What is the experience of truth and reconciliation? What is the purpose of a truth commission? What lessons can be learned from established truth and reconciliation processes?

Flowers in the Wall explores the experience of truth and reconciliation Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific, with and without a formal truth commission. Although much has been written about the operational phases of truth commissions, the efforts to establish these commissions and the struggle to put their recommendations into effect are often overlooked. Examining both the pre- and post-truth commission phases, this volume explores a diversity of interconnected scholarship with each chapter forming part of a concise narrative.

Well–researched and balanced, this book explores the effectiveness of the truth commission as transnational justice, highlighting its limitations and offering valuable lessons Canadians, and all others, facing similar issues of truth and reconciliation.

David Webster teaches international and Asian history topics with a focus on the 20th century at Bishop’s University. He is the author of Fire and the Full Moon: Canada and Indonesia in a Decolonizing World. Previously he was collection editor of East Timor: Testimony (Between the Lines, 2004). His research focuses on trans-Pacific interactions between Canada and Asia, and on the diplomacy of independence movements in Asia.

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This book is extremely useful to scholars, activists, and local communities.

—Hipolitus Yolisandry Ringgi Wangge, Pacific Affairs

Very readable . . . A highly valuable book that does an admirable job of broadening the voices we hear about truth and reconciliation.

—Rebecca Gidley, The Journal of Pacific History