The ping-pong strategy: confronting atrocities from the exile

• In Event: Decolonising State Crime and Transitional Justice

Abstract

This article will focus on the still marginal topic of atrocity crimes, and it will do so by building upon Southern studies, which expose how global power inequalities have helped present knowledge from a small number of Northern societies as universal, timeless and placeless while disregarding valuable knowledges and experiences from the South. Moreover, this article will also dispute the ‘static’ perspective in the literature of atrocities that has largely focused on either domestic or global issues of concern, but without enough attention to the dialogues, connections normative transfers, and even shared practices between the South and the North. Furthermore, it will do so by focusing on a particular unattended actor: those in exile and their role in the confrontation of the atrocities back home. Altogether, this article will go beyond the European-centred and static approaches and instead look at points of dialogue and encounters between Europe and Latin America and the role of the diaspora/exile as a legal and dynamic protagonist in the struggle against atrocities. Particularly, the research will look at the role of Argentinean activists in the European exile and their struggle against the dictatorship that ruled the country between 1976 and 1983, as well as their activism against impunity laws once democracy was re-established.

Author

• Valeria E Vegh Weis, Konstanz University