Event Report
The Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia hosted Dr. Erik Martinez Kuhonta for the sixth installment of the Japan Foundation-Global Japan Studies (JF-GJS) Talk Series on July 30th, 2025. Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, Dr. Kuhonta delivered his talk, “What Does Transitional Justice Mean in Southeast Asia?” to a hybrid audience. Taking a Comparative Politics approach, Dr. Kuhonta examined both the failure of transitional justice initiatives in countries like the Philippines, Cambodia, and Indonesia, but also the shortcomings inherent in the liberal notion of transitional justice itself.
At the heart of Dr. Kuhonta’s analysis was the concept of ambivalence, which was aimed at highlighting the general doubt around the effectiveness of transitional justice schemes in Southeast Asia, the hypocrisies in the official rhetoric of governments promoting such schemes and their actual execution, and the contradictions endemic in the process. This doubt, the hypocrisy, and such contradictions are partly the result, argued Dr. Kuhonta, of the disconnect between the liberal vision of transitional justice—its intentions, aims, and process—and the reality in Southeast Asian countries who have followed through, if only nominally, with such efforts.
After diving deep into his three national case studies, Dr. Kuhonta concluded that one of the main reasons for the ambivalence around transitional justice was elite entrenchment in Southeast Asia, such that the perpetrators of mass violence and their allies were often left the task of pursuing justice on behalf of their victims. To conclude his talk, Dr. Kuhonta ended on a positive note, stressing that despite this elite entrenchment that cynically celebrates the process of transitional justice while ensuring its ultimate emptiness, the nature of ambivalence leaves open the possibility of struggle. Victims, communities, and activists continue to seek change against all the odds, and hence the final chapter on transitional justice has not yet been written in Southeast Asia.
After the talk, Dr. Tony Scott, JF-GJS Fellow, offered his response. He began by asking Dr. Kuhonta if the critique was of Southeast Asia and its inability to follow through with transitional justice initiatives, or with the liberal notion of transitional justice itself, given the contradictions inherent in the concept, especially as it emanates from the Global North. Dr. Scott noted how these contradictions, which Dr. Kuhonta’s framework of ambivalence brings to the fore, were a productive way to think about transitional justice, not just within particular countries but on a global level. For while elite entrenchment in places like the Philippines and Indonesia ensured a lack of what Dr. Kuhonta called “democratic consolidation” there, the support of these elites by governments in North America and Europe, especially in terms of military-to-military cooperation, reveals a lack of democratic consolidation in so-called liberal democracies in turn.
The ensuing questions and answer session picked up many of these same threads, with JF-GJS Fellow Dr. Yeon I Kwon asking about the role of civil society groups in schemes of transitional justice, which prompted Dr. Kuhonta to point out that this role is also ambivalent, since civil society groups can both advocate for victims or be implicated in the mass violence waged against them. Tokyo College Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Eri Kitada asked about the structural continuity of transitional justice from a geographical perspective, concentrated as it is non-Western countries. Does it serve to perpetuate, she asked, a narrative about the progress, or lack thereof, of regions like Southeast Asia? Dr. Kuhonta finished his discussion by emphasizing that his critique of transitional justice initiatives in Southeast Asia is not a civilizational critique, but institutionalist, and also reflects on the failure of Western governments to consistently live by the principles of international law themselves.
Written by Tony Scott
Event Details
Date and time: July 30 (Wed), 2025, 11:00-12:30 (JST)
Venue: The 1st Conference Room, 3rd Floor, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, UTokyo; Online (Zoom)
https://www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/access/
Title: What Does Transitional Justice Mean in Southeast Asia?
Speaker: Erik Martinez Kuhonta, Associate Professor, McGill University
Moderator: Tony Scott, JF-GJS Fellow (IASA), UTokyo
Abstract: In Southeast Asia, transitional justice has a very mixed record. In Indonesia, impunity reigns over the 1965-66 massacres. In the Philippines, the Ferdinand Marcos regime has never been held accountable for its human rights violations. Yet even when transitional justice has appeared to make progress, its outcome has been conflicted. Cambodia’s hybrid trial of the Khmer Rouge period, although of great importance, has been shaped by a liberal teleological narrative that may not adequately address the depths of the country’s tragedy. And the International Criminal Court’s most recent stunning arrest of Rodrigo Duterte may bring justice to many victims’ families of the brutal drug war, but this justice is also cloaked in political self-interest. Limited progress and conflicted outcomes thus appear to characterize the face of transitional justice in the region. The meaning of transitional justice in Southeast Asia is therefore shrouded in deep ambivalence with significant consequences for the region’s political development.
About the Speaker: Erik Martinez Kuhonta is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. In 2024-25, he is the John H. McArthur Research Fellow of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. He is author of The Institutional Imperative: The Politics of Equitable Development in Southeast Asia (Stanford Press, 2011), which was short-listed for the Canadian Political Science Association Prize in Comparative Politics. He is co-editor of Party System Institutionalization in Asia: Democracies, Autocracies, and the Shadow of the Past (Cambridge Press, 2015) and Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis (Stanford Press, 2008). Kuhonta has held visiting fellowships at Stanford University, the National University of Singapore, the East-West Center (Honolulu), and Kyoto University. He is former president of the Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies.
Language: English
Organizer: JF-GJS Initiative at Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo