Campus screening, forum give students opportunity to debate and educate
On Wednesday evening, about 30 students and community members met to watch the new Amnesty International documentary “Justice Without Borders” and to participate in an open forum after the film.
Both the film and the forum discussed in great depth the concept of international justice, its implications and its progress in recent years.
The documentary was very straightforward, containing a myriad of testimonials from Amnesty International members spliced with a diverse lot of footage, some graphic and some uplifting. The film examines several individual cases in the struggle for international justice.
The first part of the film told of the fight to bring Alberto Fujimori, former dictator of Peru, to justice for crimes against humanity. During his ten-year rule, the film explained, Fujimori’s administration murdered and disappeared countless Peruvian citizens, several taken directly from universities.
The focus of this part of the film was an attempt to have the ex-dictator, who fled first to Japan and then to Chile, extradited back to Peru to be tried for his crimes. In what was described as landmark cooperation between the two countries brought about by massive demonstrations by human rights activists, the Chilean government turned Fujimori over to his former people. At present, he waits in a Peruvian jail for his Dec. 10 court date.
The second part of the film described the International Criminal Court, an independent court formed in recent years to try international criminals, those who have committed the most serious of human rights violations but who cannot or will not be tried in their home countries for various reasons.
The ICC has over 100 countries signed up as supporters of the court, and as such these countries comply with the court’s jurisdiction. The U.S., the film explained, has taken a position in opposition of the court.
Throughout the documentary, the concept of universal jurisdiction was discussed.
Universal jurisdiction, according to the film, means that any court has the right to try anyone who is guilty of crimes against humanity, as humanity is not confined by political boundaries but rather covers the whole of the Earth.
This idea was brought up a number of times during the forum directly following the screening. Additionally discussed were some of the individual cases of activists whose struggles for justice were portrayed in the film.
“These are extraordinary individuals, seeking justice against all odds,” Hayden Gore, Denver-based International Justice activist and scholar, said as the credits scrolled across the screen.
Gore was one of two experts brought in for the forum. He went on to describe his recent experiences touring the U.S. with one of the women pictured in the film, whose oldest son had been taken by Fujimori’s forces. He spoke of his awe in the face of her sustained courage, as she fought for fifteen years to bring the killer of her son to justice.
Another speaker at the forum was a woman named Hannah Garry, a visiting professor of international law. Garry spoke on the possible reasons for the U.S.’s opposition to the ICC, and what it would look like if the U.S. were to sign up with the court.
“The way it works (should the U.S. join the ICC), the pressure is on our courts, to deal with our own dirty laundry,” Garry said. “If we neglected to do that, then the ICC might step it.”
Garry added that the ICC is largely about holding countries accountable.
The forum lasted about an hour, and several questions ranging in content from Darfur to the Bush administration were asked and answered.
Erin Macdonald, a junior math and physics major and moderator of the event, spoke with fervor at the close of the evening about international justice and its recent developments.
“The concept of justice without borders is relatively new,” Macdonald said. “We need to get more students into it, get more of them educated. There are a lot of activists on campus, and I think this (justice without borders) is going to get really big in the near future.”
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Andrew Frankel at andrew.frankel@thecampuspress.com
