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Dossier : Les bourreaux

Daders

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Les bourreaux
Frédéric Crahay
p. 26-28
Cet article est une traduction de :
Les bourreaux [fr]

Résumés

Depuis toujours, le bourreau fascine autant qu’il effraie. Les auteurs de crimes de masse sont des individus qui exécutent, facilitent ou ordonnent l’anéantissement d’un groupe spécifique.
Le numéro 100 de Témoigner, paru en septembre 2008, s’est jadis intéressé aux bourreaux nazis. Ce dossier propose une approche historique et criminologique des autres génocides du XXe siècle.

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Texte intégral

Zicht op het nieuwe hoofdkantoor van het Internationaal Strafhof voor Rwanda in Arusha – een internationaal orgaan dat de restbevoegdheden van de Strafhoven moet uitoefenen

Zicht op het nieuwe hoofdkantoor van het Internationaal Strafhof voor Rwanda in Arusha – een internationaal orgaan dat de restbevoegdheden van de Strafhoven moet uitoefenen

© Ornella Rovetta, alle rechten voorbehouden

1We already discussed the issue of executioners in our September 2008 dossier, where we focused on Nazi executioners. In this new dossier, we broaden the perspective in several directions. The science of perpetrators or ‘perpetrator studies’ is developing rapidly. With fifteen more years of research and results, a new dossier on this topic does not seem out of place. However, perpetrator studies is still a relatively new interdisciplinary field of research. It is interdisciplinary because anthropologists, historians and political scientists, among others, contribute to it. While the study of perpetrators has not attracted the same interest as that of victims, some notable studies have explored the actions and perspectives of criminals, as well as the ‘processes by which genocide took shape’, which have contributed to what scholars consider to be a phenomenon of ‘ordinary people’ becoming criminals, perpetrators of collective atrocities. We are thinking here, of course, of Christopher Browning’s work in the early 1990s on the 101st Reserve Police Battalion in Hamburg as a case study. As long as there were many survivors of Nazi crimes, it was in a certain sense difficult to study the criminals, so great was the desire to avoid excusing the actions of the executioners. In the first article in this dossier, Belgian criminologist Christophe Busch reviews the development of research on executioners since the end of the Second World War. He focuses on the way in which ‘classical’ research on executioners has evolved, the key publications, the points of view and the paradigmatic shifts. Over time, this research has distanced itself from the facts (in the case of the Shoah), which allows scientists to stand back more.

2However, the dossier in this new issue does not only deal exclusively with Nazi executioners, but also with criminals of other 20th century genocides who were recognised, sometimes arrested and tried. Two genocides are discussed here: first, the genocide perpetrated by the Hutu regime against the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. The Russian historian Ivan Krivushin has devoted his article to analysing the defence of a notorious Hutu criminal (Théoneste Bagosora) and demonstrates that history is in this case misused in an attempt by the accused to justify the unjustifiable. In the third and final article, the historian Iva Lučić focuses on the case of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the events that took place there in 1992–1995. This article allows us to broaden the perspective further by including the Anglo-Saxon concept of the “bystander”, i.e. the person who witnesses the (mass) crime, but does not actively participate in it, either way. On the other hand, the mere presence of the “bystander”, through its “witness effect”, can have an impact on the actions of the perpetrator(s). This phenomenon, which falls within the psychosocial sphere, is traditionally more the domain of criminologists, which makes its presence in this dossier most interesting.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Zicht op het nieuwe hoofdkantoor van het Internationaal Strafhof voor Rwanda in Arusha – een internationaal orgaan dat de restbevoegdheden van de Strafhoven moet uitoefenen
Crédits © Ornella Rovetta, alle rechten voorbehouden
URL http://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/docannexe/image/11814/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 370k
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Pour citer cet article

Référence papier

Frédéric Crahay, « Daders »Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire, 136 | 2023, 26-28.

Référence électronique

Frédéric Crahay, « Daders »Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire [En ligne], 136 | 2023, mis en ligne le 15 juin 2023, consulté le 15 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/11814 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/temoigner.11814

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Auteur

Frédéric Crahay

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