8 Defining the victims of terrorism
Competing frames around victim
compensation and commemoration
post-9/11 New York City and 3/11
Madrid
Introduction
What does it mean to be a victim? How does the definition of victimhood and victim status influence the attention and resources victims receive? How does it shape the claims and demands they can make or that others can make on their behalf? The emerging literature on the politics of victimhood highlights the ways in which victims are instrumentalised in political struggles and shows how the very different amounts of moral legitimacy or worthiness attributed to the victims of particular trauma events affects the relative resources they receive (Albrecht and Kichling 2007; Biner 2006; Barker 2007; Ochs 2006), and whether they are included or excluded from the sphere of moral concern (Zeruvabel 1991; Robinson 2009). The politics of victimhood has real consequences, and political and public discourse about victims has political effects (Ochs 2006; Flesher Fominaya and Barberet, forthcoming; Humphrey 2003 cited in Ochs 2006).
Certain victims are more ideal than others, as Christie (1986) argues. The ideal victim, to paraphrase his classic model, is one that is (1) weak (2) carrying out a respectable activity, (3) somewhere they could not be blamed for being, (4) whose offender/perpetrator is ‘big and bad’ and (5) unknown to the victim. Victims derive moral legitimacy to the extent to which they adhere to this model. But in order to obtain redress, victims often need to engage in the politics of victimhood and make certain demands. The more active and demanding, the less they satisfy the first criteria ‘weakness’. Victims, therefore, are caught in a dilemma between conforming to an ideal type in order to garner as much support as possible and rejecting the passivity expected of them in order to fight for more resources and attention when they are not automatically forthcoming.
But it is not only the nature of the victim that determines their worthiness, but the nature of the crime itself. In the case of September 11, it has been noted that the victims were attributed with higher status (measured in terms of institutional attention and compensation), than those of the Oklahoma City attacks (see, for example, Shapo 2005: 139–40). As victims of a transnational terrorist attack, as opposed to a home grown one, these victims become symbolic carriers of national sovereignty in a way the Oklahoma City victims do not. Victims of transnational terrorism become endowed with state-like attributes, they ‘stand in’ for the state (Ochs 2006). Vázquez Valverde (2005) shows from a clinical psychological perspective that response to victims of terrorism is often dictated by political agendas, rather than scientifically based assessments of their needs.
Undoubtedly, the media worthiness of the trauma event also contributes to the salience and importance victims acquire in the public imagination. The spectacular nature of the September 11 attack, for example, provided shocking images that were replayed endlessly on all major media outlets. Following national traumas different carrier groups make competing claims about how traumatic events and their victims should be remembered, compensated, represented or otherwise attended to (Alexander 2004; Smelser 2004; Tota 2005). Victims of national traumas and of political crimes are inevitably caught up in struggles between different carrier groups who vie with each other to have their interpretation of the event, their definition of the worthy victims, and their demands on behalf of those victims become dominant and therefore successful (see Robinson 2008, 2009; Biner 2006). These struggles are played out in the media.
Victims’ needs are rarely automatically met, meaning that victims or people working on their behalf need to mobilise and make certain claims and demands to address these needs. Political discourses of victimhood are mobilised strategically ‘in self-conscious and tactical ways’ (Ochs 2006: 359). The framing literature leads us to believe that those demands and claims that are framed in such a way as to resonate with core cultural narratives and values are more likely to be successful (Snow and Benford 1988; Benford and Snow 2000). While victims associations undoubtedly engage in strategic framing in an attempt to maximise benefits for the victims, not all claims and demands are formulated in an explicit strategic way. The first victims’ need in many cases is to be recognised as a legitimate victim. The fight for recognition plays out through public discourses and through legal and institutional mechanisms. Victims who are recognised in one arena may not be in another. In compensation claims, for example, the burden of proof is on the victim and many victims need to struggle with administrations or courts who deny them the status or level of ‘victimhood’ they believe they deserve. Distinctions between victims and comparisons to other victims inevitably emerge.
This chapter presents a cross national comparative analysis of competing victim frames emerging after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York, in which some 2,752 people died and a further 2,594 were injured (Feinberg 2004)2 and March 11, 2004 in Madrid, in which 192 people lost their lives and 1,847 were injured. The literature on victimhood in political conflicts shows that often the determination and definition of the victims is an ambiguous and highly contested process. In many cases, there is ambiguity between victims and perpetrator (Borer 2003). Internecine conflicts are rife with disputes over victim ‘purity’ or victim legitimacy and as victims of different sides compete for recognition and other forms of satisfaction, victim taxonomies and hierarchies of worth and blame emerge (see Smyth 1998; Borer 2003; Porter 2007). While the literature leads us to expect to find competing hierarchies of worth between victims of internecine conflicts, what is more surprising is to find, as we do here, that victims are stratified into competing hierarchies in cases where there is a clear consensus and differentiation between perpetrators and victims. In both Madrid and New York there is no ambiguity about victim-perpetrator identity, that is, the victims are not seen as having brought the crime on themselves in any way.3 As such, they conform closely to Christie's ideal victim status. While there was initial confusion about who exactly the perpetrators were in the case of 3/11, no one doubted that they were the ‘bad guys’, whoever they were. Nevertheless, to a greater or lesser degree, multiple competing hierarchies of victim stratification emerged in both 9/11 and 3/11. Victim classification, or status attribution, was then linked to claims about what victims were entitled to, be it commemoration, compensation, charitable donations, representation or medical and psychological treatment. In what follows we analyse how cultural and political understandings of victimhood shaped claims making around two key areas: commemoration and compensation in the cases of 9/11 and 3/11 .
While victims in both contexts satisfy Christie's criteria for ideal victimhood, there were nevertheless key differences in the way that victimhood was understood culturally and politically, which then influenced the competing hierarchies formulated about victimhood, the demands made as a result of the way victims were framed and the satisfaction of those demands on the part of state and institutional agencies. These cases provide a cross national comparison that allows us to see how victim definitions are shaped by political cultural narratives in each case, how nationally situated cultural scripts are used to lend moral authority and weight to their claims or to challenge them and the implications this has for victim commemoration and compensation.
Methods
We used Factiva database to conduct our searches, encompassing a five-year period from the date of the attacks, up to 31 December of the fifth year. For New York, major publications in New York and New Jersey were selected: the Record, the Star-Ledger, the New York Daily News, the New York Observer, The New York Post, the New York Sun, the New York Times, Newsday, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, New York version. We searched on the terms (9/11 or Ground Zero or Twin Towers or WTC or terrorist attacks or September 11th) and (victim* or survivor* or rescue or first responder* or family or neighbor* or resident* or employee* or volunteer* or worker*) and (compensa* or claim* or assistance or help or health care or medical or suffer or aid or dona* or pay* or injur* or service* or harm* or fund* or repar* or relief* or charity* or dollar* or loss* or sick* or Feinberg or resource* or lawsuit* or coverage), limiting the search to when the terms appear in the headline or first paragraph of the article. This generated 2,384 articles.
For Madrid, we used Factiva to search in El País, Spain's centre-left national newspaper and in ABC, the centre-right national newspaper, using the terms ‘11-M’, víctim* and (compensa* or indemni* or AVT or ayud* or benef* or dona* or pag* or dañ* or prestac* or subsan* or perjuic* or repar* or alivi* or atenua* or subsana* or póstumo or enm* or euros) and (homenaj*, conmem*, recuerdo, record*, monument, olvid*) which generated 1,949 and 2,474 articles respectively.
We used frame analysis and qualitative textual content analysis, systematically coding each news article, developing a classification of themes relating to our research questions: how the victims are defined, how they are classified into taxonomies of worth and how these definitions of the victims are linked to claims made about their right to commemoration and compensation, and what form these should take.
Who is defined as a victim?
The first key difference between the cases lies in who is considered a victim of the attacks and who claims to be a victim. We find that the understanding of victimhood is much more broad and elastic in the case of the United States than Spain. In the United States, victimhood status is progressively extended to encompass a broader set of people. News coverage shows a snowballing of victimhood is evident from the day of the attacks, to the rescue efforts and then to coverage of the broadening impact of the attacks. Thus, victims come to include not only those who died in the Twin Towers, including employees, visitors and rescue workers, but also all of those impacted by the attacks (physically, economically, psychologically), such as bystanders, displaced neighbourhood residents, business owners who suffered damages, employees who lost their jobs, citizens who volunteered their time in the rescue effort, relief workers, hospital staff and even the dogs who searched through the smoldering ruins, some of whom were injured. We attribute this elastic and ever broadening definition of victimhood to be related to (1) the nature of the attacks, which generated extensive damage and required a prolonged clean-up effort, (2) the response of the media, ever searching for human interest stories and (3) the positive connotations of victimhood in the United States, and the litigious nature of society, where claims to loss or injury are often a precursor to a lawsuit, compensation, or recognition.
In sharp contrast to the case of New York and 9/11, bystanders and even first responders of 3/11 were not considered victims and did not claim to be victims. In Spain, victim status was attributed only to those who died or were injured in the attack and their families.4 However, not all those who fell into this description were always accorded victim status automatically. Within a narrative binary opposition of victims/perpetrators that defined the perpetrators as Islamic fundamentalists, Muslim victims were sometimes denied victim status. Such was the case of Yamila Ben Salah, a Moroccan woman who lost her teenage daughter in the attacks. While she was attending the trial against the surviving perpetrators she was verbally abused by another woman in the court room and again by another woman in the restroom during a break. Another 3/11 victim came to her defense and ‘explained’ to the aggressor that Ben Salah was also a victim of 3/11 (Jiménez Barca 20 February 2007). As a Muslim Moroccan she was automatically thrust into the perpetrator category. If an ideal victim is one that is clearly differentiated from their attackers, then Muslim victims like Ben Salah ‘muddy’ those clear distinctions and need to work to be accorded the moral legitimacy automatically extended to the other ‘Spanish’ or ‘non-Muslim’ victims. In a cultural context where victimhood does not carry the positive associations nor reap the financial benefits it does in the United States, 3/11 victims were much more narrowly defined than 9/11 victims. Therefore, those victims falling outside the narrow parameters of the accepted understanding of victims (whether in reality or in perception as with Ben Salah) had to work much harder for recognition as legitimate victims. The differences in cultural narratives between the two cases become clearer as we look at specific claims made by victims or those claiming to speak for them.
Victim taxonomies of worth and legitimacy
Among victims, who is more of a victim? We now turn to how the worthiness and legitimacy attributed to victims is linked to claims about two key victim issues: commemoration and compensation.
Competing victim frames around commemoration of 9/11
Who should be remembered and how? Although commemoration of 9/11 victims was highly pluralistic and individualistic (see Flesher Fominaya and Barberet, forthcoming), there were three key ways in which victims were stratified into hierarchies of worth.
A salient distinction was made between victims considered to be heroic victims of 9/11, a status attributed to rescue workers, and non-hero victims (everyone else). Contested hero status manifested itself in the controversy over the ‘Heroes of 2001’ commemorative US postage stamp. Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York, who wrote the legislation behind the heroes stamp, worried about whether to have the stamp pay tribute to all who died or just rescue workers: ‘It was a tough call. But there are always going to be victims. People are killed in horrible ways all the time, whether in terrorist attacks or car accidents.’ (Zaslow 5 September 2002). Some victims bitterly resented this distinction and argued that the heroic frame should be extended to encompass all who died. Jennifer Jacobs, the widow of a worker for Fiduciary Trust Co. International, said, ‘My husband had a uniform, too. It was a shirt and tie…. The postage stamp is a slap in the face … Everyone in their own way acted heroically’ (Zaslow 5 September 2002). Her comment highlights attempts to reject a recurrent 9/11 victim binary between uniformed and non-uniformed victims.
In addition to conflict over hero attribution, throughout the years of negotiation on rebuilding Ground Zero, including agreements on a memorial design, there was intense discussion on how to order the names of the deceased at the memorial itself and a strong push to list the deceased not only by where they were employed in the Twin Towers, and by whom, but also by position or rank and age, thus clearly stratifying the dead by occupational category. The centrality of the importance of occupation to victim identity is striking and echoes US cultural narratives around work and identity. But the debates over the ordering of the names came up against memorial design conventions, upheld by the designers, that names be alphabetised. At the continued insistence of family members of the deceased that alphabetised ordering of the names would be meaningless victims’ names were finally grouped by workplace and a system of adjacencies was worked out using an algorithm that would allow victims’ names to be placed in proximity to other victims with whom they shared a relationship or with whom they had died. These debates are striking in the insistence that victims be individualised, stratified by occupation and endowed with meaning, reflecting again deeply held US cultural values.
Besides the (contested) attribution of hero status to the rescue workers, and struggles over the way victims should be ordered and identified in commemoration, a further distinction was made between the deceased and those that survived. Nearly absent of media attention are those who survived the Twin Towers attack, including the injured. Survivors’ names are not read at commemoration ceremonies nor are they recognised in any monument or plaque. They are mentioned only in passing and as we shall see in the next section, are largely left out of compensation schemes for deceased victims, especially those survivors who developed after-effects and symptoms after the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Thus, the media at one point characterise them as ‘guilt-ridden survivors’, (Pogrebin 15 September 2001) rather than victims. They clearly are an afterthought to the disaster. Even those rescue workers who managed to save lives were not attributed hero status as were their counterparts who perished in the attacks.
Competing victim frames around commemoration of 3/11
In Spain, there was little sense that the victims were heroes (although the trope that they had died for their country was invoked to a limited degree, first by President Aznar, who argued shortly after the attacks that they had died ‘because they were Spaniards’ and then hastily nationalised non-Spaniards posthumously). Hero status was limited to the GEO special forces officer who died trying to capture the bombers some days after the attack in Leganés in the explosion of their suicide bombing. Therefore, there were no struggles over the relative heroicism of the victims or their commemoration.
Instead, conflict over commemoration centred around which victims should be commemorated on 3/11 and in the national monument. At first glance, this issue might make little sense: clearly the victims of the 3/11 attacks (however elastically defined) should be commemorated. But in Spain, the victims of 3/11 were not allowed to claim ‘ownership’ of that trauma event. Instead, long suffering victims of ETA terrorism, who had no official monument of their own, pushed (through their organisation Asociación de Víctimas del Terrorismo, AVT) for commemoration to encompass all victims of terrorism. The dispute was further complicated (and attempted to be legitimised) by the fact that some factions of the Popular Party, the party in office at the time of the bombing, had insisted immediately following the attacks and continued to insist five years later, that ETA and not Al-Qaeda were the true perpetrators of the attack. Had the ETA/3/11 framing of the event been successful, 3/11 victims would have merely been added to the long roster of ETA victims. This would have raised the issue: why then commemorate some ETA victims and not others? Pushing this commemorative agenda meant attempting to redefine the victims worthy of commemoration in order to advance partisan agendas, linked to the political capital gained by keeping ETA terrorism at the forefront of any national commemoration of 3/11. In this way the victims of 3/11 were drawn into the maelstrom of Spanish national politics and a seemingly straightforward commemorative process was subject to endless debate. Ultimately, the official national memorial monument only commemorates the attack and its dead victims. Initial plans, drawn up and approved by the Minister of Public Works and the Mayor of Madrid, did not include the names of the dead, let alone the survivors. Instead, it consisted of a glass cylinder lined with a membrane on which messages of solidarity from around the world were printed. It was only after the High Commissioner for Victims of Terrorism surveyed the families that the names of the deceased were included in a glass panel at the entrance to the monument. Yet the commemoration of 3/11 has not been confined to remembering those who died in the attacks. At the anniversary ceremonies a wreath is laid for ‘All the victims of terrorism’, reflecting that the AVT's attempt to widen the victim frame has been partially successful. The European Parliament also made March 11 the European Day of Victims of Terrorism, which paradoxically further dilutes the date's character as a unique event with particular victims, as it extends its meaning to encompass all victims of terrorism. As in the case of 9/11, survivors of the 3/11 attacks are mostly excluded from commemoration.
In Spain, the dead were listed by name only in alphabetical order and without the intervention of the High Commissioner for Victims would have had no permanent mention at all. Furthermore, in sharp contrast to the US case, where there was wrangling over the most appropriate ways to organise the names, there was no distinction made among them by nationality, employer status or any other identity marker. Whereas in the US 9/11 victims were stratified into competing hierarchies of worth and were commemorated in highly individualised ways, 3/11 victims in Spain were treated as a non-differentiated collective actor and commemorative struggles were shaped by the political cleavage between the PP and the PSOE, a dispute which pitted ETA victims against 3/11 victims, via their respective associations, the AVT and the A11MAT (Asociación 11M Afectados del Terrorismo). In essence a victim taxonomy of worth emerged between victims of 3/11, who struggled to be commemorated and recognised as victims of that particular attack, and victims of ETA, which the AVT worked tirelessly to push to the forefront of any commemorative effort on behalf of the 3/11 victims. The struggle between victims associations and parties exacted a high price for the 3/11 victims and five years after the attack (2009) there was no official national commemoration of the victims at all. The following comment from A11MAT President Manjón, highlights the anger victims feel at being used as pawns in partisan debates and her understanding that the lack of commemoration in 2009 reflected a truce between parties as a means of resolving their differences, making the victims and their commemoration expendable:
The victims are worse off than before, the only change is that now there is no photo op (foto de ocasión) -we have fallen into the background. I guess that after five years of throwing our dead at each other's feet they [the political parties] have come to a cordial understanding.
(Ximénez de Sandoval 11 March 2009)
Competing frames over compensation of 9/11 victims
Struggles over commemoration are about which victims deserve to be remembered and how. Struggles over compensation actually attribute an economic value to victims. Victim compensation through legally approved schemes places a monetary value on suffering and loss that depends on the degree of injury and in the case of the US on the economic worth of the victim. If the way victims are defined in the public imaginary is more or less elastic, who is, or is not, accorded victim status with regards to compensation is legally/juridically determined and therefore less receptive to public discourse, except in the process of creating the legislation or procedures, which is highly political. The moral, legal and political aspects of 9/11 compensation have been well documented (Hadfield 2008; Schneider 2003; Lascher and Powers 2004; Ackerman 2005; Peck 2003; Rabin 2003; Priest 2003; Shapo 2005; Dixon and Stern, 2004; Final Report of the Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001). In the US the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund was created as part of the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act, signed by the President on 22 September 2001. A Special Master, Kenneth Feinberg, was appointed to administer the fund and draft its regulations, with input from various sectors, including the public. The regulations were drafted within 90 days of enactment, but finalised in March 2002 and applications to the fund were taken until 22 December 2003. Applying for compensation through the fund placed important limitations on victims’ ability to sue the airlines, thus helping to ensure that the airline industry did not collapse, the purpose of the legislation.
If commemorative battles reveal a highly individualised way of defining victims in the US case, the struggles over compensation further underline the degree to which such cultural notions of individualism are manifested in the legal mechanisms established to compensate victims. In the US multiple competing hierarchies emerge around compensation. Three themes emerge in the United States, mostly centered on the New York case, around compensation. The first two are related to the aforementioned theme in commemoration -the idea that some victims are more deserving of recognition than others. The first theme is related to the stratification of loss as determined by the procedures of the Victim Compensation Fund. The fund, in following elements of tort law tradition, established compensation on an individualised basis and based on earnings, and also established minimum payment figures. Under the formula, money is distributed based on a victim's age, number of dependents and earning power (past and estimated future). The average payout was estimated at $1.6 million. Charitable contributions they may have received were not deducted from the award. But contrary to the traditional tort model, claimants had to deduct collateral payments, for example life insurance payments. Charities were finally excluded from deduction. It also prioritised death and physical injury over emotional distress. Victims’ complaints about the fund were directed at the compensation scheme. Most of the discourse in the media did not have to do with the fact that a price-tag was being put on a deceased person. Rather, disputes emerged among groups of victims regarding whether they felt they were being disadvantaged by the legislation, i.e. eligible to receive too little. In the case of firefighters and other rescue workers, families of the deceased argued that because of their limited salaries, after deduction of pensions, they were eligible to receive very little. Similarly, families of the more wealthy deceased victims argued that after deduction of life insurance, they were also eligible to receive little compensation and that awards did not increase substantially for the deceased who made salaries over $250,000. Marian Fontana, whose firefighter husband, Dave, was killed, said the public has the incorrect impression the families ‘are getting millions. Setting limits on our pain and suffering is a slap in the face to our loved ones’ memories’ (Sockwell-Mason 7 January 2002). Similarly, Representative King from Long Island said that given that the World Trade Center was a target partly because it was seen as the embodiment of financial success, those who achieved such success should see that reflected in their awards: ‘They were the symbols of American capitalism, the symbols of American business and they were murdered because of what they were. Now they shouldn't be deprived of what they're entitled to’ (Gootman 6 January 2002).
In response, Feinberg argued that the formula was designed to minimise disparity between victims who earned a great deal or very little: ‘We want to try and make the gap narrower between higher-end and lower-end claimants’ (Sherman 21 December 2001). Only victims killed or injured within 12 hours of the attacks could apply for compensation; rescue workers could apply if they were injured within 96 hours of the attacks. Injury claimants needed to prove a ‘verifiable’ injury and that they had received treatment within 24 hours of the attacks. New York Governor Spitzer ‘criticised that provision as unduly harsh because many injury victims were treated at the scene, where no records were kept, or went home to be with their families without seeking treatment at all’ (Geyelin 21 December 2001). But without a doubt this also left out many survivors of 9/11, the residents, business owners, rescue workers and volunteers who months later developed respiratory illnesses and who to this day are lobbying for recognition and treatment.
If families of victims differed over appropriate compensation amounts, they were more unified in their complaint that the compensation scheme did not take emotional distress seriously. Steve Campbell, a New York City police officer whose wife died in the attack, told Mr. Feinberg at a meeting with victims: ‘I feel your offer spits on my wife, my mother-in-law and my father-in-law … I have to watch them pop pills just to get through the day’ (Geyelin 23 January 2002). The very nature of the complaints from families of the deceased generated a backlash: first, from those victims of other terrorist attacks (e.g. Oklahoma, the 1993 twin towers attack and the victims of the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania), and second, from members of the public who felt that they were being greedy: ‘We feel your grief, really, I'm just wondering if we have to feel your greed, too’ (Geyelin 23 January 2002). The backlash directed against victims’ families extended beyond comments made in the public arena, as one victim revealed: ‘Whenever I do one of these TV appearances criticising the compensation plan, I get hate mail … They call me a greedy bastard and say I want to profit from my wife's death’ (Geyelin 23 January 2002).
The second theme is the ‘parallel’ source of compensation via the route of charity donations and the controversy surrounding its distribution to the families and survivors of the attacks. The RAND report lists charity as a ‘compensation mechanism’ and notes that at $2.7 billion, it constituted 7 per cent of the quantified benefits (Dixon and Stern 2004). Indeed, never had such an amount been collected in the history of the United States for one single event. The controversy arose from a variety of problems related to the distribution of funds, including an uncoordinated response (lack of a list of affected persons and lack of coordination among charities to discern who was giving whom how much); a perception that an ‘aristocracy of grief’ existed whereby uniformed workers were receiving more from charity than other types of victims and families; and concern and resentment from non-9/11 charities that their donations would dwindle because the American public was donating to the 9/11 charities. The RAND report notes the importance of charity donations in terms of responding to the needs of some who could not access other funds -undocumented workers, those who did not qualify for unemployment insurance, small businesses -as well as for providing the quickest emergency and mental health assistance. Charity in many instances was for survivors what compensation would prove not to be.
A woman who lost her husband in the attack said, ‘We're not just angry, we're heartbroken about the inequities -that people could value the lives of those men more than they would value the lives of our men…. Nobody got up to the floors where my husband was…. They died alone. And you have no idea who was helping whom. Don't tell me there weren't people up there trying to do heroic things. They had to be their own heroes and help each other’ (Barstow and Henriques 2 December 2001). Her statement reveals the ongoing contestation of hero versus non-hero status, this time linked to compensation, where ‘those men’ refers to the rescue workers, whose families were receiving a much greater share of the charity donations and ‘our’ men refers to non-uniformed workers who died in the attack.
The third theme is consistent with our finding with regards to commemoration that survivors are silenced, or at least receive less attention than those who died. In the first two years after 9/11 the compensation claims of families of deceased victims of September 11 emerge as a recurring issue, but 2003 to 2006 marks a change in focus in our media-generated dataset to highlight the increasing problems of those who survived the attacks, yet had lingering injuries or illnesses. Injured survivors had to provide evidence of injury within 12 hours of the attacks, or in the case of rescue workers, 96 hours. But after that time period, many more rescue workers developed respiratory illnesses and were ineligible for compensation. As time evolved, our data shows a struggle on the part of those survivors to achieve recognition of their illness as being related to 9/11, as well as to achieve compensation. This struggle is more arduous than that of families of the deceased and is ongoing.5 Over 60,000 rescue workers and neighbourhood residents are being treated and monitored for illnesses related to post 9/11 clean-up. In media reports, this population is rarely referred to as ‘victim’, but rather as residents or rescue workers. In this way these victims are denied recognition of their victim status. Among this group of victims are volunteers, as well as undocumented workers who were hired by clean-up crews as day laborers. An uninsured Columbian immigrant who worked cleaning dust from affected buildings in Wall Street in the months following 9/11 and who now suffers from asthma, headaches and skin rashes, said, ‘They lied. They said there was no contamination in the area’ (Kadushin and Bode 7 September 2006). Another resident said, ‘We were there when the towers fell. We breathed in the air…. All of us who lived in or worked in the area -Chinese, black, white or Spanish -are suffering’ (Kadushin and Bode 7 September 2006).
Competing frames over compensation of 3/11 victims
Unlike the case of 9/11, the bulk of 3/11 victim compensation was determined primarily by the presiding judge in the trial against the surviving perpetrators of the attacks.6 Judge Gómez Bermúdez charged those found guilty with compensating the victims, but because they were insolvent, the state assumed the financial burden of compensation, as it is legally obliged to do. Under Spanish law, the judgment does not become executable until all appeals have been resolved (29 in the case of the 3/11 sentence) and compensation is delayed until then (an estimated 2–3 years at time of sentencing). However, under the terms of the 1999 Solidarity to Victims of Terrorism Law, victims were able to receive advances on part of the amount and special hardship cases were heard by the Ministry of the Interior. In striking contrast to the US case, victims were compensated solely by degree of loss or injury. The legal heirs of deceased victims received €900.000. The surviving victims are classed into 12 groups depending on the severity of their injuries. Those with the least degree of injury receive a minimum of €30.000, plus €300 for each day of hospitalisation. Those with long lasting effects from their injuries receive an additional €10.000 to €750.000, depending on the severity of their injuries. Group 12 only contained seven victims who were classed as extremely injured. They each receive an additional €900.000. There is one victim who was classed in a group of her own: Laura Vega, who was in a vegetative coma three years after the attacks. Her family received €1 million. An additional €250.000 was established for a fund for her health care, to be administered by a public institution.
Given the egalitarian compensation scheme in Spain, do we find struggles between victims over compensation? In Spain there is no counter discourse that attempts to distinguish between victims according to earning power or other criteria. Instead, we find that some victims have to fight harder to be recognised as legitimate victims by public administrative departments. Victims of 3/11 engage in struggles with the administration around a range of issues regarding burden of proof or eligibility for compensation or treatment. For example, with regards to employment disability, the administration would argue a victim was fit to return to work, the AA11MAT victim association would argue they were not. With regards to the recognition of ongoing need for psychological treatment, the administration would classify a victim as no longer needing treatment or of having abandoned treatment and the victim association would argue they had been switched from one psychologist to the other with no continuity in care. Overall, the burden of proof for victims suffering from psychological trauma was more difficult to satisfy than for physical trauma. Victims of psychological trauma had to work harder to be recognised as ‘legitimate victims’ than did those who had physical injuries. Distinctions were also made by the administration between immigrant victims from Latin America had rights to dual nationality and those from Eastern Europe who were left in limbo as they had to give up their nationality, but wait to be awarded Spanish nationality. But none of these differences were struggles among victims themselves.
However, once again, there was one area of ‘compensation’ that was politicised and that made a clear distinction between ETA victims and 3/11 victims. This was the area of victim association funding at the regional autonomous level. The Autonomous Community of Madrid is, and has been, governed by the Popular Party since the time of the attacks. From 2006–09, the President of the Autonomous Community of Madrid did not award any funding to the A11MAT, the organisation that represents the bulk of 3/11 victims (1,200) and whose president has been an outspoken critic of the Popular Party, but did make awards in these years to the AVT and the FVT (Foundation of Victims of Terrorism), both closely aligned with the Popular Party. In this way, a distinction was made between ‘good’ victims (those who did not criticise the PP) and ‘bad’ victims (those who did). Because the A11MAT is often the only resource 3/11 victims have in their struggles with the administration (regional and national, irrespective of governing party), this denial of funding constitutes a form of punishment for not having the ‘correct’ political ideology, despite the fact the A11MAT is avowedly non-partisan and has criticised both major parties. The ‘solution’ to this problem was itself partisan, with eight socialist party (PSOE) city governments signing agreements to help fund the A11MAT, which also receives funding from the Ministry of the Interior and from anonymous benefactors (El País 6 October 2008).
Conclusions: making sense of victim hierarchies in cases of transnational terrorism
The most striking and unexpected finding is the existence of victim taxonomies among victims of transnational as opposed to internecine terrorism. In both cases, despite the absence of debate about the distinction between victims and perpetrators, victim taxonomies of worth emerged. It is clear from the analysis that three areas were key in determining the victim definition and status, and what they were entitled to as a result of that status: nationally situated cultural narratives about victimhood; the national legal framework; and the political arena, in which political and economic agendas (in the case of 9/11) were also important.
In the US, hierarchies among 9/11 victims and between 9/11 victims and non-9/11 victims are clearly reflected in commemoration and compensation schemes and the debates they generated. Victim movements have been very successful in the US in making claims on behalf of victims and de-stigmatising victimhood (Barker 2007). Therefore, victims of 9/11 were very broadly and elastically defined and received overwhelming support from the public through charitable donations. 9/11 deceased victims were also very successfully framed as sacred: symbolic representatives of the nation who were commemorated in grandiose official ceremonies, as well as in a myriad of highly pluralistic and individualistic ways. 9/11 and its victims were framed as unique and unprecedented. This framing also was reflected in the legislation passed to compensate the victims, legislation with a clear economic and political agenda. The compensation fund was unique to 9/11 victims, a product of politics and departed substantially from precedent. There was a clear political and economic agenda behind the compensation scheme and victim compensation was instrumentalised to save the airline industry from collapse. Victim compensation was, compared to Spain, highly individualised, and consistent with the common law tort tradition, considered current and future earnings, as well as the number of dependents of the deceased. It also clearly defined eligibility and thus circumscribed victimhood to the physical and temporal immediacy of the individual to the 9/11 attacks.
The uniqueness of the compensation scheme, as well as the anniversary commemoration, generated resentment on the part of other victims of terrorism on US soil. But even within those groups affected by the Twin Towers attacks, multiple contested hierarchies emerged, based on (1) occupational status and ‘hero’ status (2) struggles over the order in which names should be listed, centred on employee status and (3) whether the victim was deceased or had survived. These hierarchies reflect fundamental narratives in American society that place great importance on occupation and income as identity markers and esteem indicators (see Flesher Fominaya and Barberet, forthcoming), a preoccupation regarding ‘heroism’ and again, the sacred nature of those who died at the hands of terrorists. These distinctions between victims were codified and reinforced through the legal mechanism of the compensation fund. Although in the public imagination there were many legitimate victims of 9/11, the legal restrictions placed on claimants meant that many of these victims were left out. Surviving victims especially were made ‘invisible’ both in the commemorations and denied compensation in many cases. Because of the highly politicised nature of the response to 9/11, which led to the rapid passage of legislation affecting the victims, the process did not allow time for victims associations to develop and organise their own claims making, especially around compensation. Trying to fit their needs and demands into a very circumscribed legislation requires them to re-engage the political arena, requesting congress to renew budgetary allowances for ongoing treatment, for example, which is an endeavor that requires significant material and emotional resources.
In Spain, the cultural narratives of victimhood are much less positive than in the US, and victims’ movements are much less developed. Victims of 3/11 were certainly viewed with great sympathy, but this did not translate into an abundance of resources from charitable donations. Instead, in keeping with the more developed welfare state in Spain, the state was expected to attend to the victims’ needs and claims. Victims were defined very narrowly, both in the public perception and legally, and were compensated according to existing legislation (The Law of Solidarity with Victims of Terrorism) and the result of the trial against the surviving perpetrators. Culturally and legally, then, unlike in the US case, we see little differentiation between victims of 3/11 and they are framed in collective egalitarian terms. It is in the political arena that the strongest taxonomies of worth emerge. 3/11 victims had a harder time being sacralised as representatives of the nation, due to the constant competing frame that they were in truth ETA victims. Although ETA victims are framed by ETA as representatives of the oppressive Spanish state, this definition is not shared by the general Spanish public, who see ETA victims as the outcome of homegrown, rather than transnational terrorism. 3/11 victims therefore had a harder time framing themselves as unique, and were forced into an ongoing partisan struggle that pitted them against ETA victims and denied them autonomy. The salient hierarchy, therefore, was not among different 3/11 victims, but between 3/11 and ETA victims. These struggles shaped commemoration significantly, but had less impact on direct compensation given the less politicised nature of legal compensation in the Spanish framework. However, 3/11 victims, or more specifically the A11MAT victims association that represents the majority of them, suffered significantly. They were ‘punished’ (through denial of funding) by the PP for refusing to accept ETA's responsibility and for therefore questioning the AVT/PP's narrative that ETA is the most important issue in Spanish politics.
This comparative analysis shows that the politics of victimhood has very real consequences for victims, not only in cases of internecine conflict, but also in cases of transnational terrorism. We have shown that national cultural narratives, legal frameworks and political arenas shape these in very different ways. While a detailed analysis is beyond the scope of this chapter, these findings have implications for ongoing debates about the existence of a ‘global’ civil society. When it comes to victims of terrorism, even that perpetrated by groups operating ‘globally’ like Al-Qaeda, it is clear that national contexts continue to shape victims experiences in fundamental ways and with real consequences for the victims.
Notes
1 Cristina Flesher-Fominaya wishes to thank the British Academy for the support that enabled the completion of this research. Rosemary Barberet wishes to acknowledge funding support of PSC CUNY grant 62474–00 40.
2 Dixon and Stern (2004) estimate that 250 persons were seriously injured.
3 We refer here to dominant discourses within domestic public arenas, but see Robinson (2009) for discourses that exclude 9/11 victims from spheres of moral concern in her comparative analysis of online fora.
4 Letschert and Pemberton (2008) show cross national variation among OSCE countries in who is included in the definition of victims, ranging from direct victim only, to families of direct victims, to first responders in a minority of cases.
5 In late 2010 the United States Congress passed the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, to continue to provide health care and monitoring for tens of thousands of first responders, construction workers and Lower Manhattan residents who were exposed to World Trade Center dust after the attacks.
It also establishes a Victims Compensation Fund that will give monetary awards for to emergency workers and others who fall ill and lose wages as a result of exposure to the dust and to their families in case of death, similar to one set up for people who were killed on 9/11.
6 There were initial compensation payments made by RENFE (the train company) accident insurance, but these were relatively small and determined by the existing insurance policy rather than politically or by the courts.
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