The court of women for the Balkans
On a cold autumn morning, on the top floor of the Hotel Saraj, in Sarajevo a group of women discuss and envision possible scenarios of the court of women in the Balkans. It is a reflection, but also the political praxis and poetic vision of justice shared by more than 60 women activists. These women demand freedom and sacredness of the most fragile words, the ones rooted in our emotional world of memories. And it is this exercise of love and mutual recognition that reaffirm the right of the global south for a restorative justice.
It is the 14 of September when starts a three days meeting where feminists, pacifists and women trapped in the loss of relatives, violence start talk about their own meaning of justice. What emerge is a justice which does not measure the satisfaction of victims on the number years of condemnation, penalties and judgements. As Kada Hotić from the Pokret majki enklava Srebrenica i Žepa (Movement of mothers from Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves) said: “Such a justice just prolong the circle of violence. It uses the power of tribunals to lock perpetrators behind doors. Such justice has a bitter taste, it does not bring back what we have lost, it does not offer a public recognition for the specificity, uniqueness of the ones we loved.”
The path that led to the first public debate for the establishment of the court of women in the Balkans began in 2000. Started by seven women’s organisations that have made the resistance to militarism and the recognition of the other, an everyday political praxis: Women in Black (Žene u crnom) from Serbia, Center for Women’s Studies (Centar za ženske studije) from Zagreb, Centre for women’s studies (Centar za ženske studije) from Belgrade, Center for Women War Victims (Centar za žene žrtve rata) from Zagreb, the Kosovo Women’s Network (Rrjeti i Grupeve të Grave të Kosovës) from Kosovo, Anima Kotor Anima Kotor Montenegro and Women for Women (Žene ženama) from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The court of women is an initiative that belongs to the discourse of dissent, a model of restorative justice as opposed to the traditional tribunal justice. This court has its roots in a form of resistance that, after the violence of wars, intend to give spaces of dignity, intend to listen and to give recognition of the loss. A court that focuses on the victims, and the survivors. A court made up of women and men of authority that wants to weave and sew memory but also return emotions and relationships.
Since 1993, when for the first time it has been proposed, happened 35 courts of the women who offered a different and alternative practices of justice, who spoke of wars but also of the other forms of violence such as poverty, trafficking. The court “judged” the inhuman face of globalisation, the violence done by USA army under the flags of democracy in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.
In Sarajevo, along with Corinne Kuman, founder of the court for the women were Sylvia Marcos (Mexico), Yvette Abrahams (South Africa), Eman Khammas (IRAQ), Vichuta Ly (Cambodia) and Ethel Long Scott (U.S.). Women who have long and personals experience of conflicts, exclusions, margins. Women who have given first to themselves and then to the victims, voices and faces. The court space is given to victims and survivors with their own particular stories while in traditional court is the perpetrator who is constantly under the lights of “fame” magnified by the brutality of the committed crimes.
On a cold autumn morning, on the top floor of the Hotel Saraj, in Sarajevo a group of women discuss and envision possible scenarios of the court of women in the Balkans. It is a reflection, but it is also the political praxis and the poetic vision of justice shared by more than 60 women activists. These women demand freedom and sacredness of the most fragile words the ones that root in our emotional world of memories and trough this exercise of love and mutual recognition reaffirm the right of the global south for a restorative justice.
A justice that does not respond to the categories of western human rights jurisprudence and its pretension to be universal. A traditional justice diminished in its values and equality by the inaction of the United Nations and the impunity of winners to commit atrocities.
It is an alternative, unusual form of resistance coming from the people who are unsatisfied with international courts justice models. People who are tired of double standard and morality. Survivors that want recognition for the thousand others that are missing, killed, outraged in war that have no justice at all. That’s court ask for restoration for all. For the people from Rwanda and Bosnia Herzegovina as much as for the people of Vietnam, for the forgotten victims of Sierra Leone as for the denied victims of Afghanistan and Iraq. It’ a people, a women court, self-legitimate by braveness, denounce and ethic.
The court of women proposed by Corinne is about the reconstruction of memory and our-story, it is about personalised the crime giving names, faces to protocols and judicial cases’ numbers. It is the capacity of Yvette to go trough her own memories of the apartheid and reworked them with the sons and daughters of the perpetrators to free them from guilty. Different and at the same time similar is Vichita battle against the guilt of being a survivor of the Khmer regime in Cambodia.
This justice comes from the margins, from exploited and excluded women from India as well as from the insurgents of the Mexican zapatist community of Sylvia, and returns to Iraq, to Emman, to remember to her and to us that there are wars for democracy that kill much more than declared tyranny.
A new and so different, more humane justice for the Balkans of Staša Zajović, women in black, which explain how the paternalism entrenched in the socialist system had survived and re-invented itself into the new capitalism, promoting indifference against solidarity, global terror against local terror, suggesting as answer a politic of care. On the same pattern Biljana Kašić from the women’s studies centre Zagreb, talk about reconstruction of emotional network, of safe spaces where each and everyone can find her/his own humanity and not limiting ourself into the alienation of western discourse which reduces justice to laws, rules, regulations, standards.
For four hours, 60 women imagine a justice that does not use the consumed words of democracy and development cooperation. They claim the right to an imaginary that gives voice to the forgotten community, which will reveal the deep texture, fabric of human lives and will not be dazzled by the spotlight on the single monster.
The court of women in the Balkans it’s all here in this terrific stream of energy that bases its strength on disobedience and reconciliation.
