence of Israel. 140 00:18:31,650 --> 00:18:39,660 As a result of the growing popularity of the word Holocaust for many reasons that I can't go into now. 141 00:18:41,280 --> 00:18:45,420 It was subsequently used to describe other mass killings, 142 00:18:45,960 --> 00:18:56,370 like the famine during and after the Japanese occupation in the East Indies, which was called the East East Indian Holocaust. 143 00:18:56,970 --> 00:19:14,880 The next one place. Or more recently, a book about the Spanish Civil War, 1936 1939, which was published and titled The Spanish Holocaust in 2012. 144 00:19:16,260 --> 00:19:20,800 Explain these and other examples of anachronism. 145 00:19:21,020 --> 00:19:27,670 Raise two sets of questions. First, is any form of anachronism senseless? 146 00:19:28,770 --> 00:19:33,330 And in fact, senseless anachronism, therefore a play on Nazism? 147 00:19:34,320 --> 00:19:40,290 Or can we just distinguish between senseless and sensible forms of anachronism? 148 00:19:42,100 --> 00:19:50,620 And second, does each and every form of anachronism inevitably imply a historic moralism? 149 00:19:52,710 --> 00:19:59,270 Or if well-founded moral judgements of historical events are possible. 150 00:19:59,280 --> 00:20:01,680 After all, that remains to be seen. 151 00:20:02,610 --> 00:20:12,629 Does this mean that the study of war crimes by historical figures should not simply be dismissed as ahistorical moralism and senseless anachronism, 152 00:20:12,630 --> 00:20:19,650 but be taken seriously for what they were crimes of war, violations of human rights, etc. 153 00:20:21,170 --> 00:20:31,590 Next one. In art, literature and audiovisual media anachronisms about there. 154 00:20:32,350 --> 00:20:41,919 When you start to look at it, they're everywhere. And a very striking example of such an intentional use of anachronism was televised 155 00:20:41,920 --> 00:20:46,540 was a televised reconstruction of the first day of the war in Indonesia. 156 00:20:47,300 --> 00:20:51,280 The Dutch army intervened in 1948. 157 00:20:51,280 --> 00:20:57,430 It was called a police show action with a euphemism, but it was fighting a war there. 158 00:20:58,780 --> 00:21:06,159 What happened in 1974 was brought to the viewer in this program by life correspondents in Jakarta, 159 00:21:06,160 --> 00:21:13,210 The Hague, Washington, etc. and it was as if colour television already existed in those days. 160 00:21:14,020 --> 00:21:17,740 It was very made, very lively, very well, very well done. 161 00:21:18,160 --> 00:21:33,400 And and they made very creative use of the way we look at news to consume news, digest news, etc., to get an understanding of what the situation was. 162 00:21:33,410 --> 00:21:47,170 I thought it was brilliantly, brilliantly done. I could give many examples in in in art and literature of the deliberate use of anachronisms. 163 00:21:47,620 --> 00:21:56,110 Sometimes it's unintentional, but often it is done with a certain purpose, a rhetorical purpose, an artistic purpose. 164 00:21:56,860 --> 00:22:04,480 While in art, literature and the media anachronisms are accepted or at least tolerated in academia, 165 00:22:05,140 --> 00:22:10,780 an anachronism tends to be considered a grave error, although there are some exceptions. 166 00:22:12,680 --> 00:22:15,890 Like there are always some exceptions and here are some exceptions too. 167 00:22:16,190 --> 00:22:23,900 For example, historian Peter Burke has argued that anachronism may indeed be productive for historians. 168 00:22:24,320 --> 00:22:28,490 A very deviant position, I assume. 169 00:22:29,360 --> 00:22:34,370 But as an example, he refers to the best selling book, Montague, 170 00:22:35,120 --> 00:22:42,740 in which historian what you read described an 18th century village in the south of France. 171 00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:50,360 The way a modern anthropologist would describe a village in the 20th century very effectively. 172 00:22:52,190 --> 00:23:03,530 Anachronisms. May, according to Burke, therefore make the subject matter more interesting by introducing a dramatic human dimension in this way. 173 00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:10,530 Next slide, please. Generally. 174 00:23:10,530 --> 00:23:22,139 However, within within in history historiography they call it the methodological fallacy of anachronism is considered to be serious, 175 00:23:22,140 --> 00:23:34,770 and it has even be called the historical sin of sense, having been caught in the act of committing such a methodological fallacy, 176 00:23:35,250 --> 00:23:39,299 which happened to me when I was accused of senseless anachronism, 177 00:23:39,300 --> 00:23:49,380 when I talked about this thought experiment with asked you why makes one feel ashamed for being so stupidly unscientific 178 00:23:49,830 --> 00:23:57,240 and showing such a total lack of awareness of the fact that the past differs fundamentally from the present. 179 00:23:57,660 --> 00:24:06,180 And when I imagined the situation that had happened, I still feel very uneasy about it even. 180 00:24:06,420 --> 00:24:12,090 But even historians do not consider every form of anachronism a mortal sin. 181 00:24:12,660 --> 00:24:22,320 According to some, for example, definitions of anachronism have in fact set the bar too, too high. 182 00:24:23,400 --> 00:24:27,360 So you could say to some historians, 183 00:24:27,360 --> 00:24:39,210 this is too dogmatic to say that each and every form of anachronism is a historical sin, let alone the sin of sins. 184 00:24:40,950 --> 00:24:42,689 One reason for that, for this, 185 00:24:42,690 --> 00:24:56,850 is that anachronism is unavoidable because historians are tied to the present and have knowledge which contemporary actors at the time never have. 186 00:24:58,500 --> 00:24:59,850 And as a matter of fact, 187 00:24:59,850 --> 00:25:09,060 most historical explanations are based on descriptions and classifications that were not available to the objects of research. 188 00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:16,610 However, the fact that the historian is tied to the present does not imply that anything goes. 189 00:25:18,260 --> 00:25:26,030 It is important to carefully distinguish between types of anachronism that are simply inevitable. 190 00:25:28,150 --> 00:25:35,740 An anachronism that are not inevitable, but nevertheless may be legitimate or even desirable. 191 00:25:38,110 --> 00:25:45,280 Conceptual anachronism is inevitable. If the historian has the ambition to describe and explain past deeds, 192 00:25:46,150 --> 00:25:53,350 then description and explanation will demand categories not available to the agents, the historical agents themselves. 193 00:25:53,590 --> 00:25:58,750 It would, for example, be legitimate to describe people as homosexuals, 194 00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:05,890 even if they lived in a time when the concept of homosexuality had not yet entered the vocabulary. 195 00:26:07,330 --> 00:26:13,060 This form of descriptive anachronism would be appropriate, however, 196 00:26:13,090 --> 00:26:21,940 only if homosexuality were defined in terms of the behaviour of people having sex with people of the same sex. 197 00:26:23,290 --> 00:26:32,170 It would not be allowed to project a modern idea of homosexuality on an earlier period, 198 00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:40,390 nor to impose modern values about sexuality on a situation in the pre-modern world. 199 00:26:43,170 --> 00:26:53,160 But even such a form of judgemental anachronism could be legitimate, as, for example, in the case of violations of human rights. 200 00:26:55,500 --> 00:27:01,350 In a discussion of the work of the famous historian historian quant Quentin Skinner, 201 00:27:02,790 --> 00:27:11,760 he is claimed to have stated that we cannot logically denounce the Chilean country for failing to uphold basic, 202 00:27:11,970 --> 00:27:17,490 basic human rights because they never had any intention of doing so. 203 00:27:19,340 --> 00:27:22,909 In response to this claim, it has been argued that, 204 00:27:22,910 --> 00:27:29,450 of course we can't criticise the Chilean country for not upholding basic human rights and we should. 205 00:27:31,100 --> 00:27:40,970 Because in this case it's perfectly in line with Skinner's thought to condemn the agent as ignorance or maliciousness. 206 00:27:42,140 --> 00:27:54,320 This is a fairly sophisticated and detailed debate between Skinner and other historians that I cannot go into now, 207 00:27:54,320 --> 00:28:09,140 and possibly I'm not even able to to to analyse in all its finesse finesses that theoretical historians have. 208 00:28:09,890 --> 00:28:20,090 But I thought the debate is interesting because it's it's about such a clear case of a military dictatorship in South America. 209 00:28:20,390 --> 00:28:33,200 And the question whether or not we ask as as as we speak now are legitimately could legitimately 210 00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:41,690 condemn these historical actors for having done what they've done in cases like this. 211 00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:51,230 Anachronistic use of contemporary concepts, theories and perspectives, alien to two historical agents is perfectly legitimate. 212 00:28:52,070 --> 00:29:01,940 It may even be desirable because past agents may have deceived themselves about their motives or simply have possessed a more 213 00:29:01,940 --> 00:29:11,060 limited understanding of the processes they took part in or witnessed than historians enjoying the benefit of hindsight have today. 214 00:29:12,350 --> 00:29:20,719 In other words, anachronistic unfaithfulness to concepts and categories of past agents does not 215 00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:27,230 always constitute an historically incoherent interpretation of past deeds. 216 00:29:27,740 --> 00:29:38,360 It's some, in some cases, retrospective application of contemporary theories and conceptual frameworks to historical events will 217 00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:46,070 allow a better understanding of historical events that was possible while they were taking place. 218 00:29:46,910 --> 00:29:56,540 Understanding the past in contemporary terms, stronger than in its own terms, can be a manifestation of historical sophistication. 219 00:29:59,090 --> 00:30:04,000 And I'm going to do. We had that. 220 00:30:06,010 --> 00:30:11,350 Yeah. Now we're going to take a legal perspective on anachronism. 221 00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:20,860 And I'd like to say, especially to the students, to signal to me, please, when, when I'm losing you. 222 00:30:20,860 --> 00:30:25,570 And in the argument, don't be shy. You're doing me service. 223 00:30:26,080 --> 00:30:31,510 If you stop me and say, Oh, wait a minute, I didn't get this. 224 00:30:31,810 --> 00:30:44,290 So maybe, maybe just I stop here for a minute to see if it's been somewhat clear to you what I've argued so far. 225 00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:55,390 Have you have you understood the problem, that you can be humiliated by historians if you don't if you don't watch your step 226 00:30:56,140 --> 00:31:00,250 when you're dealing with historical with historical human rights violations, 227 00:31:01,210 --> 00:31:07,060 all we need to be to be on guard with them. So that's clear, I think. 228 00:31:08,170 --> 00:31:13,840 And have you understood why, even when you take historians to task, 229 00:31:14,530 --> 00:31:25,840 that there is there is leeway there to use contemporary the contemporary concept that we as criminologist I used to work with, 230 00:31:26,170 --> 00:31:34,990 to use them to to understand, to explain, even to describe to some extent what happened in the past. 231 00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:41,730 Or is that? How's that? Speak up. 232 00:31:44,540 --> 00:31:49,080 How you're doing? Me servers. Okay. 233 00:31:50,130 --> 00:31:54,780 Maybe you're all lawyers now and then. We're going to continue with with the law perspective. 234 00:31:54,780 --> 00:32:07,500 Now, what historians consider as anachronistic from a legal perspective will be seen as a violation of the principle of legality. 235 00:32:09,030 --> 00:32:17,219 The operative moral principle in criminal law demands that person faces criminal charges 236 00:32:17,220 --> 00:32:25,230 only for an act that has been criminalised by law at the time the act was committed. 237 00:32:26,130 --> 00:32:30,150 No. Retrospective application of law. 238 00:32:32,460 --> 00:32:36,120 In international criminal law. 239 00:32:36,120 --> 00:32:47,790 This is and this is an all legal principle, right. But in international criminal law, everything is more more liquid. 240 00:32:48,150 --> 00:32:53,450 Zygmunt Bauman would say it's more you know, it's more and more still contested. 241 00:32:53,460 --> 00:32:56,460 It's it's it's in flux. It's changing. 242 00:32:57,270 --> 00:33:04,590 So in international criminal law, it may be admissible to convict to convict a defendant, 243 00:33:05,370 --> 00:33:14,580 even if at the time the crimes were committed, these actions were proved propagated and enforced by the state. 244 00:33:15,630 --> 00:33:21,030 And an obvious example for that is that this is that at the Nuremberg trials, 245 00:33:21,030 --> 00:33:30,629 some lawyers argued in favour of the defendants that the genocidal actions committed during the Third 246 00:33:30,630 --> 00:33:40,830 Reich did not constitute crimes because they were not violations of law in effect at the time and place. 247 00:33:43,310 --> 00:33:46,640 During the trial. This argument was overruled. However, 248 00:33:47,150 --> 00:33:57,980 by the contrary argument that it was more significant that these actions were criminal under Germany's treaty obligations and pre-existing German law. 249 00:33:58,610 --> 00:34:05,630 And ultimately the Nazis would be tried and convicted also for crimes against humanity, 250 00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:13,310 which were not yet officially recognised as a legal category in international criminal law. 251 00:34:16,290 --> 00:34:25,230 Since then, in international criminal law, there is a tendency to relax the principle of legality in exceptional situations. 252 00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:35,880 In these cases, a violation of the legality principle is seen as not only morally justified, but even legally legitimate. 253 00:34:46,330 --> 00:34:56,290 In 1968, the convention of non applicability of statutory limitations to war crimes and Crimes against Humanity was adopted, 254 00:34:57,070 --> 00:35:02,110 which guaranteed imprest repeatability for war crimes and crimes against humanity. 255 00:35:03,370 --> 00:35:10,870 As a result, the prosecution of these international crimes could be no longer restricted by time limits. 256 00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:16,540 This was meant for crimes during the Second World War. 257 00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:27,850 To prevent that those have committed them would, after all, go free, but has since been applied on a much broader scale. 258 00:35:28,510 --> 00:35:37,750 In Argentina, for example, prosecutions and trials of suspects of human rights violations during the military dictatorship of 19 six, 259 00:35:37,990 --> 00:35:49,300 76, 1983 have been resumed after the Supreme Court of Argentina ruled in 2005 that amnesty laws of the 1990 were unconstitutional. 260 00:35:49,630 --> 00:35:53,740 Exactly. Because these crimes were imprisoned, corruptible. 261 00:35:55,530 --> 00:36:03,809 Therefore they could still be prosecuted 30 years or more after the events took 262 00:36:03,810 --> 00:36:09,510 place by declaring war crimes and crimes against humanity in proscriptive, 263 00:36:09,510 --> 00:36:13,610 all the legality principle is somewhat relaxed. 264 00:36:13,650 --> 00:36:23,790 You could say a legal anachronism, which I use as an equivalent or historical anachronism. 265 00:36:24,720 --> 00:36:27,900 The legality is no longer unattainable. 266 00:36:27,930 --> 00:36:38,520 There are situations where it's seen as more morally acceptable or even even mandatory to relax the principle, 267 00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:48,930 to go ahead with prosecution trial of these horrific crimes, even when they were committed in a distant past. 268 00:36:54,410 --> 00:37:02,050 Q But even in cases in which suspected perpetrators themselves are no longer alive, 269 00:37:02,060 --> 00:37:10,220 and that's usually where a criminal trial ends, think of the trial against Milosevic or Milosevic died in prison. 270 00:37:10,610 --> 00:37:23,690 That was end of story. And when we had a talk at the university with Alfons Ory, one of the sitting judges on the on the trial against Milosevic, 271 00:37:24,350 --> 00:37:36,410 and I asked him if it would be imaginable to continue the trial for for for truth finding. 272 00:37:37,830 --> 00:37:40,970 He said, well, we are judges, we are not historians. 273 00:37:41,510 --> 00:37:49,370 And that was for him. End of story. Now, for historians, that's that's different. 274 00:37:49,370 --> 00:37:52,520 And maybe for criminal charges, criminologists. 275 00:37:52,730 --> 00:38:08,030 And it needs to be different, too, because there seems to be room for historical injustices in in international law, 276 00:38:08,210 --> 00:38:11,960 not so much international criminal law maybe, but in international law. 277 00:38:12,710 --> 00:38:22,580 And that is the evolution of what we call a right to truth, which is now to be recognised by a number of human rights treaties, 278 00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:29,330 the right to truth grants, victims of human rights violations and their relatives. 279 00:38:29,870 --> 00:38:32,599 A fundamental and in proscriptive. 280 00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:41,480 All right to know the truth about the circumstances of their human rights violations and in the case of deaths or disappearance, 281 00:38:41,990 --> 00:38:50,270 the fate of the victims. The right also holds when the perpetrators have died, 282 00:38:50,810 --> 00:39:00,370 not being prosecuted or being granted amnesty, as was the case in Argentina between 1989 and 1990. 283 00:39:01,620 --> 00:39:09,590 Victims of human rights violations and their relatives may claim their right to truth until they die. 284 00:39:11,120 --> 00:39:15,410 But the right to truth is also a right of society at large. 285 00:39:16,520 --> 00:39:28,000 And because of the public interest in the truth. It's not strictly a strictly legal, but political, historical, historical, moral. 286 00:39:29,020 --> 00:39:39,950 You could say that historical interest to a proscriptive ability becomes virtually endless, regardless of how much time has gone by. 287 00:39:39,970 --> 00:39:44,080 It will never be too late to ask for the historical truth. 288 00:39:46,460 --> 00:39:51,110 In this way, justice can be done concerning what had happened in the past. 289 00:39:51,350 --> 00:39:56,660 And this also applies to the excesses that took place during the Dutch colonial wars 290 00:39:57,080 --> 00:40:06,320 and more specifically during the above mentioned military actions in Lombok in 1894, 291 00:40:07,010 --> 00:40:11,240 where in which lt could not kalayaan was involved. 292 00:40:17,090 --> 00:40:21,770 With regard to such painful episodes in the national history, 293 00:40:22,430 --> 00:40:29,329 it can no longer be maintained that historical events are to be seen strictly within their own 294 00:40:29,330 --> 00:40:36,710 historical context and to be judged exclusively according to the values and norms of the time. 295 00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:45,010 If only because painful episodes in history and uncomfortable historical events. 296 00:40:46,210 --> 00:40:54,640 Won't go away. They will continue to haunt us, forcing us to realise that the past is not over yet. 297 00:40:56,290 --> 00:40:59,380 Because justice has not yet been done. 298 00:41:00,670 --> 00:41:11,530 In this way, they live on in the here and now, influencing what we think or try to forget as well as what we do or don't do. 299 00:41:13,930 --> 00:41:16,480 In order to do justice to the past, 300 00:41:16,630 --> 00:41:26,350 we need to rethink the notion of anachronism and especially the linear conception of historical time on which it is based, 301 00:41:27,100 --> 00:41:32,560 a linear conception to which most historians still subscribe. 302 00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:43,990 Doing justice to the past requires a radical critique of this dominant concept of historical time. 303 00:41:45,250 --> 00:41:50,980 And such a radical critique has been offered by the French philosopher science Michel Sarah, 304 00:41:51,760 --> 00:42:02,620 who considers a linear notion of time to be naive and unrealistic because it only causes problems in how we think about historical processes. 305 00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:07,390 As he argues in no uncertain terms, quote, 306 00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:17,710 All our difficulties with the theory of history come from the fact that we think of time in this inadequate and naive way. 307 00:42:22,870 --> 00:42:33,760 The life and work of historical figures is continually being historicist by locating them outside the here and now, 308 00:42:34,390 --> 00:42:42,910 creating historical distance, despite the fact that in reality, says Sara. 309 00:42:43,660 --> 00:42:49,930 Few people and even fewer thoughts are completely congruent with the date of their time. 310 00:42:51,740 --> 00:42:55,130 Ideals, norms, values. They float. 311 00:42:55,850 --> 00:43:00,170 They move back and forth. In history, you cannot exactly locate them. 312 00:43:01,940 --> 00:43:05,690 The way is supposed to be in linear time. 313 00:43:05,740 --> 00:43:10,729 At first you had the Middle Ages and then you had the Enlightenment, 314 00:43:10,730 --> 00:43:19,460 and then you had the 18th century Ampere, etc. and then we had modernity, and then we had laid modernity. 315 00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:25,310 It is not when you look in actual detail how ideas develop. 316 00:43:26,930 --> 00:43:31,430 That is not exactly how history evolves. 317 00:43:32,510 --> 00:43:41,960 So rather than located historical facts and events on a linear timescale, Sarah proposes a multi temporal perspective. 318 00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:51,820 Explain. The right to historical truth demands that linearity be replaced with a more complex notion of time. 319 00:43:54,190 --> 00:44:02,950 And an example of such a complex notion of time is offered by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, 320 00:44:04,210 --> 00:44:13,480 who treats time as spectacle, arguing that traumatic historical events like atrocities, 321 00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:25,150 massacres, human rights violations in the past, that they do not belong to the past, but continue to haunt us as spectres, as ghosts, to the present. 322 00:44:25,270 --> 00:44:29,640 They won't go away. They stick up their ugly hex heads. 323 00:44:30,100 --> 00:44:37,810 Every once in a while when when politicians, whether politicians like it or not. 324 00:44:38,980 --> 00:44:46,630 So as long as as as justice is done, as transitional justice hasn't run its course, 325 00:44:47,290 --> 00:44:56,109 as peace hasn't been created these days, these events of the past, they haunt our stay. 326 00:44:56,110 --> 00:45:07,089 They won't go away. And to capture that notion that the past is part of the present, Derrida talks about spectral spectral time, 327 00:45:07,090 --> 00:45:13,570 the spectral notion of time where past and present are intermingled, if you like. 328 00:45:16,330 --> 00:45:24,790 Now, some have countered that Derrida does not, in this way succeed in escaping linearity altogether, 329 00:45:27,070 --> 00:45:34,059 and therefore it might be preferable to follow elsewhere in his alternative, alternative, 330 00:45:34,060 --> 00:45:40,420 topical, topological notion of time for which he has the example of a handkerchief. 331 00:45:46,010 --> 00:45:58,240 I quote Michel, Sir, if you take a handkerchief and spread it out in order to iron it, you can see in it a certain fixed distances and proximity. 332 00:45:59,740 --> 00:46:07,270 If you scatter circle in one area, you mark out nearby points and measure far off distances. 333 00:46:08,410 --> 00:46:12,970 Then take the same handkerchief and crumble it by putting it in your pocket. 334 00:46:13,780 --> 00:46:21,310 Two distant points suddenly are close, even superimposed if further, you tear it in certain places. 335 00:46:21,340 --> 00:46:27,350 Two points that were close can become very distant as we experience time. 336 00:46:27,370 --> 00:46:33,850 It resembles the crumpled version much more than the flat, overly simple, simplified one. 337 00:46:35,140 --> 00:46:43,600 According to Michelle, Sarah Thyme is best be described as a topological sheet, which wraps itself around the world. 338 00:46:45,700 --> 00:46:52,660 Although it may be true that the reader's notion of spectral time did not succeed in escaping linearity altogether, 339 00:46:53,410 --> 00:47:01,300 and that Sarah's supple, adaptable, multi-directional notion of topological time is more realistic. 340 00:47:02,170 --> 00:47:06,760 I'd say that the notion of spectral time may still be useful. 341 00:47:08,380 --> 00:47:20,860 Indeed it reminds us it can shed some clarifying light on the complex and difficult relationship with the past as they emerge and emerge, 342 00:47:20,860 --> 00:47:35,040 for example, in transitional justice, where we have to deal with the past in these complex ways and and and try to to bring the past and and 343 00:47:35,100 --> 00:47:44,730 the present together in order for people to allow them to to live on and to live together in the future. 344 00:47:46,570 --> 00:48:00,670 So. And maybe in terms of criticism of linearity, there might be some shortcomings in that in the notion of spectral time. 345 00:48:01,180 --> 00:48:09,460 I think the two for for us as criminologist, we we can use both notions just to to be aware. 346 00:48:09,940 --> 00:48:16,780 First of time is not not linear and and and multidimensional and complex. 347 00:48:17,230 --> 00:48:27,010 And secondly, this spectral notion that that this this nonlinear notion of time is very useful for 348 00:48:27,010 --> 00:48:32,710 the spectres that haunt us when we're dealing with phenomena of transitional justice. 349 00:48:34,930 --> 00:48:44,889 I conclude that it does make sense to anachronistically consider events in the past as international crimes, 350 00:48:44,890 --> 00:48:51,190 regardless of whether or not contemporaries could consider them as such as international crimes. 351 00:48:51,790 --> 00:49:02,110 Obviously they couldn't. In order to try to understand the motives of the perpetrators of these crimes, which is what criminologists tried to do. 352 00:49:03,580 --> 00:49:08,470 We need to locate them in the social, cultural and political context in which they took place. 353 00:49:08,770 --> 00:49:19,750 So there I would go along with the ethno graphical historical perspective that you have to to also see them as children of their time. 354 00:49:20,620 --> 00:49:28,170 That you do try to understand the moral constraints, for instance, that they're that they're acting with them. 355 00:49:29,650 --> 00:49:34,910 But to judge the events in which they were involved, 356 00:49:34,910 --> 00:49:40,930 there is no reason to strictly limit ourselves to the values and norms that were held at the time. 357 00:49:46,930 --> 00:49:50,990 Strictly speaking. Yeah, that's this philosophy. 358 00:49:51,430 --> 00:49:59,170 Philosophers always do that. To to to to rewind conclusion and apply a conclusion to. 359 00:49:59,260 --> 00:50:00,640 To the argument itself. 360 00:50:01,180 --> 00:50:10,870 So strictly speaking, one could argue that giving up the linear notion of time renders the notion of Americanism itself senseless. 361 00:50:12,070 --> 00:50:13,650 Isn't that sophisticated, right? 362 00:50:14,590 --> 00:50:25,150 However, I do not want to suggest that we should discard the notion of anachronism entirely by declaring it itself senseless. 363 00:50:25,930 --> 00:50:31,450 I think it has a function, especially for for us, for non historians, 364 00:50:32,500 --> 00:50:41,020 because it serves as a reminder that we need to rethink the notion of time in order to do justice to, 365 00:50:41,200 --> 00:50:44,370 to the past, especially to the, 366 00:50:44,620 --> 00:50:59,440 the painful episodes in the past in our colonial history and in the past of military dictatorship and in transitional justice towards the past. 367 00:51:00,190 --> 00:51:09,460 Historical truth and justice require the application of both past and contemporary perspectives to historical events. 368 00:51:10,240 --> 00:51:21,070 Because even if historical crimes did not exist, did not yet exist legally, they could not at the time be understood as international crimes, 369 00:51:21,610 --> 00:51:34,390 the acts and events which these concepts to which these concepts refer now, they were historically they were committed in reality. 370 00:51:35,290 --> 00:51:46,240 So we cannot just argue, going back to the beginning of this talk, they didn't exist because people didn't have a name for it. 371 00:51:46,690 --> 00:51:56,320 You know, these atrocities took place in reality and we have to relate to them in terms of truth and in terms of justice, 372 00:51:56,800 --> 00:52:02,560 if only because not to do so also implies a moral stance. 373 00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:13,390 Retrospective moral judgements of past events are justifiable if those judgements have a sufficient factual basis, 374 00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:21,280 are carefully and reasonably made, and offer a contribution to public historical debate. 375 00:52:22,270 --> 00:52:33,819 Thus, if reflexively applied anachronism do make sense and may therefore be justified in the context of the 376 00:52:33,820 --> 00:52:45,490 work that we do in criminology criminal criminal law with regard to process of transitional justice. 377 00:52:47,110 --> 00:52:58,120 In short, it does make sense to define past wrongs anachronistically as crimes, even if most contemporaries at the time did not consider them as such. 378 00:52:58,750 --> 00:53:01,930 Moral judgements of historical events do not. 379 00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:12,290 Be solely to events need not be solely based on values and norms that were dominant in the past, 380 00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:22,160 but may and in fact must to take into account considerations that we have as contemporaries 381 00:53:22,400 --> 00:53:33,410 without running the risk of becoming a historically moralistic or senselessly anachronistic. 382 00:53:33,950 --> 00:53:45,020 Thank you. Thank you very much, Officer. 383 00:53:45,190 --> 00:53:46,890 Extremely thought provoking and.