International Human Rights Law, Reparatory Justice and the Re-Ordering of Memory in Central and Eastern Europe

摘要

Focusing on two complaints submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, by former property owners in the Czech Republic, this article reviews measures of reparatory justice that have been introduced in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990. The article argues that, in rejecting claims of discriminatory treatment by ethnic Germans denied property restitution in the Czech Republic, the HRC has shown a lack of both historical and moral judgment, as well as a failure to give reasons for its decisions. The article suggests that one of the functions of national and international human rights law is to establish sites of historical memory, as suggested by Patrick Macklem. However, law’s ‘memorial sites’ must acknowledge the moral ambiguities that characterise historical experiences such as the post-war resettlement of millions of Germans from parts of Central and Eastern Europe.