The touchy politics of saying sorry
Jan. 15, 2006. 01:00 AM
TORONTO STAR
OLIVIA WARD
[...]
The Chinese head tax, imposed by Ottawa a century ago, is the sleeper issue of January 2006, a subject that seldom surfaced in political circles until this election was imminent.
The depth of bitterness that Chinese Canadians feel about the lack of an official apology for the decades-old indignity has taken Liberal politicians by surprise, as many voters threaten to withdraw their support.
[...]
Prime Minister Paul Martin has made a personal apology for the tax, which was imposed in 1885 to stem the flow of Chinese immigrants who were no longer needed to build the nation's transcontinental railroad. But while Martin's government agreed to acknowledge that the tax was discriminatory and to pay $2.5 million for educational projects to raise consciousness about its injustice, it refused to offer a formal apology.
The anger in Canada's Chinese communities is a reminder of how potent is the desire for apology in societies throughout the world, stretching through generations and even across centuries.
"An apology would be the first step toward creating an atmosphere for reintroducing justice in the aftermath of innumerable, heinous crimes, and the beginning of a process of rebuilding working relations between people who cannot dare trust each other," says George Shirinian, director of the Zoryan Institute of Canada, a research centre for genocide and diaspora studies that focuses on Armenian issues.
But, he adds, "it is crucial that an apology be commensurate — big, public, serious, sincere, with serious compensation and perhaps even retribution — with the crime committed, in order to serve justice."
Ever since more than one million Armenians were killed under the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917 — a crime recognized by Canada and other countries as genocide — the families of those who perished have been campaigning for Turkey to acknowledge its responsibility.
But Turkey denies that the deaths were the result of a deliberate campaign of genocide, contending that death figures are exaggerated, and that many Armenians died as a result of warfare between the Ottomans and Armenian fighters. The Turkish government has prosecuted a number of Turkish intellectuals who acknowledge the genocide, including literary lion Orhan Pamuk.
Says Shirinian, the son of two survivors of the massacre, the lack of an apology "brings the crimes of the past into the present in the life of every living Armenian.
"There is never closure, only a continuation of the crime in a new form, through denial. This causes immeasurable feelings of anger, violation, dehumanization and betrayal."
Over the past century, some governments, as well as politicians, have apologized for large-scale crimes.
Germany has rewritten its history texts to decry the Holocaust, and its president apologized for the murder of six million Jews in a speech in the Israeli Knesset. It has also apologized for the slaughter of Namibia's Herero people in 1904.
[...]
But many other wrongs have never been acknowledged, leaving wounds still raw. [...].
[...]
For governments, saying sorry is often difficult because of real or imagined financial liability. Lawyers advise against admitting fault, and politicians fear the "copycat effect" of one aggrieved group after another filing multi-million-dollar suits.
But, says Trudy Govier, a philosophy professor at University of Lethbridge, "the focus should be on dignity, respect and vindication. Logically and philosophically, you can distinguish apology from compensation. When you renounce behaviour, implicitly you recognize the other's dignity."
Without an apology, history has shown, life can go on — between countries, ethnic groups and communities in which great wrongs have been done.
But those who have closely studied the issue say that without some form of apology, relationships are poorer, less trusting, and more volatile.
"When people apologize, they acknowledge that those damaging acts were wrong," says Govier, author of the forthcoming book Taking Wrongs Seriously. "If the guilty party isn't willing to admit that, the victims can only wonder whether, in certain circumstances, it would commit those acts again."
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
TORONTO STAR
OLIVIA WARD
[...]
The Chinese head tax, imposed by Ottawa a century ago, is the sleeper issue of January 2006, a subject that seldom surfaced in political circles until this election was imminent.
The depth of bitterness that Chinese Canadians feel about the lack of an official apology for the decades-old indignity has taken Liberal politicians by surprise, as many voters threaten to withdraw their support.
[...]
Prime Minister Paul Martin has made a personal apology for the tax, which was imposed in 1885 to stem the flow of Chinese immigrants who were no longer needed to build the nation's transcontinental railroad. But while Martin's government agreed to acknowledge that the tax was discriminatory and to pay $2.5 million for educational projects to raise consciousness about its injustice, it refused to offer a formal apology.
The anger in Canada's Chinese communities is a reminder of how potent is the desire for apology in societies throughout the world, stretching through generations and even across centuries.
"An apology would be the first step toward creating an atmosphere for reintroducing justice in the aftermath of innumerable, heinous crimes, and the beginning of a process of rebuilding working relations between people who cannot dare trust each other," says George Shirinian, director of the Zoryan Institute of Canada, a research centre for genocide and diaspora studies that focuses on Armenian issues.
But, he adds, "it is crucial that an apology be commensurate — big, public, serious, sincere, with serious compensation and perhaps even retribution — with the crime committed, in order to serve justice."
Ever since more than one million Armenians were killed under the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917 — a crime recognized by Canada and other countries as genocide — the families of those who perished have been campaigning for Turkey to acknowledge its responsibility.
But Turkey denies that the deaths were the result of a deliberate campaign of genocide, contending that death figures are exaggerated, and that many Armenians died as a result of warfare between the Ottomans and Armenian fighters. The Turkish government has prosecuted a number of Turkish intellectuals who acknowledge the genocide, including literary lion Orhan Pamuk.
Says Shirinian, the son of two survivors of the massacre, the lack of an apology "brings the crimes of the past into the present in the life of every living Armenian.
"There is never closure, only a continuation of the crime in a new form, through denial. This causes immeasurable feelings of anger, violation, dehumanization and betrayal."
Over the past century, some governments, as well as politicians, have apologized for large-scale crimes.
Germany has rewritten its history texts to decry the Holocaust, and its president apologized for the murder of six million Jews in a speech in the Israeli Knesset. It has also apologized for the slaughter of Namibia's Herero people in 1904.
[...]
But many other wrongs have never been acknowledged, leaving wounds still raw. [...].
[...]
For governments, saying sorry is often difficult because of real or imagined financial liability. Lawyers advise against admitting fault, and politicians fear the "copycat effect" of one aggrieved group after another filing multi-million-dollar suits.
But, says Trudy Govier, a philosophy professor at University of Lethbridge, "the focus should be on dignity, respect and vindication. Logically and philosophically, you can distinguish apology from compensation. When you renounce behaviour, implicitly you recognize the other's dignity."
Without an apology, history has shown, life can go on — between countries, ethnic groups and communities in which great wrongs have been done.
But those who have closely studied the issue say that without some form of apology, relationships are poorer, less trusting, and more volatile.
"When people apologize, they acknowledge that those damaging acts were wrong," says Govier, author of the forthcoming book Taking Wrongs Seriously. "If the guilty party isn't willing to admit that, the victims can only wonder whether, in certain circumstances, it would commit those acts again."
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
posted by Vahe Balabanian at 1:05 PM
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