Human rights activists and transitional justice in the post-communist world: explaining silence among the outspoken

In this article, I use the cases of Croatia and Poland to explore the role of long-time human rights activists as advocates in the field of transitional justice. I argue that while core human rights organizations from the non-democratic period may play an important role in bringing attention to rights violations in non-democracies, they are severely handicapped with respect to transitional justice in the early transition period as a result of the very nature of the past regime, which prompts formation of elite organizations dependent on outside donors and isolated, or even distrusted, by their natural constituents at home. By contrast, organizations for which human rights is only one sub-theme, such as victims? organizations, may be more insulated from these defects and hence have a better shot at influencing the public justice debate.