On 21 November 2024, Dr. Choman Hardi, co-director of CGDS, participated in a panel discussion at King’s College London titled The Ethics of Representation: Engaging with Testimony of Atrocity. She was joined by fellow panellists Prof. Jelke Boesten and Dr. Rebecca Jinks, and the session was chaired by Dr. Rachel Kerr. The conversation cantered on the ethical challenges surrounding the representation of testimonies from survivors of atrocity, exploring the responsibilities of researchers who document and share the painful experiences of those who have endured extreme suffering.
Dr. Hardi shared insights from her own research on collecting testimonies from women survivors of the Anfal genocide. While these women are widely represented in political and media discourse, their stories have often been heavily edited and framed in a way that depicted them as powerless victims—drenched in black, trapped in grief, alone in empty graveyards, and endlessly mourning the deaths of their loved ones decades after the atrocities. In her work, Dr. Hardi sought to uncover the "real" experiences of these women, focusing on their agency and resilience in the aftermath of the genocide.
The importance of testimony, Dr. Hardi argued, lies in its ability to illuminate the subjective and contextual meanings of women’s experiences, which, in turn, influenced their decisions and behaviours during and after the genocide. She shared two examples where the context of survivors’ lives shaped their testimonies, causing them to emphasize different aspects of their experiences. While intersubjectivity—
Another critical issue Dr. Hardi highlighted was the burden placed on survivors, who are often over-researched and repeatedly asked to recount their traumatic experiences long after the events have ended. This emphasis on the atrocity itself, she pointed out, can overshadow the resourcefulness and strength survivors demonstrated in facing the aftermath. Furthermore, it can diminish the survivors’ calls for justice, reparation, and support.
Dr. Hardi also addressed the ethical considerations involved in presenting survivors’ testimonies through poetry. While literary representation can help amplify the stories of survivors and make their experiences more accessible to wider audiences, she emphasized the importance of artists portraying survivors as complex, multifaceted human beings, rather than reducing them to their vulnerability. Survivors, Dr. Hardi argued, should not be victimized further through representations that focus solely on their trauma.
The evening concluded with a poetry reading by Dr. Hardi, during which she read from the Anfalsequence in her second poetry collection, as well as new poems written from the perspectives of survivors and perpetrators during the Bosnian genocide.