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Beyond Democratic Tolerance: Witch Killings in Timor-Leste
[journal article]
Abstract Newly democratising states experience challenges in reconciling 'traditional' or 'customary' dispute resolution practices with newly established state-based legal systems based on the rule of law. For Timor-Leste, these tensions are pronounced in continuing debates concerning the killing or injuring... view more
Newly democratising states experience challenges in reconciling 'traditional' or 'customary' dispute resolution practices with newly established state-based legal systems based on the rule of law. For Timor-Leste, these tensions are pronounced in continuing debates concerning the killing or injuring of women accused of witchcraft. Defences of extrajudicial punishments tend to conflate democracy with local support and fail to deal with the key institutions of democratic systems, including the rule of law, political equality, and civil rights. In Timor-Leste's case, where equality and social rights were incorporated into the Constitution as fundamental governmental obligations, localised extrajudicial punishments threaten internal and external state legitimacy and highlight the difficulties of ensuring the primacy of state-based institutions. Extrajudicial punishments challenge Timor-Leste's capacity to consolidate new liberal democratic political institutions. (author's abstract)... view less
Keywords
democratization; East-Timor; legal order; constitutional state; legal consciousness; political consciousness; violence; arbitrary law; penalty; value; traditional culture; traditional society; woman; witch hunt; human rights; Southeast Asia
Classification
Criminal Sociology, Sociology of Law
Macrosociology, Analysis of Whole Societies
Political System, Constitution, Government
Document language
English
Publication Year
2015
Page/Pages
p. 37-64
Journal
Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 34 (2015) 3
ISSN
1868-1034
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed
Licence
Deposit Licence - No Redistribution, No Modifications