And will these efforts be successful? I think sometimes yes and sometimes no. Regarding colonial violence, I think there are legitimate reasons for it to be considered [as genocidal]. I would start with a very restrictive definition, and apply it to historical events to distinguish certain types of violence in a certain context as abnormal. For instance, if you look at early European state building, it was an inherently violent process. This is terrible, but it was part of ordinary politics so there was nothing extraordinary about it. However, if we could go back and look at colonial violence, it was violence against a chosen enemy, namely what people deemed as 'primitive.' Was all of that genocidal? Let’s go back to the question of specific intent. Was the intent just to subjugate the people or to extract resources? Or was the idea to destroy the targeted group of people "as such"? If we look into these incidences of collective violence, I do believe we can find cases of genocide. If we look into the evidence, as in Australia and elsewhere, and can find government documents indicating that the intent of the violence was to get rid of a certain population as a whole, to purify the society as a whole, then I believe there is a good case that can be made.

On the other hand, I would say cases such as the Irish potato famine, [and other] “man made famines,” are on the border. We would be hard pressed to find evidence [that it was genocidal]. What we need here is a dispassionate analysis, and this is where the activists should be more patient and where most of the work should be done. The only way any advance can be made is by examining the evidence we have at hand. We need to very carefully and very rigorously analyze the historical evidence before we reach any conclusions.

Do you think societies benefit in the process of reconciliation by framing their experience as one of “crimes against humanity”? In your observation, does the reconciliation process of a society change drastically if the event is understood as a genocide or crime against humanity, instead of more traditional terms such as “civil war”?

It depends. This is a topic I have been working on for a while, and I think this aspect has been ignored not only in scholarship but also in practice. And this is the question of what I call “genocide in translation.” Because when you ask if an event or process is described as a “genocide” or “war,” we are overlooking the fact that these words may work in English and French or in certain other languages, but they may not in others. My work in Rwanda suggests, for example, that in the language of Kinyarwanda there are at least 14 different terms that have been used to describe the experience of 1994. So it’s not just a question of “genocide” or “war,” but also many other terms that are intertwined with the language of the given setting, culture and so on. There are many connotations involved.

The question is [thus], I believe, a very apt one. I think naming has an enormous impact on the reconciliation process because a misnomer may very well provoke resentment on the part of those who feel like their suffering has been minimized, or conversely provoke resentment on the part of the perpetrators who feel like their acts have been exaggerated. For instance, in Rwanda, if a perpetrator told a victim, “you are not a victim of genocide, but a victim of civil war; I am not a génocidaire, but I am a war criminal,” it would profoundly influence the victims [in the reconciliation process], because they will feel that their sufferings have been diminished. And this kind of response will make it difficult for the victims or their relatives to forgive.

What has been the most notable success story in the last few decades regarding atrocity—perhaps a genocide averted, a problem brought to light, or an effective reconciliation process?

As much as I would like to see stricter definitions of genocide and reconciliation, I am willing to acknowledge progress. However, reconciliation and success are different. There are many levels of reconciliation—international, national, local, municipal, and so on—and the demands for each are different. You may say there is international reconciliation if there is an official apology, however [the success] will differ depending on whether it was honest or not, how it was received, the context of the apology and multiple other determining factors.

Germany is, and I am hesitant to say this for I am German, considered to have taken many appropriate steps. Whether the consequences have already been reconciliation, I would be careful to say. However, in certain instances, I’m tempted to say that we have made strides towards reconciliation. Of course, [acknowledging] this will be excluding many who feel strongly against it, and I think here is the difficulty. At what point can we say we have reached reconciliation?

The study of reconciliation is very soft, and we have not developed any indicators. . In South Africa there have been some scholars who have attempted to do just that. South Africa is, of course, a place where we have made many inroads, yet the problem is that we have not defined reconciliation in this particular context in a demanding fashion. We have, in South Africa, had some success but have not achieved a fully reconciled society. This again, depends on your measure. If you define reconciliation as tolerance or coexistence, perhaps [it is a success]. I just believe that that is not enough. Some say one of the indicators of reconciliation is whether people can interact at a barbeque or a dinner party. If we take East Asia, when the previous prime minister of Japan visited China and Korea, he was treated in a civil, diplomatic manner, and he was tolerated on Chinese and Korean soil, but there has been no reconciliation—not even on the international level—among these countries. In Rwanda, many believe that we are seeing progress and movement towards reconciliation. I simply have not seen evidence of that whatsoever. Many point to the fact that former perpetrators are being released from prison, that they are helping victims rebuild their houses, that they are working alongside each other, that they have stopped killing one another, and so on. To me, these things are not evidence [of reconciliation]. These are clear signals of coexistence—that they are living alongside each other. This is a good achievement if they had other choices, but in one of the poorest countries in the world, the people have no choice but to live side by side. Is this reconciliation? It could be, but I have my doubts. I define reconciliation as a very narrow term, as requiring both mercy and forgiveness. If you think of the kind of phenomenon we are facing, violent acts such as genocide, it is simply inconceivable to expect reconciliation after a decade. To be realistic and to be able to measure progress, we also need to have very high standards for reconciliation. So I think we should be careful in evaluating these questions. Broader definitions might not reflect the realities.