Thesis advisor: Stephen J. Pope / Transitional justice responds to injustices and violations of human rights following a period of repressive rule or civil war. This dissertation argues that the needs of post-conflict societies are best served by local, participatory approaches to transitional justice. In the case of Guatemala, it was essential for the nation to embrace its common religious narrative as a resource for rebuilding the republic. The Guatemalan Catholic Church worked to build peace out of the ashes of state sponsored terror. It demonstrated the prophetic role of the Church by offering a collective voice condemning those in positions of authority for their neglect of the basic human rights of the majority of Guatemalans. The CEG also highlighted the reconciliatory function of the Church by promoting forgiveness and reconciliation within the public square. This experience calls for theological ethical reflection on how the Catholic Church could best serve the needs of civil society in the wake of nearly forty years of political violence. Responding to the need for critical theological reflection, this dissertation proposes a transformationalist understanding of the relation of love to justice for transitional justice. It draws its inspiration from a selective reading of Augustine and Augustinian scholarship. An Augustinian approach to transitional justice brings together the high moral ideas of love, justice, forgiveness, and peace while at the same time acknowledging the ever-present reality of sin and human weakness. It attempts to transform a post-conflict society into a moral community whose citizens are on a journey toward the destination of temporal peace. It realizes that we may never reach our destination of temporal peace, but we can glimpse it from afar. This dissertation offers the following ten Augustinian insights as a framework for a theological approach to transitional justice. 1) Charity is the motivating force for transitional justice and the pursuit of socio-political reconciliation; 2) Charity transforms our understanding of justice from noninterference and retribution to rehabilitating and reconciling; 3) Transitional justice ought to be contextual, paying attention to the unique concerns of a given post-conflict society; 4) Distinguishing, without bifurcating, the ends of the temporal and celestial commonwealths offers a positive, but not naïve, evaluation of the Church’s potential to be an instrument of social transformation; 5) Post-conflict societies need to foster conditions that allow for pluralism and social cohesion through civic friendship; 6) Post-conflict societies must develop social practices to train citizens in the civic virtues of love, justice, and friendship; 7) Transitional justice requires an ethical retrieval of the truth through the healing of memory; 8) Transitional justice upholds the moral obligation to admonish and correct sinful social behavior; 9) Transitional justice ought to foster the just and prudential protection of society through the use of coercive force on behalf of society’s most vulnerable citizens; and 10) Post-conflict societies need to cultivate and sustain an ethos of active hope that, far from inducing political passivity, promotes civic engagement. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Durante os anos de 1964 a 1985, o regime militar brasileiro combateu os militantes contrários ao governo instaurado. O movimento estudantil teve grande representação nas lutas políticas e sociais, nesse contexto, tornou-se importante nos quadros da oposição. O governo fez uso de diversos aparatos para conter a ação dos estudantes, tais como a instauração de processos judiciais contra manifestações estudantis consideradas subversivas. Este estudo pretende apresentar o perfil dos estudantes processados pelo regime militar, assim como o desempenho da acusação e da defesa nos julgamentos, com base em processos arquivados pelo Projeto Brasil Nunca Mais (BNM), que tratam da ação estudantil. O acervo do Projeto é composto pela duplicação e análise dos processos procedentes do Superior Tribunal Militar (STM), pertinentes aos anos de 1964 a 1979. A análise revelou que, aos olhos do Ministério Público, o estudante processado era subversivo e aliado a grupos de esquerda que pretendiam a derrubada do governo, ao passo que, para a defesa, era vítima da própria ingenuidade. Conforme o desempenho do procurador e do advogado, o juiz auditor determinava que o estudante era ou subversivo, ou um cidadão que poderia voltar a viver integrado de maneira construtiva na sociedade. / From 1964 until 1985, when Brazil remained under military control, political prisoners were detained by government to be sued and convicted. The student movement, during the military regime had great representation in the political struggles and became an important opposition against the military regime that took power in April 1964. This research intends to present the profile of the students sued for the military regime and how was the performance of the accusation and the defense in the judgments. This research is based mainly on the military court proceedings of actual trials, which were secretly photocopied by lawyers associated with the Catholic Church and analyzed by a team of researchers, the daring Project known as \"Brazil: Never Again\" (BNM). The project turned out public duplicate archives containing complete record of Brazils military courts. This was achieved by bringing together the most of official legal proceedings of practically the political cases tried in Brazilian military courts between April 1964 and March 1979, specifically those that reached the Supreme Military Court. The analysis of legal proceedings demonstrated that, according to the Public Military Ministrys point of view, the sued student was subversive and allied the leftist organizations to the resistance to that regime. On the other hand, the lawyer for the defense saw the student was a victim of its proper weakness. Depending on the performance of the accusation and the defense, the student could be judged either subversive or a citizen capable to live integrated in useful way in the society.

Durante os anos de 1964 a 1985, o regime militar brasileiro combateu os militantes contrários ao governo instaurado. O movimento estudantil teve grande representação nas lutas políticas e sociais, nesse contexto, tornou-se importante nos quadros da oposição. O governo fez uso de diversos aparatos para conter a ação dos estudantes, tais como a instauração de processos judiciais contra manifestações estudantis consideradas subversivas. Este estudo pretende apresentar o perfil dos estudantes processados pelo regime militar, assim como o desempenho da acusação e da defesa nos julgamentos, com base em processos arquivados pelo Projeto Brasil Nunca Mais (BNM), que tratam da ação estudantil. O acervo do Projeto é composto pela duplicação e análise dos processos procedentes do Superior Tribunal Militar (STM), pertinentes aos anos de 1964 a 1979. A análise revelou que, aos olhos do Ministério Público, o estudante processado era subversivo e aliado a grupos de esquerda que pretendiam a derrubada do governo, ao passo que, para a defesa, era vítima da própria ingenuidade. Conforme o desempenho do procurador e do advogado, o juiz auditor determinava que o estudante era ou subversivo, ou um cidadão que poderia voltar a viver integrado de maneira construtiva na sociedade. / From 1964 until 1985, when Brazil remained under military control, political prisoners were detained by government to be sued and convicted. The student movement, during the military regime had great representation in the political struggles and became an important opposition against the military regime that took power in April 1964. This research intends to present the profile of the students sued for the military regime and how was the performance of the accusation and the defense in the judgments. This research is based mainly on the military court proceedings of actual trials, which were secretly photocopied by lawyers associated with the Catholic Church and analyzed by a team of researchers, the daring Project known as \"Brazil: Never Again\" (BNM). The project turned out public duplicate archives containing complete record of Brazils military courts. This was achieved by bringing together the most of official legal proceedings of practically the political cases tried in Brazilian military courts between April 1964 and March 1979, specifically those that reached the Supreme Military Court. The analysis of legal proceedings demonstrated that, according to the Public Military Ministrys point of view, the sued student was subversive and allied the leftist organizations to the resistance to that regime. On the other hand, the lawyer for the defense saw the student was a victim of its proper weakness. Depending on the performance of the accusation and the defense, the student could be judged either subversive or a citizen capable to live integrated in useful way in the society.

The end of the Second World War found the city of Thessaloniki devastated by the loss of nearly its total Jewish population in the concentration camps of the Third Reich. A few survivals return to their city just to realize that their fortunes have been confiscated either by the local authorities or by their Christian neighbors. Some Jews decide to leave their former homeland and some others take the decision to remain and start their life from scratch. For the following decades, the Jewish history of the city is being carefully and on purpose hidden and the collective memory erases the traces of Jews. In this part of the story, the Jews by themselves kept a low public profile and remained silent, struggling to survive and rebuild their fortunes. It was in 2013, when a heterogeneous group of people decided to launch the Memory Walk “Never Again” for the 50.000 Jews of Thessaloniki who lost their lives in the Shoa (Holocaust). The Memory walk had to deal with the barriers of the strong nationalistic profile of the city and of its local population. However, the Memory walk came to be established as an institution which exists and grows until today. The current paper examines how local digital media approached the first Memory walk taking into consideration the Jewish history, the stereotypes regarding Jews, the antisemitism and the strong nationalist and deeply religious profile of the city. The first part describes the Jewish presence in Thessaloniki under the Ottoman Empire, the consequences of the Hellenization of the city in 1912, the national identity formation process and the mobilizing role of the Orthodox Church in the political and cultural homogenization. In the second part, digital media articles related to the first Memory Walk are being analyzed according to the CDA (critical discourse analysis) and a critical reflection on how media approached the Memory walk is finally presented. The analysis results will be finalized with the conclusions which derive from in person interviews with key stakeholders of the Memory Walk.

No description available.