It's 1995, apartheid has just ended in South Africa, and the recently inaugurated president, Nelson Mandela, is seeking a candidate to serve as a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. A bloody genocide took place in that East African country in 1994. Mandela decides to nominate Navi Pillay, a well-known human rights lawyer in South Africa who fought for the rights of activists during apartheid.
"So I do understand the word 'genocide,'" Pillay wrote last Tuesday in a letter to the editor in The New York Times. "I don't use that word lightly." The letter was printed on the day Pillay, as chair of an independent United Nations commission of inquiry, stated that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. According to Pillay, the Israeli approach in Gaza is comparable to that in Rwanda. "You dehumanize your victims," Pillay told the news channel Al Jazeera. "They are animals, and therefore you can kill them without conscience."
The rapporteurs' findings are making headlines worldwide. Israel has reacted angrily to the genocide accusation, claiming that the report "is entirely based on lies from Hamas." Pro-Palestine activists applauded the report, although some believe it should have been released much sooner. The Dutch cabinet reviewed the report on Thursday but "does not agree with its conclusion."
The damning investigative findings of Pillay's commission could potentially be used in the International Criminal Court case against Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, among others. The finding of genocide is thus the latest achievement, for now, in Navi Pillay's long career.
But who is Pillay? Which legal cases have shaped her career? I attempted to answer these and other questions for de Volkskrant: the "Slotakkoord" on this remarkable South African was published in today's newspaper.