Volume 1 Number 2 June 2002

Part 1 of this article detailed the controversy surrounding the 1992 television image of Fikret Alic and others imprisoned at Trnopolje camp in Bosnia, demonstrating how doubts about its veracity were unsustainable. Part 2 explores the historical, political and visual context in which the particulars of the controversy are located. It explores what is involved in the concept of a 'concentration camp', as well as the nature of the Nazis' concentration camp system and the implications of this for the memory of the Holocaust and our understanding of contemporary atrocity. Then documentary evidence about the war in Bosnia is introduced in order to understand the significance of Omarska and Trnopolje in their wider context. Following that, the general question of the relationship between pictures and policy, and the specific question for the relationships between photography and the Holocaust, is considered to illuminate the larger question of how particular atrocities are represented. Finally, the article concludes with some thoughts on the politics of critique and intellectual responsibility in instances where criticism becomes historical denial.

This paper seeks to develop a theoretically based explanation of how it can be that commitments to principles of human rights can co-exist with indifference towards concrete human rights abuses. The paper opens with a discussion of a reflection by Jacques Maritain, one of the French delegates to the congresses which lead to the Universal Declaration. The argument moves on to suggest that indifference is an integral dimension of the human condition and that indifference is exacerbated by the dominance of a hermeneutical culture in modernity. It is proposed that since the hermeneutic culture is inescapable (and that escape from it is in any case dangerous and illicit), so indifference is also unavoidable. Social actors are faced with the problem of having to choose how to act morally in the conditions of this paradox.

This article addresses the question: Why is there so often silence in the face of injustice? Much of this silence is socially constructed, the result of a process through which possible (and, often, previously audible) objections to injustice are muffled, not by modifying the conditions giving rise to the objections, but by other means. Not all silences are socially constructed, of course, and some of those that are may have the genuine endorsement of all those who observe them. The author examines those socially constructed silences that are clearly not uncontested or incontestable and, drawing on Stanley Milgramís classic work on obedience to authority and other, more, contemporary social psychological research, attempts to understand the social construction of various forms of silence and their consequences for current and future forms of injustice.

This article discusses one possible response to human rights abuses, collaborative relocation: the externally facilitated resettlement of threatened individuals or groups from one territory to another. From 1933 to 1945, several attempts were made to negotiate the large-scale collaborative relocation of Jews from Germany and Axis Europe. The first of these, the Nazi-Zionist 'Transfer Agreement' of 1933-39, enjoyed significant success; subsequent efforts were largely unsuccessful. This variation was a product of a shift in the identities and interests of the actors involved. The Zionists who negotiated the Transfer Agreement were engaged in a parallel programme of 'ethnic bolstering' in Palestine, and thus had a positive interest in the relocation of Jews from Germany to Palestine. By contrast, the United States and United Kingdom, the actors that exercised de facto veto over collaborative relocation from 1938 onward, were positively averse to further inflows of Jewish refugees. The consequence, after 1941, was a fatal convergence of preferences: both the Allied governments and Adolf Hitler preferred the extermination of the European Jews to any large-scale release of them into Allied hands.

This article examines the role of non-governmental agencies in promoting respect for human rights by the Nigerian government. It documents NGOsí efforts, between 1995 and 1998, to respond to government indifference toward human rights violations in Nigeria. The NGOs attempted to influence United States and other Western governments to impose an embargo on Nigerian oil products. NGOs believed that an embargo would force the Nigerian military regime to demonstrate respect for environmental and human rights. NGO efforts failed, in part, due to influence that the multinational oil industry had on the economic interests of Western governments. In addition, NGOs failed because they were unable to generate a public reaction that would force Western policy makers to change their policies toward Nigeria.

Why do international actors take an intense interest in a few local human rights problems, while remaining indifferent to many others? Structural features of the international system ease or impede responses to particular violations, but the strategies of human rights victims also play a major role in explaining the variation. This article analyses the concept of 'indifference' and examines factors contributing to victims' ability to overcome it. The article probes the utility of these factors by analyzing international responses to low-level human rights violations in rural Mexico. The article suggests that scholars should pay closer attention to the agency of victims, particularly the ways in which they project and frame their situations to international audiences.