- Title
- Beyond democratic tolerance : Witch killings in Timor-Leste
- Creator
- Strating, Rebecca; Edmondson, Elizabeth
- Date
- 2015
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/100836
- Identifier
- vital:10606
- Identifier
- h
- Identifier
- ISSN:1868-4882
- 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 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. © 2015, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies. All rights reserved.
- Publisher
- GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies
- Relation
- Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs Vol. 34, no. 3 (2015), p. 37-64
- Rights
- Copyright © 2015, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies. All rights reserved. The Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs is an Open Access publication. It may be read, copied and distributed free of charge according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/).
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Democracy; Extrajudicial punishment; Rule of law; State-building; Timor-Leste
- Full Text
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