The Potential of Testimony in Transitional Justice: what Truth Can It Bring to Light?

Abstract

Frequently, authoritarian regimes that perpetrate administrative massacres leave a mark on the past of a people’s history, which has to be remembered and understood so that people can project its future with freedom. Considering that the transitional justice process can be an opportunity for emerging the memory of a traumatic past and of its horrifying events, this article intends to discuss the role of testimony (and testimonial truth) actualizing the right to truth and memory, questioning the principles and the forms whereby courts and truth commissions usually search for the factual truth; and outlining how testimony could be able to deal with the wounds of the past and their unrepresentability, exposing a truth that surmounts the facts. The examples explored in the article are from the Eichmann trial in Israel, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) after Apartheid, and the Brazilian National Truth Commission (NTC) after the military regime.