Arnak Trials

Judge Kani Liáinai delivering a verdict, 1960

The Arnak Trials was a wave of official trials in Gylias after the end of the Liberation War. The trials took place between 1958 and 1961 against anyone accused of collaboration with the Xevdenite regime, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Held in Arnak, the trials were conducted in a heated atmosphere, and were extensive, reaching from the highest levels of Xevdenite government to participation in routine violations of human rights and discrimination. Approximately 300.000 cases were investigated in total, with more than half of defendants being exonerated.

As the Free Territories had abolished prisons and the death penalty, sentences generally included payment of restitution and damages, house arrest, community service, and lengthy probation. The most severe sentences passed were dégradation civique and expulsion from the community. The highest-ranking officials of the Tymzar–Nalo regime were shipped to a barren islet, where they died.

Together with the Lucian Purge, the Arnak Trials marked a defining moment in Gylian history: the former marginalised the authoritarian socialists, ensuring that anarchism would retain a leading role in the new Gylian society, while the latter destroyed reactionaries and social conservatives as an organised force, fueling the energy of the Golden Revolution. The trials were notable for avoiding victor's justice: all accusations of war crimes were investigated regardless of faction.

Background

During the Liberation War, war crimes were committed by multiple factions, and actions against real and alleged Xevdenite collaborators took place, either judicially or popularly. Popular actions included kangaroo courts and convictions, public humiliations, assaults, detentions, individual acts of revenge and mob violence.

The Free Territories, the ultimately victorious faction, placed emphasis on spontaneous order, and developed an anarchist jurisprudence. There was a general attitude among anarchists and other revolutionaries that retaliation for past injustices was inevitable. Justina Mendonça Ferreira remarked in the General Council: "Revolutionary violence, once unleashed, cannot be stopped. It can only be channeled into the proper avenues." Darnan Cyras, the Chair of the General Council, similarly stated: "Anyone stupid enough to try to get in the way of people taking revenge on an oppressor of centuries deserves whatever they get."

The Free Territories and the People's Army took measures to prevent "wild" acts of revenge and devloped formal means to prosecute past crimes. Notable moderating influences in Free Territories law included the abolition of the death penalty and prisons, and the transition towards a nonadversarial system, with judges actively involved in establishing the facts of the case and the verdict. As part of efforts to restrain extra-legal vigilantism, expulsion was promoted as a preferable alternative to murder.

Punishment later became a wedge issue between anarchists and statists–authoritarians. The latter advocated harsh penalties to maintain "revolutionary fervour", which the former condemned as a covert means to seize power. The anarchists finally broke their "alliance of convenience" through the Lucian Purge of 1956.

Organisation

The General Council passed a resolution on 10 October 1957 establishing tribunals for "crimes committed by Xevden and crimes committed during the war". The broad definition of "crimes committed by Xevden" reflected a willingness to right past wrongs regardless of scale or time elapsed.

The trials were conducted on the basis of existing Free Territories jurisprudence, with some references to international law. Many cases disregarded the principles of nulla poena sine lege and avoidance of ex-post facto laws.

Xevdenite jurisprudence was disregarded from the outset as illegitimate. Prosecutors and judges treated Xevden as an illegal regime that had usurped the Liúşai League. One judge's verdict in a case of political repression scornfully referred to the accused as "idiotic cogs in a 200-year old machine of criminality."

Trials

The trials began on 10 February 1958 in Arnak, and lasted until 25 December 1961. There were multiple trials running in parallel, with a total of 45 judges presiding. Out of all the judges, Kani Liáinai achieved the most recognition: she presided over the first and last sessions of the trials as a whole, and played a highly public role in establishing the principles of the trials, gaining praise for conducting the trials in a fair manner despite the emotionally-charged atmosphere.

Many notable figures of the Free Territories, ranging from members of the Darnan Cyras government to war heroes and artists, testified as witnesses. Among the remarkable participants included the Varnaþ family, the former ruling family of the Nerveiík Kingdom, who were treated almost as guests of honour.

Charges

Charges brought to trial included:

• War crimes — mass murder, murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war, abuses of civilians, forced labour, plundering and wanton destruction.
• Crimes of collaboration — participation in collaborationist organisations or parties, participation in collaborationist propaganda, instigation or participation in discrimination, any form of zeal in favour of the Xevdenites.
• Crimes against society — attempts or conspiracy to impose authority upon others, espionage on behalf of the Xevdenites, rendering assistance to Xevdenites and other hostile groups, war profiteering.
• Crimes against people — murder, torture, sexual assault, abuse and other atrocities, false accusations with intent to destroy others' lives or curtail their rights.

The courts required proof of active participation to secure indictment, and gave lesser sentences to those who were merely "followers" rather than complicit or responsible for Xevdenite activities.

No charges were accepted against people who had sexual relationships with Xevdenites. Extensive prosecutions were carried out against those who had persecuted LGBT people in Xevden and during the war, including Free Territories feminists who had engaged in trans bashing.

Verdicts

More than 300.000 people were investigated by the trials in total, and around 180.000 of them were not charged with anything.

By 1961, the tribunals had given out 106.125 sentences, either alone or in combination:

• 45.013 amendes and restitutions of varying value, including seizure of ill-gotten assets and personal property above the threshold for basic sustenance.
• 21.386 house arrests, probations and supervised releases, with terms ranging from 5 to 20 years.
• 15.574 mandated community services of indeterminate length. Many of those convicted of war profiteering, exploitation, or crimes involving ill-gotten wealth were ordered to carry out services such as street sweeping or sewing mailbags.
• 14.149 dégradations civiques, of which a significant minority were for life.
• 10.003 expulsions from the community.

Aftermath

President Reda Kazan commuted all but 3 sentences of expulsions from the community on 26 December 1961. The decision initially shocked the public, and was subsequently seen as "magnificent statesmanship".

Reda delivered a highly acclaimed televised address explaining her decision. She argued that "the time for war and rancour is over, and as difficult as it may seem, now is the time to throw away the sword and allow ourselves to heal." She further emphasised that there were no amnesties: "The sentences are final, and nothing will erase the guilt of the criminals for the rest of their lives. But to execute such sentences would be to stain Gylias' very soul." The address came to be known as the Oresteia speech because Reda referenced the Oresteia's conclusion, declaring that "Just as Athena freed Orestes from relentless torment, we as Gylians must conquer our greatest challenge: to turn the Erinyes into the Eumenides."

Those whose sentences were commuted were still subject to lengthy terms of probation and mandatory community service. While undertaking community service, many were forced to wear wooden boards detailing the crimes they had been convicted of.

The only expulsions from the community Reda didn't commute were for Tymzar, Nalo Ðari, and the head of the Storm of Steel. They were transported to a barren, uninhabited islet in the Varuna Ocean, where they were abandoned to die. The islet was subsequently named Phonos Rock, after the ancient Hellene personification of murder.

Legacy

The Arnak Trials were a landmark in Gylian history. In their extensive investigations and witness statements, they compiled overwhelming evidence of past wrongdoing by Xevden, helping to deliver transitional justice.

The heated atmosphere and sometimes harsh administration of justice satisfied Gylians' wish for revenge for past mistreatments. The trials of torturers were conducted in an especially heated atmosphere, and their sentences carried some of the most humiliating and relentlessly insulting justifications, read by judges to a positive response. In addition to individual sentences, various organisations associated with the Xevdenite state were declared criminal.

The trials were legally founded on the principle of Xevdenite society as "a monstrous abomination imposed on the Gylian people", in Justina's words. The punishments meted out to former oppressors served as the counterpart to the fervour of the Golden Revolution — reuniting the utopian push to build a new society with the final and irrevocable destruction of the old. The frequency of amendes and restitutions in sentences symbolically affirmed the egalitarianism of the Free Territories and Golden Revolution: the act of enriching oneself at the expense of others in a discriminatory society was treated as a crime against society.

Ŋéida Vaşad writes that the "relentless exposure, humiliation, and comeuppance dealt to the instigators of repression", widely covered by the media, served as a "purification ritual" by exposing and destroying the images of the powerful, who were reduced to petty incompetents and sadists. She later commented she felt the punishments themselves were less significant than the self-inflicted public disgrace of the accused — an ideal retaliation against authoritarianism and dictatorship.

The expulsion to Phonos Rock served as the first manifestation of social quarantine areas as a punishment.

The emotionally-charged proceedings and sentences shocked and dismayed some foreign observers, who saw them as show trials.

Eleanor Henderson expressed misgivings about the Arnak Trials in her writings. She was particularly uncomfortable with the way the nulla poena sine lege principle was disregarded and the severity of some of the sentences. "I understand the impulse to put all of Xevden itself on trial," she said in 1998, "but that is a most dangerous path to start on." Nevertheless, she used the trials as a model when devising the trials of the former dictatorial regime in Allamunnika.