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ABSTRACT
This article examines major theoretical dilemmas underpinning measures of transitional justice in general and the reparation of victims of human rights violations in particular. It assesses the role of financial compensation, justice, truth-telling, forgiveness, democratization, and other factors that are assumed to heal victims of political violence. In order to test their influence, we conducted a survey of former political prisoners in the Czech Republic. Findings from our regression analyses reveal that reparation is a two-dimensional process that incorporates sociopolitical redress and inner healing. These dimensions correlate positively with financial compensation and democratization; and negatively with public truth telling, the lack of reconciliation, and continued stigmatization by neighbors. At the same time, most proxies of retributive desires are not significantly related to the outcomes of reparation. These associations are interpreted in the light of narrative accounts obtained through interviews, letters, and observations. The results indicate that individual reparation, if it is to be successful, must be an organic part of a broader policy of social reconstruction. Based on our findings, we propose a victim-oriented model of social reconstruction for transitional countries.
It is a painful history. It is an ulcer that is not cured. ... If we do not deal with guilt, the curse remains. The nation is cursed twice, if they do not deal with those killed. Schools, courts, judges. We are the last survivors who cry so.
Antonin Huvar1
I. INTRODUCTION
Claims for reparation for historical injustices stretch across different categories of atrocities, including acts of injustice committed during World War II, acts perpetrated by "state terrorism" in authoritarian Latin America, communist Central and Eastern Europe, and apartheid South Africa, and demands arising from European colonialism. This article focuses on reparation that concerns transitional democracies seeking to redress gross violations of human rights caused by predecessor regimes.
Reparation, in common parlance, refers to financial and material compensation. However, many scholars and practitioners in the field of transitional justice use the term more generally to encompass not just a single act or mechanism but a process that "has the purpose of relieving the suffering of and affording justice to victims by removing or redressing to the extent possible the consequences of the wrongful acts and by preventing and deterring violations."2 They use...