Professor Kieran McEvoy:

An honestly held belief. This is all going to happen behind closed doors. There will be no hearings and no legal representation for victims. In our reading of the legislation, it does not appear to us that an individual victim will even know whether a person has been given an amnesty in the victim's case. At the moment, the legislation requires what looks like a statistical table showing how many amnesties have been granted per year, but the victim would not know from the report provided by what we see as the toothless review mechanism whether an individual perpetrator had benefited from impunity under that process. How is any victim meant to believe in the credibility of such a process?

I will make a final point about the South African example. The amnesty committee was holding its hearings and the human rights violations committee was doing its work. The ANC and the other elements of the liberation forces sold that to their supporters as being the moment when people could come forward in the national interest and there would be a truth and reconciliation process, but that once that process was completed, prosecutions would be back on the table for people who did not engage - South Africa was not getting rid of prosecutions altogether - and the resources of the state would be deployed towards those prosecutions. For other political reasons, there was a haphazard set of prosecutions afterwards, but the deal was that there would be a moment in the country's history, there would be a proper truth and reconciliation process requiring full disclosure and at which victims were legally represented - a significant number of applications for amnesty were rejected - and prosecutions were meant to happen afterwards. Interestingly, prosecutions are now happening 20 odd years later because there has been a change in government and the ANC is now more interested politically in ensuring that prosecutions happen. There are also inquests up and running to deal with apartheid era issues. The normal legal process is now running its course. Under what the British are proposing, though, it will happen behind closed doors, there will be no legal representation for victims, victims might not even know that amnesties have been granted and it will all be finished after five years with a presumptive amnesty, meaning no prosecutions, inquests or anything else.