3 - Voices of the terrified

Summary

Criminal proceedings tend to be surprisingly dull. There again, dullness is supposed to be a requisite of impartial justice; so perhaps it is not so surprising. The problem, of course, is that this can very easily lead to what has been termed ‘emotional disconnect’. In her account of proceedings at the Zigic trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, the Serbian journalist and writer Slavenka Drakulic testified to the sheer boredom of events, as well as the experience of emotional disconnect. The courtroom, she reported, looked ‘more like a hospital waiting room’; the epitome of ‘aseptic’ décor. Boredom rapidly set in. She was bored. The defendant looked bored. The judge looked particularly bored. It was ‘not a show for an audience’. Of course, the idea that law, like the evil which it is so often supposed to address, might be surprisingly banal is not new.

But suddenly, whilst listening to the distant account of a particular room in the concentration camp at Keraterm, Drakulic was aroused from her dozing:

Suddenly I see that picture in front of my eyes, and I realise what the judge is talking about. The death of 120 prisoners is no longer abstract, no longer mere words. Now the tedious, precise interrogation takes on a new meaning. Now I realise how much we are all poisoned by the trials depicted in television shows and Hollywood movies, with their rapid exchange of arguments between good looking lawyers in expensive suits. In The Hague there is no such false drama. […]