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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Listen to my interview with Ahmed Sirleaf, Program Associate at the Advocates for Human Rights at their International Justice program.
Sirleaf is a human rights advocate and scholar, and is particularly interested in transitional justice initiatives in the world. Speaking on the ground breaking involvement of the Liberian Diaspora’s (Minnesota’s particularly) involvement in holding public hearings as part of larger reconciliation efforts, Sirleaf said:
In the history of any truth commissions or analogous bodies—current or past— this is the first time that a truth commission is systematically engaging both the people in the country where human rights and humanitarian law violations occurred (Liberia) and the Diaspora community; particularly in the United States.
With that came challenges: only victims spoke about crimes committed against them. Fear of prosecution kept perpetrators in the shadows. How then, is the Liberian community in Minnesota, and other refugees communities, dealing with post-war trauma and the very likely chance that their neighbor here in Minnesota was once a war criminal from the country from which they fled?
This show aired on June 11th, 2011.
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