SS.
Thank goodness you had emotional support. What did you do to have fun?
EOB. [Laughs] Go to museums. Art is the most sublime manifestation of human kindness. Many artists dedicated their lives to the creation of beauty and I have a great deal of admiration for that.
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SS.
After you lost the election to the Tribunal, you have been elected Vice-President of Costa Rica and appointed Minister of the Environment. What do you see in your future?
EOB. A new opportunity to set new goals and engage in new projects. This is very gratifying for me because it was a team effort and intended to make my country a more just and equal society. I am a great believer in teamwork. Now I have been given the additional opportunity to work in a different context which involves seeing the environment as an integral part of the human development equation. The challenge is not only how to work for nature's preservation but how to become a harmonious part of that nature. This is one of life's curious ironies that I end up working in an area that has been called the third generation of human rights: the right to breathe fresh air; the right to a safe habitat; the right to clean water. We are talking about the right to live in societies which co-exist harmoniously with and within nature; the right to use natural resources without destroying them; the need to replace them responsibly. This is what we are talking about when we discuss the rights of people to sustainable and harmonious development. I am very enthused about this new direction.
SS.
I think it is most fitting that you get a great opportunity to focus on life, human kindness and solidarity. It is about time.
Interview with Patricia Viseur-Sellers,
Legal Officer on Gender Issues
Sara Sharratt
SUMMARY. In this interview such issues as morality and integrity, the meaning of rape in various social contexts and the demand for justice from the international connnunity are discussed. In addition to her role in the legal system, Viseur-Sellers discusses her experiences as an African-American woman in the social systems of Europe, the United States and Latin America. The personal effects of this work on her are also explored. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678.E-mail address: getinfo@haworthpressinc.com]
KEYWORDS. Gender issues, sexual violence, trauma, war crimes SS.
Could you share with us some of your personal and professional background?
PVS. I am a US citizen and an African-American. Originally, I am from Philadelphia, but have lived in Europe for about 13 years and have been working in The Hague at the War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for close to five years. I was a Public Defender in Patricia Viseur-Sellers is Legal Officer on Gender Issues, Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. She also functions as a prosecutor for certain cases dealing with sexual violence.
Address correspondence to: Patricia Viseur-Sellers, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Churchillplein 1, 2517
JW, The Hague, The Netherlands.
[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: "Interview with Patricia Viseur-Sellers, Legal Officer on Gender Issues." Sharratt, Sara. Co-published simultaneously in Women & Therapy (The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol.
22, No. I, 1999, pp. 53-78; and: Assault on the Soul: Women ill the Former Yugoslavia (ed: Sara Sharratt and Ellyn Kaschak) The Haworth Press, Inc., 1999, pp. 53-78. Single or multiple copies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service (1-800-342-9678, 9:00a.m. 5:00 p.m. (ES1). E-mail
address: getinfo@haworthpressinc.com].
© 1999 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Philadelphia. Then I worked in the field of human rights in Latin America at the Ford Foundation, after which I worked in foreign affairs at the European Union before coming to the Tribunal, where I've been working almost since its inception.
SS.
You came as a gender legal specialist?
PVS. Yes, as a legal advisor on gender issues, for both Rwanda and Yugoslavia.
SS.
Why a gender specialist?
PVS. The sexual violence and rapes that occurred during the Yugoslavian cont1ict were not only too egregious to ignore, but were the focus of the human rights community, and the women's community in particular. It certain!y was known that countless rapes and other forms of sexual violence took place. The Secretary General incorporated rape into statutes related to crimes against humanity, and stated in his report that sexual violence was considered a serious violation of international humanitarian law. Therefore, Judge Goldstone and Graham Blewitt [Chief Prosecutor until1996 and still current Depu-ty Prosecutor, respectively], asked me, soon after I arrived, to be the legal advisor on gender-related crimes since they were to be an important area within our investigations, our evidence and eventually the prosecutions.
SS.
My sense was that Judge Goldstone's previous work in South Africa was important.
PVS. Coming out of South Mrica, I think Judge Goldstone had an ease with which to understand different types of prejudice and oppression and how law could either support that oppression or assist in redressing it. He applied this awareness directly to issues related to sexual violence during war time, making it something that he wanted his office to actively pursue.
SS.
Was he supportive of you?
PVS. Yes, he was.
SS.
How?
PVS. He was supportive by creating and then asking me to occupy this position. The fact that he placed me and the issue of gender at the Sara Sharratt
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cabinet level of the Office of the Prosecutor made it possible for me to intercede in investigations and speak with investigators and lawyers horizontally. This was a tremendous help, and I'm sure if his support was not there from the beginning our ability to address gender issues would have been compromised.
SS.
Where else did you find support?
PVS. Within the Tribunal we sometimes underestimate the staff that have professional backgrounds pertaining to sexual violence. There are several attorneys who have worked with sexual violence, including child abuse, within their careers. There was also quite a bit of support from lawyers who studied international law and understood the importance of this issue. I think also many women in the office made an attempt to integrate gender policy internally in order to support and accelerate our gender policies in the investigations and prosecution of sexual violence. They were very supportive, and caught the connection between their everyday life as women and the possibility of sexual violence during armed conflict.
We moved into the second stage under Judge Arbour. Now our policy and operations concentrate on normalizing the inclusion of sexual violence under our mandates [Judge Arbour is the current Chief Prosecutor. She is from Quebec, Canada]. The subject has become more like the air we breathe; it's no longer disquieting, shocking, intrusive or invasive. We have developed a legal framework, an investigative methodology. Moreover, we understand how great an impact the gender of the interpreter can have on our sexual assault investigations.
SS.
That was not taken into account in the beginning?
PVS. Perhaps not consciously. Most of our interpreters are female. When we developed internal expertise, we started examining and understanding more deeply the role of the interpreter; the gender of the interpreter; the age of the interpreter and the nationality of the interpreter. As we analyzed our internal teams, we looked for the best strategy to investigate evidence of sexual violence. How should an investigation team be configured? How should we amass the evidence? Should we separate sexual violence out from other crimes?
Or integrate sexual violence into other crimes? There has been much internal evaluation and, after pointed debate, we decided to have mixed gender teams.
SS.
What are the differences that you have found?
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Assault on the Soul: Women in the Former Yugoslavia
PVS. A major difference is that, in the context of a war, the crime of rape is no longer "just" rape. It's a crime against humanity manifested through sexual violence. It's a war crime in which one side is a non-combatant, and the other is party to the conflict. Just having those distinguishing legal elements removes rape from the realm of
"non-consensual sexual penetration,"a definition more appropriate to the prosecution of rape within a neighborhood in Brooklyn. Also, one has to remember that rape is generally not the only crime inflicted against that person on that day. Often in wartime you might have a victim or witness who has been shot, has seen family members killed before their eyes, been detained, starved or tortured, in addition to the sexual violence inflicted on them. So rape during war is not an ordinary crime. War crimes by themselves are serious violations of international humanitarian law and as such cannot be considered ordinary crimes.
SS.
In addition to the multiplicity of crimes, what is the difference for the rape victim in Brooklyn as opposed to the former Yugoslavia?
PVS. Rape in war is connected to a much larger political content Of course, this is not to say that rape in Brooklyn is not connected to the policies and the politics of patriarchy or the policies and politics of urban poverty. But the sexual violence that occurs during an armed conflict is distinctly related to the political and the societal upheaval that has led to war in the first place. Societies don't usually have temporary detention centers where segments of their population are interred and guarded by soldiers on a random basis. There is a parallel, but also a pronounced difference between detention during war and "peacetime" incarceration.
SS.
Or detention centers where women are raped constantly.
PVS. That's right, it's not as formalized. Although you might have sexual violence in US prisons, it's not the same political context where you have a reckless society "breaking down" in the midst of an internal or international war.
SS.
Do you think the trauma would be any different?
PVS. I think that is a very difficult question. Most of the psychologists I have talked to acknowledge that during war, trauma is multi-faceted.
Some trauma is related directly to the sexual violence. One always has to ask when precisely the sexual violence occurred in the midst Sara Sharratt
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of the traumatization of a given person. Was it the first traumatic act or did it occur after a series of ten acts?
I think we have to start looking at the context of war-related trauma, and broadening it so that it encompasses trauma from sexual violence either as a victim or witness, or as someone who has had to incorporate the fact that their daughters, sons or wives were raped.
Thus, I think we have to look at post-traumatic stress in war-like situations, whereby sexual violence is certainly a part but not necessarily the entire trauma.
SS.
I have heard expressions like "collective damage" to the community, or to the soul or to the country.
PVS. Both would work. While the trauma does remain very individual it also becomes part of the community trauma. This strikes, as I suggested earlier, at the very heart of the political context in which war-related sexual violence occurs. In municipal or domestic situations, you do have a community that is perhaps affected on a certain level, with all women being aware that one shouldn't walk through dark parking lots at night because we know there is danger. I don't think it's to the level of traumatization, but we have a sense of what is dangerous. Moreover, there is a community reaction in terms of the domestic rape situation. So it is not contradictory or surprising to think· that there is going to be a communal reaction to war-time sexual violence in addition to the reaction of an individual person who has experienced sexual violence or post-traumatic stress reaction.
SS.
We've also talked about atrocities. How has that impacted you personally?
PVS. I can't even bear the thought of going to see a violent movie. When I see a movie advertised with Sylvester Stallone or Bruce Willis with a gun, I block the poster right out. I couldn't even tell you what the name of the movie would be. I know from myself personally that when I started doing this work I didn't go back to my gynecologist for two years. I'm sure that was part of my reaction to the sexual violence.
Another reaction is that I find myself crying over things that are not really that important. Over a soapy television commercial, for example, or when I go to my son's basketball ceremony and they're handing out medals to these eight- and nine-year-old kids. They all think they're going to be the next slam dunk champions and I get all 58
Assault on the Soul: Women in the Former Yugoslavia
weepy. I know that it won't last for very long but for ten seconds it can be realized. It's so nice to be able to look at a kid and enjoy them in that way. I know it's related to these horrendous things and hearing how families are destroyed. I wasn't crying over those basketball medals. Instead, I was realizing that, "O.K., I can exhale for a second."
SS.
Innocence ...
PVS. All of a sudden the innocence came back. At least I think I am being very honest with myself: This is when it comes out and I'm happy it can come out. On the other hand my reaction to the sexual violence from work, as with most people, could appear in the form of vicarious trauma that might not show up for years. Ten years from now while walking down the street something might click a memory that I hadn't even been aware that I had suppressed.
SS.
Were you prepared for it at all? Did anything in your background prepare you for this?
PVS. Not really, but perhaps. I think maybe the time I spent living in Latin America helped, since Brazil was just coming out of a dictatorship at the time. There were certain narratives about torture in Latin America and there were certain situations where you saw people who had gone through politically traumatizing situations, sometimes related to sexual violence. But nothing could have prepared you for this.
Unless you were an investigator from, say, Guatemala, I would challenge anyone in this building to say that they were prepared. Thank goodness you don't have to walk around being prepared for these kinds of stories in your life.
SS.
What did it do to you?
PVS. In many ways it made me understand better the multiple ways in which people try to destroy each other. Often, whether from a right or left perspective, we allow violence to be seen as heroic. I mean the violence that was used to overcome: oppression, nationalism or colonialism. One takes up arms and you've got this very nice, idealized
"everyman" who is pictured defending the homeland, or whatever.
However, when that same violence strikes an individual, it is aghast-ly dehumanizing thing. There are very few ways to shoot someone nicely, and there is absolutely no way to rape someone and be a hero.
The Quakers say that if violence is part of the manner in which you Sara Sharratt
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gained or you have acquired your society, violence is already integral to that society. When part of that violence incorporates sexual violence, one really has to question the validity of any violence whatsoever, no matter how romantic. And I admit to not being completely clear and sure on this issue.
SS.
What issue?
PVS. On the issue that all violence is bad. Yet, I still have certain romantic notions of violence, as we all do. The Amistad movie has just come out. Ihaven't seen it yet. It might be too violent for me to see. I'm not too sure that I
want to see it. However, I'm sure that it is about
people fighting off chains of repression, a slave woman fighting off a man who might be trying to rape and kill her. That is all violence that one "should be in agreement with." What I'm saying is that violence is horrid. It's horrible.
SS.
Are there connections between the former Yugoslavia, slavery in the US, Rwanda and other ongoing struggles?
PVS. Well yes, but I don't think one can compare these struggles in a straightforward fashion. If you look at slavery in the Americas, that was institutionalized torture for a period of two hundred years. One recognizes that this institution provided economic benefits, and de-culturized large regions of the Americas. Not even to talk about the genocide committed against Indigenous Americans, we had institutionalized sexual violence that is ret1ected in the legacy facing African-American women and Brazilian women today. In the make-up of the African-American community, part of our legacy, our differentiations of color, are associated with past rapes that occurred during slavery and the blood has descended down through the generations.
Now, is that comparable to the psychic damage of sexual violence that occurred in Yugoslavia? There might be some parallels. However, I have never lived in a war situation; I am talking about six generations after slavery and how does that feel, compared to someone else who is talking about three or four years after an armed cont1ict, and their legacy of rape. In Rwanda, the sexual violence that occurred during the genocide, is that related to an African-American sense of slavery? I don't know. I haven't thought about it that much, but what I will say is that there will be a psychic legacy in Rwandan society due to the sexual violence. Why should individual psychic scars and societal scars be anything new? I think it's normal.
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It derives from patriarchy and it is part of the legacy of sexual violence.
SS.
Is it easier to live in Europe than in the USA?
PVS. No, I don't think so. I think that anyone who is really dealing with their life is dealing with it no matter where they live. I'm not living in Europe because I think it is less racist. I am in Europe because this is where my husband lives and we decided to live here. I think that Europe has a lot of its own problems and legacies. They have plenty of stereotypes of black women. Where I used to live in Belgium, men would stop me because they thought I was a prostitute on the street. I had to tell them, "No I'm not a prostitute but if you are looking for one, come with me, maybe I can help you." Then I would say in a loud, public voice, "This man needs a prostitute.
Does anyone know where he might find one?"
They see a tall black woman and from their colonial legacy of Zaire the only black woman that they imagine is a sexual partner.
And thus they act surprised and devastated when I tell them I am not a prostitute. I am American, an educated American, and they don't have anywhere to fit that in psychologically because it's not a part of their worldview in Europe. I think Europeans need to truly deal with their own colonial legacies and sexual myths associated with this legacy.
SS.
To go back to something that you were talking about before, about support for people who are involved in your line of work, have you ever felt like talking to a psychologist and have you?
PVS. I think many of us have talked about this and I think we should have an in-house psychologist who will assist the staff, whether the people who input the evidence into the computers to interpreters, attorneys, investigators, guards and supervisors. We must not underestimate how traumatic each person's job could be at any step of the way. The bailiff who is calling out the case, listens to that testimony everyday. What is their reaction? What about the guards who are sitting next to the accused? I wouldn't underestimate anyone's need to speak with a psychologist to express their feelings. However, it would have to be user-friendly enough that people would feel comfortable. But the need comes and goes. That is one excellent thing about working in the Tribunal: You don't feel victimized because you have identified a problem and you're actually doing something about it. If it doesn't always give you the illusion that you are Sara Sharratt
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contributing to the common good, it does allow you to control the trauma in a different way.
SS.
They may need to go to somebody sometimes but not all the time, that is what you are saying.
PVS. Yes. I don't think people necessarily go around denying that. I mean no one is keeping a stiff upper lip. At times a little stress is going to have to come out, and it is probably good that it does.
SS.
What shocked you the most so far?
PVS. Sometimes the extent of barbarity within the witness statements affects me. I also have been pleasantly shocked, for example when reading the Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. She describes the beauty of a little blade of grass coming up amongst the cracked pots.
Sometimes you're shocked by that little blade of grass and you walk over to protect it. Sometimes you are amazed and shocked by the tiny heroism that, had someone not been interviewed on a side issue, you may never have seen this. My God, when humanity grows it can bloom wonderfully, to the extent of shocking you.
That stands in sharp contrast to the barbarity, the banality of it alL I think those of us who work here all the time put up certain defense mechanisms. We all get into this nice, water cooler type of gossip, right next to the horrendous things that a witness is saying. Or you declare that I've just had it, I'm not taking it anymore. I'm not taking what? You shock yourself at your own pettiness [Laughs].
At the same time you have to understand these are normal non-war folks who have come to work at the War Crimes Tribunal. So, there is a whole part of "normal" society that continues to exist alongside of these traumatic war scenarios.
SS.
There must be an impact. There is no way of going through it without changing something about your views of the world and people in it.
PVS. I would say yes, but sometimes I ask myself whether those views would not have been changed anyway. The work probably acceler-ated the change. I am much less inclined to underestimate people. I think that people arc capable of everything.
SS.
You don't underestimate anyone?
PVS. I don't underestimate anyone, to the extent of how barbaric or how heroic they could be. I think also that it is very important to have morals and to know yourself.
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SS.
I am very interested in morals. Tell me more about morality.
PVS. I really had to question myself here. What do you value in life? What is your self-integrity? What are your values in terms of human beings? Who can be used? Who is the throw-away population? Can you ever pre-judge who that throw-away population might be? I mean the more you start looking at people ...
SS.
You are assuming that there is a throw-away population.
PVS. Well, I think we have to assume that no one can be thrown away.
Does that mean the perpetrators are good or that there is some re-deeming quality in them? I don't think you can throw them away either because people can change. How one is treated is how one will treat someone else. I think of that when I look at that blade of grass or hear about the men who go in and instead of raping say, "Hey, don't say anything let's just sit here for 10 minutes, but don't say anything when we go out either." I mean that person is someone who had some moral integrity.
SS.
Where did you go with that?
PVS. Where you go with that is the recognition that it is important to have some values, and that there are