Memory and Rights: A Historic Perspective on Human Rights Discourse in East Asia

During the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945), Japan committed gross human rights violations, such as the torture and forced labour of prisoners of war, mass rape at Nanjing, sexual slavery, and human experimentation (Tanaka, 1996). After the war, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) convicted thousands with war crimes, but as parts of East Asia struggle to transition out of this period, the legacy of war crimes acts as a roadblock to regional cooperation (Selden, 2008). Japanese Ministers honouring war criminals, revisionist history books, and controversial memorials, all act to inflame tensions (Watts, 2005; France-Presse 2017). Even within Japan there is no coherent acknowledgement of the occurrence of past violations, explicitly seen in submissions to Japan's Universal Periodic Review cycle (a United Nations mechanism set up to periodically monitor the human rights obligations of states). In the document, demands for justice for the euphemistically called 'Comfort Women' (women who were forced into prostitution for the military) lie alongside submissions that deny the occurrence of any violation. (United Nations General Assembly, 2017).

Dudai (2017) explains that a fundamental problem for post-conflict states is the denial of past human rights violations. In his paper, he proposes that transitional justice mechanisms can act as a form of social control to reshape a society's understanding of the past and contradict denial. He applies Stanley Cohen's (1985; 2001) theories of social control - categorising acts as deviant and contrary to convivial society - and denial to post-conflict states. Dudai argues that by countering denialist collective memory with "good" social control, compliance with human rights norms can be enhanced (Dudai, 2017, p.3). This PhD thesis proposes to examine the legacy of Japanese war crimes and how this influences existing human rights narratives and legal mechanisms, using frameworks of social control and denial to examine transitional justice, and how these elements may promote acceptance of international human rights norms. This research will provide a new understanding of transitional justice in East Asia by examining developments through the lens of Dudai's theory and Cohen's frameworks, and assessing if there is an effect on the understanding of human rights norms. It will test the hypotheses that denial of previous violations negatively impacts on human rights discourse, and that transitional justice mechanisms can in turn counteract this, in the context of East Asia. This is particularly relevant as Asia is currently the only continent without a regional human rights mechanism, possibly indicating resistance to international norms (Saul et al., 2010).