Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch Blog

• News source:
• 13 May 2012
• CTV
• By AP

NASHVILLE — No matter how much digging investigators did, the crime remained open until a thief turned himself in and returned the fruits of his theft.

• News source:

Riots and Restorative Justice
featuring Dr. Theo Gavrielides
2012 Bruce and Lis Welch Community Dialogue

Tuesday, May 8, 2012, 7-9pm (reception to follow)
SFU Woodward’s, 149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver
Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, Room 3200

This lecture is free, however pre-registration is required.
RSVP by Friday, May 4

The role of Restorative Justice following riots will be the focus of the next Bruce and Lis Welch Community Dialogue. Honored guest Dr. Theo Gavrielides will provide insights into this new field of practice, including how Restorative Justice was proposed and implemented after Britain’s August 2011 riots, where 15,000 rioters caused an estimated £500 million in damages.

Vancouver’s Stanley Cup riot has many parallels to the British experience, including a desire to provide victims with a better sense of reparation and closure, as well as an interest in reducing the risk of re-offense. Spontaneous responses to the riot demonstrated a desire from community members to participate with officials in the process of ensuring accountability, bridge building, and restoring the social fabric of the affected areas.

• News source:

UBC Program on Dispute Resolution presents:
“Shattered Lives, hope of Healing:
Facilitating Dialogue in Crimes of Severe Violence.”

For more information on the Program on Dispute Resolution’s 2011-12
Speaker Series: http://www.law.ubc.ca/pdr/index.html or http://www.law.ubc.ca/files/pdf/events/2011/dr-Speaker-Series-2011-12.pdf
Thursday, January 12, 2012

4:30 –6:00 pm

Allard Hall Forum, 1822 East Mall

Often times, the needs of crime victims and what they are provided in Criminal Justice System processes are diametrically opposed. In order to address some of those unmet needs, Dave Gustafson and staff at Fraser Region Community Justice Initiatives Association (CJI) conducted research in the late 1980s and set out to develop a program based on what they heard. Since then, they have been facilitating dialogues between crime victims and the prisoners responsible for their harms in cases involving the most serious offences in the Canadian Criminal Code. In this presentation, Dave Gustafson and guest speaker Debbie Klassen, herself a victim of attempt murder and a family survivor of homicide, will share the remarkable story of her trauma recovery journey, from victim to survivor and beyond, as a participant in CJI’s Victim Offender Mediation Program, now a model for Canada and many other jurisdictions in the US and Europe.
Dave Gustafson is Co-Director of Fraser Region Community Justice Initiatives Association (CJI) in Langley, B.C. CJI specializes in training, program development, and facilitating victim-offender dialogue across the spectrum from relatively minor incidents in schools to the most serious criminal offences in the Canadian criminal code. The agency’s pioneering Victim Offender Mediation Program has become the model for Canada and is now available to prisoners and victims coast-to-coast. He is Adjunct Professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University where he has taught on peace and justice-making theory, restorative justice models and practices. Gustafson also maintains a small psychotherapeutic private practice specializing in trauma recovery. An avowed life-long student, he is working on his doctoral dissertation (KUL, Leuven, Belgium) on the clinical implications of facilitated therapeutic encounter between trauma survivors and those responsible for the harms.

• News source:
• 8 December 2011
• Globe and Mail
• By KIM MACKRAEL

The Japanese government is offering an apology to Canadian prisoners of war, a significant move for a country that historians say has long struggled to come to terms with its wartime past…

Historians say Japan has been reticent to issue formal apologies for its actions, especially when compared with other countries involved in the war.

“The Japanese government has had a lot of difficulty apologizing for anything to do with the Second World War,” said Diana Lary, a retired professor at the University of British Columbia with expertise in Asian military history. “Compare that with what the Germans did. They not only apologized but [they] apologized profusely and made all kinds of restitutions.”

• News source:
• 18 November 2011
• By Erin Anderssen

In almost every tragic case of bullying, there are bystanders. They see the scuffles in the school hallway, and read the vicious stream of insults on Facebook, and look away, or log off. They are both the nervous audience for the bully, and the tear-stained faces in the school assembly when a student commits suicide and the grief counsellors step in.

But they are also the ones with the real power on the playground – more than parents and teachers. One student confronting a bully is often enough to stop the abuse instantly, Canadian research has found. But support doesn’t even need to be that daring: In a U.S. national survey, victims said that peers helped most by simply spending time with them, and sharing advice. …more

• News source:
• 3 November 2011
• MCC
• By Wilma Derksen

Statement on Bill C-10 by Wilma Derksen

November 3, 2011

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to have this opportunity to address you and the rest of the committee regarding Bill C-10, The Safe Streets and Communities Act.

I am here on behalf of Mennonite Central Committee. However, I will also be speaking to you as a parent of a murdered child. I am here because the issues you are addressing are extremely important to me and my family…

I am still involved with other victims of crime. Two weeks ago I was with a group that spent most of the evening analyzing the problems of our justice system. We were wallowing in our pain, not always being “politically correct” as one member put it, but allowing each other to speak freely. At the end of the evening, I asked them what they would do to create justice in our country.

To be honest, I expected that they would suggest changes to our criminal justice system similar to the bill we have before us today. I thought they would prioritize safety at all costs, propose stiffer sentences and advocate for more victim rights.

They didn’t. As we went around the circle, they all agreed that the answer to crime is to put more emphasis on the school system and other social programs. While not denying that we have to maintain prisons, they insisted that we as a society need to put our energy and creative thinking into giving our young people a better education.

• News source:
• 3 October 2011
• BBC

A woman who lost a relative in an IRA bombing in Coleraine has met one of the men who carried out the attack.

Jean Jefferson’s aunt was killed and her father severely disfigured in the blast, which killed six civilians in the town in 1973.

She met for the first time last week with Sean McGlinchey, who was convicted of the bombing.

She said Mr McGlinchey, who is the mayor of Limavady, apologised to her and she now regards him as a friend.

• News source:
• 14 September 2011
• EMU Restorative Justice Blog
• By Howard Zehr

The field of restorative justice has been characterized by on-going discussions about how to define the term. Some have argued that we should avoid definitions because of the rigidity they bring. Others have claimed that ambiguity and uncertainty have led to confusion and bad practice.

Many have advised that we drop the term “justice” entirely. In a school context, for example, the “justice” word is often replaced by terms such as “practices” or “disciplines.” Catherine Bargen, in her earlier guest blog, questions the wisdom of that, and her concerns are affirmed and expanded upon in an important new contribution by Dorothy Vaandering. (“A faithful compass: rethinking the term restorative justice to find clarity.” Contemporary Justice Review, Vol 14, No. 3, Sept 2011, 307-328).

• News source:
• 14 September 2011
• Phnom Penh Post
• By John Anthony

Huy Senghul and Norng Chen Kimty’s fathers were tormentor and victim, respectively, at the Khmer Rouge’s infamous Tuol Sleng interrogation facility, but the two now work together, at times sharing a desk, to document the crimes of the genocidal regime.

Their fathers, former Tuol Sleng executioner Him Huy and child survivor Norng Chanphal, have since quite remarkably reconciled, and the children now work as researchers at the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, a key source of written evidence for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

Both daughters share a common goal: to search for the truth about those slain during the three years, eight months and 20 days that the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia.

• News source:
• 12 September 2011
• Vancouver Sun
• For every 100 rioters locked up for four months, it will cost taxpayers $1.7 million.
• By Stephen Hume

In the aftermath of a hockey riot that rapidly recedes into a Vancouver past suffused with street violence since the earliest days, a few lingering thoughts bubble up amid the weighty opinions of the formal review.

Righteous blame is predictably and copiously distributed…

Venting demands for a crackdown might be emotionally satisfying but perhaps restorative justice — innovative sentences involving community service instead of jail time and finding a way to use the process as a teaching moment for better socializing some of these angry, alienated and disengaged young people — is worth a serious second look.

• News source:
• 11 September 2011
• VOA

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has begun a visit to France, striving to rebuild ties that were shattered by accusations related to Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

Mr. Kagame was scheduled to meet with Rwandan expatriates, French business leaders and French President Nicolas Sarkozy during his three-day visit.

• News source:
• Reporting on Conflict
• press release
• By Peaceful Tomorrows and Tavola della Pace

Ten years after the attack on September 11, 2001 and the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, the Italian Tavola della Pace (Peace Roundtable) and September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows have decided to go Kabul to say enough with the violence, war and terrorism.

The Italian-American delegation will travel to Kabul from August 31 to September 5, 2011 to meet Afghan families of the victims of terrorism and war and the representatives of Afghan civil and international organizations working in the country. (read more…)

• News source:
• 17 August 2011
• NPR
• "This should be about restorative justice ... it should not be about retribution," Brake said.
• By Bill Chappell

It seems likely that two British men sentenced to serve four years in prison for plotting riots — which did not take place — will appeal their sentences. Their punishments were handed down less than a week after Britain was seized by fiery riots…

A debate has now erupted over the punishment, which critics see as excessively harsh. But in British Prime Minister David Cameron’s eyes, the four-year sentences are appropriate…

Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake disagreed, telling BBC’s Newsnight that the pair would not have received the same sentences if they had posted their comments on Facebook before the riots began.

“This should be about restorative justice … it should not be about retribution,” Brake said.

• News source:
• 2 August 2011
• Washington Post
• By AP

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — David Potorti recalls his mother’s pain when his brother Jim was killed in the World Trade Center. Clutching her stomach, she cried out: “Jim. Jim. Jim.”

She said something else that made a lasting impression on him: “I don’t want anyone else to feel the pain I’m feeling right now.”

Potorti channeled that grief into becoming a peace activist, joining a group of other relatives of Sept. 11 victims who responded to the attacks by spreading that message and working to prevent others — including civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan — from enduring the same kind of suffering.

• News source:
• 4 July 2011
• ABC
• By Emma Sykes

When she began the Reading for Reconciliation book group, Helen Carrick’s dream was that the reading group would spread, and there would be “reading for reconciliation groups springing up all over Australia.”…

Helen wanted to educate herself and others like her; engage with the traditional owners of the land; and encourage more indigenous authors to tell their story.

Although she was a well educated teacher librarian, and a self confessed history buff, one experience highlighted Helen’s lack of knowledge in one area of Australian history, one that she would now argue is the most important.

It wasn’t until she heard an indigenous woman speak of her experience growing up on the Cherbourg Mission, 200 kilometres north-west of Brisbane, where she lived in dormitories, separated from her family that Helen realised how little she knew of Australia’s indigenous history.

• News source:
• 11 June 2011
• Independent (Uganda)
• By Magnus Mazimpaka

Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights group, is long accustomed to drawing controversy in Rwanda. Whether branding President Paul Kagame’s regime as dictatorial or highlighting purported press freedom abuses, the well known and respected organization is often derided by Rwandan government officials as biased and misleading.

Its new report, entitled, “Justice Compromised: The Legacy of Rwanda’s Community-Based Gacaca Courts,” [link added] has not only helped to cement this reputation amongst local officials, but has also drawn the suspicion of an international diplomat whose own country is known for being critical of the Kagame regime…

In her opening remarks, Leslie Haskell, researcher at the HRW Africa Division and author of the report, told reporters that Gacaca courts had truly achieved a lot, but also left a lot to be desired…

Gacaca courts, largely built on the Rwandan community philosophy of settling disputes through truth telling and forgiveness, were introduced in 2004 to reduce the backlog of genocide cases for approximately 130,000 suspects who were languishing in prisons as they waited for their trial.

Among other achievements, Haskell said Gacaca courts helped with “locating and identifying bodies of victims and a possible easing of ethnic tensions.”

However, Haskell also said that she found in “many cases that potential witnesses failed to speak out in defence of genocide suspects because they feared prosecution for perjury, complicity in genocide or ‘genocide ideology’,” a term the report alleges is a, “vaguely defined crime prohibiting ideas, statements, or conduct that might lead to ethnic tensions or violen

• News source:
• 10 June 2011
• Providence Journal
• By W. Zachary Malinowski

PROVIDENCE — Jose Rodriguez could hardly believe how his life had changed.

There he was last week, in a conference room at the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence, fielding questions from U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, the highest-ranking prosecutor in the nation and the first man of color to serve in that position. Holder wanted to know how Rodriguez and other street workers with violent pasts worked to change their ways and make the streets safer in Providence and Central Falls.

• News source:
• 2 June 2011
• ColorLines
• By Michelle Chen

When unspeakable crimes have been committed, justice often falls silent, too. That’s why half a century after Colombia plunged into bloody conflict and oppression, the healing has barely begun. But a new law is trying to make victims of the violence whole in a country still fractured by brutal violence. In the process, it has revived an old debate over reparations, and how society should confront past injustices that still shape life today.

• News source:
• 21 May 2011
• Reporting on Conflict
• By Catherine Morris

Peacemakers Trust has added a new resource, RwandanStories to its list of educational and bibliographic resources on Rwanda. Rwandan Stories is a collection of video, photography and journalism that explore the origins, details and aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide through the eyes of both survivors and perpetrators. The site includes a wealth of educational curriculum materials. RwandanStories was developed as a collaboration among several Australians including filmaker Dave Fullerton, peace and reconciliation consultant John Steward, and educator Sally Morgan.

• News source:

The Impact of Effective Apology on Dispute Resolution – With or Without Legislation http://www.cba.org/CBA/BlastEmail/pd-2011/2011-04_pd_dispute_resolution_e.aspx
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Presented by the CBA National Alternative Dispute Resolution Section

Giving and receiving a sincere, credible and effective apology can go a long way towards fostering individual empowerment and inter-party recognition, defusing conflict and often avoiding or limiting the scope of costly litigation. Legislation in several Canadian provinces (with others expected to follow) limits the potential legal consequences of an apology, increasing the likelihood of successful settlement negotiations. However, while an effective apology can lead to great results for all, with or without legislation, an ineffective apology can be disastrous and may well aggravate the conflict.
Learn how to craft an effective apology with your client and the consequences of not getting it right.

• Overview of apology legislation
• Use of apologies in dispute resolution, with or without legislation • Components of an effective apology • Consequences of an ill-conceived apology • Discussion of real-life examples

Speakers George Derwin, Legal Counsel Manitoba Hydro International Ltd.
John Peter Weldon, Mediator, Facilitator, Lawyer
Accreditation
The time spent attending this program may be applied towards the annual CPD requirement in British Columbia, Northwest Territories, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Ontario. (Please note that these CPD hours are not accredited by the LSUC for the New Member Requirement or the Professionalism Credit.)

Registration open to all CBA members and non-members.

Registration deadline:
April 25, 2011, 4 p.m. ET

TIME AND DATE
Wednesday, April 27, 2011