the title ‘Nunca Mas’ (‘no more’ in Spanish), (Sarkin & Dly, 2004)whilst the Timor‐Leste’s Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation, has adopted the title ‘Chega’ (‘enough’ in Portuguese) (Powell, 2006). Moreover, former Argentinean President Raul Alfonsinstated that his national commission’s aim ‘was to prevent rather than to punish’ (Sarkin & Daly, 2004). psychological benefits of giving testimony for victims (Hamber 2009). Finally, there are doubts about the reconciliatory effects of commissions that uncover the truth, but fail to take action against those implicated in wrongs (Hamber 2009). d) Amnesties Grant legal protection from civil and/or criminal liability, is a controversial reconciliation process. Amnesty can be granted to individuals or groups. It can be granted unconditionally or conditionally. If conditional, the granting of amnesty occurs only if certain provisions are met. For example, in South Africa, perpetrators had to make a complete disclosure of the rights violations for which they were responsible and demonstrate that such violations were committed for political reasons (Dyzenhaus 2000). Amnesties may also be conditional on non-recidivism (Freeman 2011). Truth commissions are temporary official institutions established to examine patterns of specified human rights abuses over a given time period (Hayner 2010). Dozens of truth commissions have been established in communities around the globe over the past thirty years. Commission reports provide a summary of such findings and typically issue recommendations on how to prevent such abuses in the future. These reports vary in the degree to which the proceedings and findings are made public. Some name individual perpetrators and some do not. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was marked by a high degree of openness, televised the testimony of many victims and perpetrators. A number of moral objections to amnesties are that at least prima facie unjust, specifically, preventing retributive and/or corrective justice from being done (Greenawalt 2000). Granting amnesty is claimed to be inimical to countering historical impunity for political leaders. Aspiring fora “Never Again” dispensation seems intuitively unlikely if future political leaders and actors believe they will not be held accountable for their actions. The danger posed by amnesty policies is that, in failing to hold wrongdoers accountable and undermining the ability of victims to seek legal recourse for their harms, they may (inadvertently) send the message that the abuses of the past were not wrong or that the victims did not deserve better treatment (Pensky 2008). Justified anger against the perpetrators will not be exorcised, and may instead find expression in acts of revenge. In the literature, a variety of claims are advanced regarding how truth commissions can contribute to reconciliation, both among individual perpetrators and victims as well as within national communities. At the individual level, talking through the past is often represented as a form of catharsis, wherein the trauma of the past can be re-experienced, dealt with, and let go. The South African TRC appeared to offer several examples of such a process, including spontaneous requests for forgiveness by perpetrators and offers of forgiveness by victims (Tutu 1999, South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report 1998). In terms of societal reconciliation, it is claimed that TRCs reintegrate victims in a number of ways. The fact that victims state publicly what happened contributes to re-establishing their civic and political dignity (Kiss 2000). Officially recording the wrongs done to victims, officially denied in the past, reinforces the equal moral standing of victims (du Toit, 2000). The report produced cultivates collective reconciliation through communal self-understanding. A narrative must be produced of how a community could at once have a past full of abuses as well as a present and ideal future in which those abuses are rejected (Dwyer 1999). TRCs challenge stereotypes that dehumanized members of the community in the past (C. Murphy 2010) and foster sympathy (Eisikovits 2009). The proceedings and report of a truth commission can foster trust in institutions (Gibson 2004) and reassert normative standards for social repair (Walker 2010). Amnesties continue to be used by states and in fact have increased in frequency (Mallinder 2008). They may be used to encourage perpetrators to give full and truthful testimony to truth commissions as in South Africa or as part of a strategy to forget the past as in Cambodia. Amnesties also may be used to incentivize an end to conflict, as was the case in South Africa (Dyzenhaus 2000). Arguments for the moral permissibility of amnesty challenge the idea that granting amnesty reinforces impunity or undermines stability and justice (Mallinder 2008). Freeman (2011) claims that amnesties can be justified as a measure of last resort, so long as victims are included in the process of deciding to pass an amnesty and amnesties are used for the sake of facilitating an end to conflict or reconciliation. Many of the criticisms on TRCs do not question the value of establishing the truth itself, but the means used to encourage perpetrators to testify, such as amnesty from prosecution. Others object to the ways in which truth commissions (sometimes subtly) pressure victims toward a forgiveness or reconciliation they may want to resist (Dyzenhaus 2000, Gutmann and Thompson 2000, C. Murphy 2010), or question the e) 8 Trials and Punishment Punishment is the intentional infliction of harm or suffering on a wrongdoer in response to a wrong committed. Although transitional societies are sometimes portrayed as having to choose between reconciliation and punishment, these responses are not necessarily opposed (Bennett 2008, Verdeja 2009).