Three months after Nelson Mandela was released from prison, in April of 1990,  I received from the South African government,  a letter bomb, hidden inside the pages of two religious magazines.  Among other injuries, I was left with no hands and one eye. For me it is always important to say that I had a sense that God was with me – that the great promise of the Christian scriptures had been kept – “Lo I am with you always even to the end of the age.”

What enabled me to heal? To travel towards wholeness. Excellent medical treatment both in Zimbabwe and in Australia, Yes.
But also I received messages of prayer, love and support from across the globe.
My own story was listened to, acknowledged, reverenced, recognised and given a moral content.
Every person has a story to tell. Every story needs a listener.

I would like to emphasize the difference between knowledge and acknowledgment and its importance for healing individuals, communities and nations.  Families can have guilty secrets. There is abuse in a family.  Everybody knows. There is knowledge but no acknowledgment, perhaps even denial.  What is true of individuals and families is also true of nations.

Where torture, or forms of abuse,  have  taken place, the torturer will tell the tortured that no mark will be left so no-one will believe that they have been tortured.  Finally healing begins, when it is publically acknowledged that yes, you were tortured, and it was wrong.  Torture inverts the moral order.  Acknowledgment helps to recreate the moral order.

I have spent some time with the Sami people in the northern part of Sweden.  There the church has acknowledged its role in oppression.  However the wider community has not been educated about the history of the oppression.  So knowledge and acknowledgment are both important on the journey to healing.

When I received a letter bomb, I became a victim. I  physically survived so I was a survivor. I realized that if I was filled with hatred, self pity,  bitterness and desire for revenge, then I would be a victim for ever.

One of South Africa's great leaders, Chief Albert Lutuli, once said, “those who think of themselves
as victims eventually become the victimizers of others.”  This is as much true of what happens in intimate space as within nations and between nations.  We don't have to look very far to find dramatic examples.  People give themselves permission to do terrible things to others because of what was done to them.  Of course sometimes there is competition for victimhood.

There is also the relationship between political violence, legitimized or not, and what happens in the privacy of the bedroom.  Armed conflict comes to an end for the society or the individual but does not necessarily end in the home where there maybe self harm or harm to others in the form of domestic or sexual violence.

The life giving alternative to victims becoming victimisers is that victims should become victors, not in a militaristic sense   Rather those who have become objects of history, become subjects of history once more.  The key as to whether victims becomes victimisers or victors often lies with whether or not there has been acknowledgment

In South Africa, we did have a considerable amount of acknowledgment in terms of the role of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission which listened to the stories of 23 000 people..

My question was what about those who did not qualify to come to the Commission.  What happened to their stories?  When horrible things happen to human beings, it is normal to harbour feelings such as bitterness, hatred and desire for revenge.  The problem is that those feelings destroy us.  For our own sake, we have to find the way of detoxifying, of vomiting out the poison.

It was in the context of reflections of my own journey and that of the nation that some of us developed an intervention, which we call a Healing of the Memories workshop.  This particular intervention takes two and a half days.  We promise people one step on the road to healing.  However for some the step maybe life changing especially if a story is being told for the first time.

We know that in situations of conflict or abuse there will be those who need clinical interventions.  Relatively speaking this is often a very small population.  There is often a much larger group of people who are sub clinical, but still have unfinished business from the past.  They need a safe space where events from the past can be addressed and where they can begin to let go of destructive feelings.  Even in situations where many have suffered, people often feel very isolated as they don't know what others are feeling.  A new sense of belonging emerges when I tell my story and there are multiple witnesses.

We often say in our Institute, those who would be the healers of others must be on their own journey of healing.  Permission and space is needed for chaplains to deal with their own stuff, and the impact of the lives we lead.  Lest we too become victimizers rather than victors.

In  conclusion may I just say that the Institute for Healing of Memories has worked in a variety of contexts across the globe, with combatants and civilians, in post and present conflict situations, in relation to HIV and AIDS, with refugees, prisoners, victims of war here in South Africa, in Zimbabwe, Uganda, the US, Northern Ireland, Fiji, Ausralia, Germany and the UK.

Every context is unique with its own particular history and circumstances.  But at the deepest level,  we are one human family, capable of beautiful and horrible deeds, sharing the same destructive and lifegiving emotions and feelings.

I just saw the move Waltz with Bashir, which offers a fascinating and sobering look at memory , war, and genocide--as well as individual and collective memory. Early in the movie, there were several lines of dialogue that intrigue me; they go something like:"There is a human mechanism that keeps us from going to the dark places. Memory leads us where we need to go."Obviously, this is out of the context of the entire movie; these words, however,  stayed with me. Any thoughts? 

Before I begin my question I would just like to acknowledge that my involvement in this discussion comes from working at CVT and I have almost no experience in any type of TRC.

However, as I have been following this moving and thoughtful discussion I have noticed that, generally, the discussion seems to be about situations that have a very clear victim/victimizer, each with clear historical roles.  In some cases atrocities have been inflicted in equal measure by two sides sides in a conflict.  I am thinking of Columbia as an example, where the national army, militias and FARC have all been accused of a number of violations of human rights.

When two or more parties are on "equal" footing does this change the process?  Does it make it more difficult or easier to admit guilt as has been discussed in this dialogue?  I would welcome any with thoughts or experience in this matter discuss. 

I recently travelled to Southern Sudan for the first time; arguably amongst the most traumatised societies in Africa and beyond. In listening to people's stories-and each and every person had experienced some level of unimaginable trauma due to the 20+ year war- I found it fascinating to observe how each individual has managed to live with and digest his/her story in a totally different way. In some instances people had lived through very similar experiences- two friends who had faught the Arab regime together for 15 years told me their story in separate situations. If I had not known, I would never have guessed they had been through the same trauma. Another man had lost his ability to speak. Another had turned to the church. Yet another had taken his physical disability and used it as a tool to heal others...

So I conclude that our raw material- who we are emotionally, psychologically, socially and experientially before living through a traumatic episode, significantly affects the way we remember, forgive, heal and overcome. 

Just a thought...from a relative newcomer to this fascinating conversation.

Fidi

(Friederike Bubenzer)

I have a few almost random responses to a number of issues that come through the contributions of other partners in this multilogue.

     --The relation of retriibutive and restorative justice.  Undergoing or imposing some punishment for sins is old in the norms ofs religion and social ethics. Can punishment be so guaged as to SERVE restoration of the humanity of both victims and perpetrators?  I believe it can, but not if punishment is defined as revenge-in-kind or in isolation from restorative measures.  Our USA penal system is rife with that very isolation.

      --Does the USA need a TRC?  I think so, but as with other nations it needs a process on several levels of legal and non-legal measues.  I see from Michael Lapsley that he believes that we can get a Healing-of-Memories center in New York City. I would gladly collaborate with that, but hopefully around the current discussion of reparations to the African American and Native American communities, and in communication with certain  members of the US congress.

      --One contributor--mb--notes that "we must acknowledge our progress" in the healing of our histories.  That is very important, I think.  It gives folk a preliminary assurance that some healing, some reconciliation, some new civic peace can be built upon. But it muste be in data empirically verifiable or in testimony from the healers and the healed. (This would be one use of  the principle of positive reinforcement.  It is one of the best of educational principles, which I have tried to follow in narratives of GErmany, S.Africa, and the USA in my recent book HONEST PATRIOTS.)

     -- INTERGENERATIONAL  transmission of memory is a vital issue for politics and civic culture, and I'd like to see more insight on how that happens, if at all.  In the USA, e.g. leaders of our civil rights movement already have sighed with disappointment over the ease with which many African American young people seem to have slight awareness of what struggle the ancestors had to effect the changes of the 1960s lawS.  Some veterans of the Movement are wondering if even President Obama is giving strong enough recognition to that history in his speeches. You can legitimately begin to forget the evils of the past by accurately remembering them: I see this as a task which belongs to every generation's just appropriation of history.  It poses a delicate task for those who teach and interpret history in educational and other public circles.  

      --Related to the above is the question of what are the benefits and harms to a second generation of children of those who suffered most in the original trauma.  My best acquaintance with that question has been in some of the data on how Japanese Americans did or did  not acquaint their children of what it was like to be in the internment camps of 1942-45.  And the work of Yael Daniell on children of Holocaust survivors.  Perhaps our Israeli partner--Professor Zvi--is well acqainted with her extensive work.

        If Michale Lapsley reads this, I'd be eager to hear from him about a New York office for Healing of Memories.    Don Shriver

TREE OF LIFE - ABAI would like to sign up for full participation in this conference, but getting on the Internet twice daily is not possible. Some interaction should be possible before the end of the conference.We have been running counselling workshops for survivors of torture and other forms of political violence since the beginning of last year: 10 in 2008 and the fourth for 2009 is due this weekend, 27-31 March. The parent organisation who teach the ‘Tree of Life’ method want to see the method spread rather than grow a big organisation, and they call us ABA because our first groups of participants came from that organisation, but now we are reaching out more widely and have selected three more for facilitator training in the near future as more demand emerges.Follow-up interviews show a reduction of 30-100% in symptoms of disturbance and also show an increasing desire of participants to forgive the perpetrators. They now propose workshops for perpetrators, who are also very hurt people.

Brian MacGarry

 How do I add a picture?

I am interested in the role of public story-telling from different sides of a political conflict.  How do we facilitate public listening to those stories? 

As a clinician, memories--or lack of memories--are often the most distressing symptoms to survivors of torture, war and other human rights abuses. As many times I have worked with a client to facilitate a reduction in intrusive memories, I have also worked with clients to process the absence of memories and reminders--reminders of not only horror and suffering, but reminders of more positive aspects of one's life.  The words "I cannot remember who I was" or "I cannot find who I was" are not uncommon amongst those I have worked with.  There is certainly no shortage of ideas, techniques, clinical approaches and methodologies for processing traumatic memories. I am less aware of "best practice" ideas about restoring memories--a tricky process, because what is "remembered" may not be actual or accurate, and there is an active debate about "retrieving" memories. What I have observed in clinical and communal settings is really quite simple: there seems to be something powerful and restorative in the sharing of memories in the many contexts in which sharing can occur (clinical, storytelling, creative processes such as art, dance, music, testimonials, reconciliation). Perhaps a collective willingness to listen, witness, share and be part of the process of remembering  is fundamental to the  healing of memories.

As the comments are amassing, in a most interesting way, I find myself reflecting on a topic I often do: how are processes of healing and reconciliation similar and different at the individual and societal level? Zvi Beckerman is raising issues of what I call victim-perpetrator oscillation. A novice therapist can learn to interrupt these patterns within a family, but there is no best practice for interrupting these forces at a societal level. Why? Lee Thorn recounts sitting with Bounthanh in her chicken coop and, in his openhearted listening to her story, his suffering witness of her life experience shifting his decades' earlier position of being an agent of that same suffering, ends up being adopted by her and her husband. Why can (some) individuals accomplish what collectivities (Jill's example of Greensboro) cannot? What processes do not scale up; what might scale up if we knew how to do so effectively and what does scale up?

Hello Glenda, Fr. Michael, Charles and others,

I can really appreciate Fr. Michael's comment on the importance of Healing Memories. How could a person concerned about individuals in their community, implement the methods of the Institute for the Healing of Memories? For me, I have no experience as a counselor, but I would like to learn some simple skills that I can use with my own community. 

Thanks!

Kristin Antin, New Tactics Online Community Builder

Am I ready as a lead facilitator to hear what could harm me? What if the pain and horror in the story is too much to handle? How should I act in such situation? What if I cannot handle the pain any more.? What must I do If the participant was my perpetrator? Should I wear a mask? I mean what kind of mask? 

These were the questions that flow in my mind like wild river after Dwaine, a war veteran made this statement " I am not sure whether the therapist is ready to hear my story" We were in the VAMC auditorium with homeless vets in Minneapolis, U.S. with Fr Micheal Lapsley. He was the key speaker in one of the Monthly Metro meetings of the homeless veterans led by Kathy Vitalis who is the director of the program.

That statement made me think twice as a facilitator in the Institute for Healing of Memories. Am I in the right space? I mean  how am I dealing with pain as a facilitator? What am I doing in relation to self care? I asked Fr Micheal Lapsley that question? He said " You must learn to pamper yourself my Lord" That sounds easy but it took us hours to address the question of how. He was patient and was convinced when he made Chief Albert Luthuli's quote" Those whose who heal others must be in their own journey of healing" That made sense. I mean I learn't that self awareness is essential in the process of applying healing methods.  I then realise the listeners as well as facilitators must be true and genuine in the healing process. The level of intergrity and compassion must be high.

I salute the facilitators in their role of healing the nation. I believe it is not about passion but compassion to heal the nations of the world.

Madoda Gcwadi

Madoda555 [at] yahoo [dot] com

Institute for Healing of Memories

Capetown South Africa

I am so moved by all the contributions to this dialogue. There are so many stories and insights about how we can all move towards healing and reconciliation. Many have shared that embarking on a healing journey is a 'one step at a time ' process. In the Healing of Memories methodology we use the narative approach. I have tried  to understabd why this appraoch is so useful and powerful as illustrated by the many stoies in this dialogue.

An example of the narative therapeutic apprach may help to illustrate its application.

The Aboriginal Health Council put out a newsletter titled "Reclaiming Our stories, Reclaiming our Lives" (http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:eADeS3cG5wIJ:https://www.library.health.sa.gov.au/LinkClick.aspx%3Flink%3Dkeeping-the-community-strong.pdf%26mid%3D384%26PortalID%3D0+%22Reclaiming+Our+stories,+Reclaiming+our+Lives&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us). The Australian government was investigating pain and suffering of relatives of Aboriginal people who died in custody. the idea was to reclaim Aboriginal knowledges about ways to respond to grief and pain, to honour Aboriginal healing practices. Narrative therapy was "identified by Aboriginal health workers as in different parts of Australia as more appropriate to Aboriginal culture than the more conventional Western mental health practices". Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal counselors trained in Narrative therapy gathered with famiy groups to hear their stories and recommendations. During this time there was sharing of stories and the sharing of indiginous healing practices.In this exercise present deaths were  linked to past and present injustices, such that storytelling and hearing allows memories to be sifted to reclaim self esteem. With in the context of the workshop, people felt freer to start remembering those things they wanted to rememebr about the people they had lost, rather than only rememebring the loss and injustice. Nsrrative therapy places a great deal of importance on finding ways in which an audience can be invited to play a part in authenticating and strengthening the preferred stories that are emrging in the therapeutic siutation.

While we believe in the Institute for healing of Memeories that we are not tharapist as such,  we believe that we are contributing to the healing of individuals and communities.

Glenda

Institute for the healing of Memeories

I would appreciate any of the involved in the dialogue in any of its sections to offer some insights expereinces on the way they (or others) approach the young who might pay the price of past conflicts but might not be directly involved in them today.

i ask because of my own experiences in Israel in two different settings

1) the one considered to be the second today already third generation of holocaust survivors

and

2) children at the bilingual schools who though living in Israel are not 'borned' with the memories of the conflict

will be very appreciative of any insights you may have

zb

I'll try to answer questions:

 1.    The basic method is very simple: a three-day workshop with, optimally, eight new participants who work as a circle with two facilitators, who are themselves survivors or the kind of trauma the other participants have suffered. It is called 'Tree of Life' because it leads participants through a reflection on stages in their life by comparison with a tree: roots, early growth, damage suffered and prospects for further growth. Workshops are held in places with sufficient indigenous trees; not necessarily woodland, as one good venue we have used is a small training centre on a plot of less than a hectare in a Harare suburb, but almost undisturbed natural tree growth over most of the area.

I have found in other settings that leading people to talk first about their roots is a very good way to  open the way to go deeper.

There is a strong emphasis on participants (including facilitators) being 'a circle' of equals. In the opening session they define their own ground rules for conducting the subsequent sessions. One rule, that nobody should be interrupted while they are speaking, is introduced by using the simple ritual of a 'talking stone': when you hold the stone, you have the floor, and place it back in the centre of the circle when you have finished.

Other uses of ritual are developed by successive groups: early in the workshop, each participant is encouraged to find 'their' tree, where they may spend reflective time and which will provide some material they choose – leaf, flower, fruit, whatever – for a later ritual of burning a symbol of what the participants have unburdened themselves of and want to put behind them.

I nearly described that as a closing ritual, but it isn't. Before the end a session is given to the practical implications of 'further growth'. This does have a bit of input on the dynamics of working together (including whether power works as a pyramid or a circle) and has, for every group we have worked with, led them to meet regularly for mutual support since their workshop.

We admit that this is a kind of psycho-spiritual 'first aid' and therefore an important part of preparing for and monitoring the process is a questionnaire that enumerates 20 common symptoms of post-trauma disturbance, from disturbed sleep and digestion to thoughts of suicide. If would-be participants are so disturbed that they clearly need more professional one-to-one counselling, we can refer them within the Tree of Life network. Repeating that questionnaire three months after a workshop, along with a more open-ended interview, gives us a measure of the impact of our workshops.

Subsequent groups show very noticeable improvement in their questionnaire scores, now averaging a 70% reduction, where the January-February 2008 groups recorded about 30%. Although our general situation has grown a bit more open, some violence continues, so I think this improvement is also a sign that the facilitators have grown into their task. They certainly look and act much more confident.

 2.    Training facilitators: Potential facilitators are selected from among participants. The facilitators will suggest after a workshop who would be suitable. I just back them up, while trying to be sure they were asking the right questions before making the recommendation. We currently have one trainee facilitator who has worked with us in three workshops and will go for a training course with the parent organisation next week, along with three others we have just chosen.

Our two experienced facilitators have been invited to take part in that course as training resource people. I have not seen a 'syllabus' for that course. As far as I can say, the training course tries to make trainees familiar with the facilitators' handbook. The apprenticeship aspect of training has been very important for us. Our two facilitators did not feel confident to 'go solo' until they had each facilitated a workshop with each of the three who had run their training course, because each had their own style and our two felt they needed to experience working with these rather different approaches in order to each find her own style. Their being invited to help train the next generation shows that they are considered competent for that now.

I suppose that means we will be left to organise our own training for facilitators from now on. We have recently had the first approach from a rural community and for them, the best service we can provide is to hold one workshop, then train facilitators from that community to continue the work. This is a significant step because, although the worst violence has probably been in rural areas, victims have been more cautious about drawing further attention to themselves by asking for help.

Our experience shows that both gender and age balance are needed among the available facilitators.

 3.    One other consideration on selecting participants:

Our participants for each workshop have usually come from one community, giving them something in common. Where we included people with very different experiences, that did not work so well. - survivors of torture with people who had lost their livelihoods and maybe homes in the politically-motivated attacks on the urban poor in 2005-6 without suffering assault on their persons. Therefore, although almost 90% of our participants are now urging that we offer workshops to perpetrators of violence and some are beginning to do this, we will wait for survivors to suggest before we attempt the final ideal of getting perpetrators and victims to sit down in the same circle in a workshop.

 4.    Avoiding facilitator burnout: We hold a debriefing session with facilitators after each workshop. They recount how they assess the workshop and, more importantly, how they feel about it. Relaxation exercises play an important part in the workshops and in the debriefing sessions. We have held occasional one-day or morning get-togethers with an emphasis on relaxation exercises and sharing feelings about where the process has brought us to. One of these was conducted by an expert in meditative methods that I find very helpful, but our facilitators' style uses more vocal and active prayer. No problem: the main thing is that all of us are led to try to deepen our spiritual lives, and you usually do that better in your own tradition than by trying to uproot yourself and transplant to another. Experience of other traditions can provide elements that help our growth. Just what those elements will be depend so much on each person's experience that they cannot be predicted.

The workshops themselves and the group solidarity they generate do quite significantly reduce the impact of further violence:

 a)    Our March and April 2008 groups experienced more violence (some of them were beaten again) during the period of the one-horse race 'presidential run-off'. When we were able to hold the follow-up survey, in September, they showed no quantitative reduction in disturbance,as measured by the questionnaire, but all reported in the interviews something like: 'life is still very hard, but we feel strengthened and freed to cope with it.'

 b)    One of our facilitators suffered from high blood pressure after her torture until she took part in a Tree of Life workshop, where (God's finger shows in strange ways!) she found she had forgotten to bring her pills – and she got through the workshop without them, possibly helped by some herbs cultivated at that venue. She hasn't used the pills since, but reported some BP problems after she had another bad experience recently. She was reluctant to go back on to medication and, with expressed support from the team, including prayer, and more careful attention to relaxation, the problem vanished in a few days.

We will be interested to see the article this questioner mentions.

4)      To the offer of the 'prayer sandwich': yes prayer in a vital element in most of our workshops. We find everyone has their own way of praying: silent or aloud, listening or vocal, and if it is vocal and aloud, they way each one says it is different, so we invite volunteers from among the participants to lead the opening or closing prayer for the main sessions.

5)      Jill Williams raises an important question and truth and reconciliation and the risk of re-traumatisation of survivors if forgiveness and repentance don't go deep enough.

We rely on leading by the participants in this area. A lot of the violence we have experienced in the past eight years, although politically sponsored, depended on local initiatives, so it was not equally intense across the country. Even when it was directed from the top against particular areas, the implementation was very local. Victims were beaten or tortured either by their neighbours or in a process that made the neighbours into accomplices of the torturers, so when they say the now have the strength and freedom to forgive, they are talking about forgiving people they know well. Some of them say they see the perpetrators as themselves spiritually wounded people. Maybe sharing their own stories has helped them to see more of the roots and early problems that make perpetrators.

They ask us to provide workshops for perpetrators, so we try to do that. They have told us that putting people who suffered very different levels of violence in one workshop did not work so well, so we didn't try that again. We wait for them to suggest joint workshops for victims and perpetrators, remembering some wise words of Fr.Michael Lapsley. When he was asked in a media interview 'Do you forgive the people who sent you that letter bomb?, he replied 'It depends whether they want it.'

The survivors, at least after the best of our workshops, are the best judges of whether the neighbours responsible for the violence they suffered are ready for that.

6)      Post-conflict reconciliation led by parliament?

We agree that it has to start with the victims telling their stories and being heard.

The trouble is;

a.      You can't legislate to compel that. The SA Truth and Reconciliation Commission could only create a framework to make it easier. I will never forget watching Winnie Mandela's appearance before the Commission live on TV. She admitted that bad things happened but could not take responsibility for them. Archbishop Tutu, chairman of the Commission and an old friend of the Mandela family was practically on his knees and near to tears as he begged her to acknowledge she needed forgiveness. You will fail with some. Maybe next time . . . . . so keep trying.

b.      There was no process of reconciliation here in Zimbabwe in 1980. The word was used by a politician nobody expected it from, both parties interpreted it as 'let's forget' and continued with business and social life as usual till all that was swept under the carpet festered and erupted in volcanic proportions. If anyone is interested, I expanded on this in an article in a volume commemorating the 80th birthday of the Sri Lankan theologian Tissa Balasuriya. I gather I can put such material on this site?

We certainly haven't reached the point where legislators from both sides can tackle this one. The usual path for members of the perpetrating party who reached a point of acknowledgement has been to leave the party and, usually, the country. Still, we begin where we can and live in hope.I know survivors who see that as meaning they need to make acknowledgement as easy as possible for their persecutors.

As I write, a small and determined group of deacons of the
Episcopal Church (Anglican Communion) is meeting with Fr. Lapsley to explore
what it is the local church can do to begin to offer Healing of Memories work
here in Minneapolis, MN. As Fr. Michael mentioned, there is
great need, a crying need for healing among the veterans of our wars who reside
in the federal hospital in Minnesota
and elsewhere in the community. The fit between the church and the work is a
natural one for deacons; the Anglican diaconate is an historic order with roots
in the ancient church, and deacons are called to the ministry of social justice
in word, action, and attendance. This servant ministry to “the
poor, the stranger, the widow and orphan” is not unique to Anglicans but
is similar to orders in the Catholic and Lutheran traditions and, I am certain,
replicated in other ways in other churches. Deacons are visible icons of
the Gospel mandate of all of us in the church to serve.

My point is this: there are many of us whose work is that of
facilitating healing – whose jobs are focused on work with survivors;
whose belief systems, whether spiritually-called or philosophically-based order
this work; whose daily or occasional positions put us in a place where it is
natural to offer healing tools. But how do we engage larger systems in
the work? I write about the church because it is still influential in the
lives of many of us. I know that it is not the vehicle all of us would
choose with which to work but it is viable for many. I think of the
importance and influence of the church across war-torn Africa.
At the Center for Victims of Torture, we rely on a little book, Healing the Wounds of Trauma: How the Church Can Help,
for activities to use with groups of survivors in our community work with
refugees. Written in Africa by members
of Wycliffe Bible translators, it surprises many of us trauma professionals
with its sound basic physiological teaching framed within biblical teachings.

How do we call the church to a greater role, one that does
not only talk about healing on Sunday morning but actually goes out into the
community in a large and very visible way to offer these tools? How do we
engage other major purveyors of our social systems?

Evelyn Lennon

CVT - MN

The healing and reconciliation processes in northern Uganda has incorporated more than one method such as 'Mato oput' as practiced in old Acholi tradition and the Institute for Healing of Memories  workshops being conducted for the victims and those affected by the autrocities inflicted by the Lord's resistance Army of Joseph Kony.This well intentioned process is being curtailed/or assisted? by another justic intervention by the International Criminal Court(ICC) which has issued arrest warant for Kony.

The question to ask are?

• Can the 'fossilised' mato oput bring about healing and reconciliation? Can the process be defossilised for better effect?
• Who wants healing and reconciliation in the first place-Is it the state?, victims and their families or the ICC? And does the rest of Uganda care?
• Can the issueing of  ICC warrants for arrest of Kony assist/ constrain the healing and reconciliation process?
• Who will bring the state (who brought in the ICC) to the healing and reconciliation table?
• Or should the process just  go on without the state and Kony?
• How does one even begin the process to bring about healing in such situations of 'multiple woundedness' as displayed  by people like those in northern Uganda?
• Does Uganda resemble the Sudan as far as ICC action is concerned?
• What role the Uganda media?

Given the experience of the Institute of the Healing of Memories, their location in South Africa, and that some of their staff were highly involved in processes related to the South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I am interested to hear their insights regarding the process of healing of memories as this relates to other processes of reconciliation (personal and collective) such as the TRC.

As a point of note, Glenda Wildshut (one of our featured resource practitioners for this dialogue) and Paul Haupt wrote a New Tactics tactical notebook, I'll Walk Beside You about the process used by the South Africa TRC to provide "briefers" to install a victim-friendly process. The TRC held hearings into the human rights abuses during the apartheid era and held out the possibility of amnesty to people who showed genuine remorse for their actions. Thousands of people were accompanied before, during and after their testimony by volunteers trained in psychosocial support as well as in the legal and practical realities of the hearing process. The goal was to provide the necessary support to make the experience of testifying an empowering one that would help in the victim’s longer-term healing process, rather than contribute to renewed suffering. Glenda and Paul share this process of victim accompaniment in their tactical notebook.

Since the TRC in South Africa was created in 1995, many other such commissions have been created in other countries.  New Tactics hosted an on-line dialogue featuring this topic a year ago to share how such processes help to address the issue of impunity: Truth and Reconciliation Processes: Aiding Community Healing through Addressing Impunity

TRC processes are intended to bring together people from different sides of a conflict (victim/perpetrator) to start trust building - a necessity for people and communities to live peaceably together. I have generally viewed these processes as critical for public acknowledgement of massive violations and abuses. I hope we can discuss this public and collective aspect under the "Restorative Justice" theme of this dialogue.

Under this theme of reconciliation, I'm interested to learn if these public processes have resulted in a change in individual thinking and/or behavior from those who participated. From the side of victims who testified as well as from perpetrators who sought amnesty / public penance who participated in the TRC process - did the experience help bring about at least a personal healing of memories if not contribute to the collective remembering and healing of memories?

Nancy Pearson, New Tactics in Human Rights Program Manager

Reconciliation, particularly political reconciliation, in my opinion is both a process and a goal. I do not know whether Dr Shriver will agree wit me. I believe the the process of political reconcilation is never linear, the process is uneven  and may involve lapses into counterproductive, if not violent ways of addressing conflict. At the same time, this can be sustained by concrete goals and a shared vision of what can and might be accomplished.

A Dinka elder reflecting on the Sudanese conflict said "reconciliation begins by agreeing to sit under the same tree with your enemy, to find a way of addressing the causes of the conflict'. This is a process that prioritises dialogue and understanding. This understanding also acknowledges that we are incomplete as human beings when we are alienated from each other. so peacemaking and the need for co-existance, the will to live a fulfilled life is often the crucial motivation for reconciliation.

But I ask myself - and I hope that others will assist me with this question, given what is said about reconciliation, is it enough for us t understand what is required in order to be reconciled. what motivates us to seek reconcilation.

(this message is repeated from the above section because of the messages i have been reading in this one - hope this is not confusing and if it is i beg for your forgiveness) 

There is something pragmatic (materialistic, experiencial in Dewey's terms) in the jewish tradition which i like

When a wrong is done the way to repent (not the Hebrew word used) is to do the same but backwords. The hebrew word is teshuva (to return to repair to give back)

this has for many years guided my sense for what needs to be done in conflicts

and then i remembered that to forgive (FOR-GIVE)  and forget (FOR-GET) are words that work in a similar direction

best

zb

I think it is important to note right at the beginning of this post that nearly every form of justice has been criticized in some way.  I also have to note that as a student, I've only studied mechanisms of justice, I have not actually been directly involved with them. It seems that while restorative justice may involve a more peaceful approach, many argue that it often can result in impunity for perpetrators. On the other hand, while many argue that retributive justice can help to prevent impunity for perpetrators, in cases where there are large numbers of perpetrators, it can mean that only the worst of the perpetrators are actually ever brought to justive. Moreover, it can leave victims feeling as if the true account of the situation will never be brought to light, preventing the victims from feeling any real sense of justice. It would seem that no form of justice is perfect, and for every situation, a different form of justice may be more suitable.

One form of justice that seems to mix retributive and restorative justice that I found to be interesting were the gacaca courts in Rwanda. Given the sheer number of perpetrators in the Rwandan genocide, and the lengthy process involved in trying perpetrators at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as well as in criminal courts within Rwanda, the task of ensuring that all perpetrators were brought to justice and a full and truthful account of the Rwandan genocide was brought to light seemed daunting and near impossible.

Literally, gacaca means on the grass, or justice on the grass, and is a local way of mediating both personal and community problems. The judges in gacaca courts are not judges but rather respected leaders or household heads within the community. The courts generally meet about once a week and emphasize reconciliation rather than retribution and rely on voluntary confessions and apologies by wrongdoers. Although the emphasis is on reconcilation, further punishment for the accused is still a possibility. 

The gacaca courts have been very important in helping Rwandans come to term with the past, as many Rwandans want to know more than anything else a true account of what transpired. This involves the revelation of information such as where and when their loved ones died. Without this information, it is extremely difficult to move on into the future. 

There have been criticisms of the gacaca system. Critics say that many of the accused fail to show up, and others are afraid to share evidence because of fear of retribution (there have been reports of retributive violence preceding or following gacaca hearings). Many communities also perceive the tribunals as being one-sided, which also prevents contributors from coming forward. Survivors of the genocide often question the true nature of the repentance of the accused (which is an obligatory step in the gacaca process), and other question whether the accused have given a full account of what happened or just partial truths.

And yet, gacaca courts still seem to be a powerful way for some to share their stories about what occured during the genocide and find out the truth of what happened to their loved ones, something that is integral for initating reconcilation processes and creating peace in the future.

I am interested in knowing about other forms of local justice that have been viewed as effective? I am also interested in knowing people's perspective on retributive v. restorative justice, which people find most effective, or whether a combination of both is necessary in order for a society to move towards lasting peace?

I am a forgiveness counselor from the US. I have a free download from my website entitled The Prayer Sandwich. It offers a brief, 4 step process for the healing of memories, based on non-religious prayer, emotional release, and opening up to healing through the Life Force, or grace of the Holy Spirit.  Please feel free to download it and share it. It can be taught to children. Please remember that it was developed for use by individuals and small groups, but could be modified for larger, public work. You can find it at www.anaholub.com. All the best to you.

Following the request to add resources, I will include my website:

www.restorativeresources.net, and eventually, my new non profit, Trauma Resources International, will be linked.  I provide trainings in self-care, mitigating secondary trauma, as well as integrating body-based and creative arts therapies into clinical and community work with survivors of torture, war, and violence. The website is old and about to go through a major overhaul, but there's still someinformation about all of the above.

I'd also  love to connect with others doing similar work! 

I like the insistence on (a) justice and (b) the need of every
storyteller for listeners.  On the incompleteness of all empirical
achievements of justice, I would suggest taking a page out of Reinhold
Niebuhr, "the relevance of an impossible ideal," which I prefer to translate:
better some  justice than none, better a continuing search for justice
than premature closure of the public discussion, and better a peace achieved
through relative justice than a search among the injured and the injurers
for perfect justice.  I like how RN's brfother,my teacher,
H.Richard Nieuhr put it: "If we cannot do anything perfectly, we can do
some things imperfectly as the alternative to doing nothing."

Don Shriver, New York

From Donald Shriver

On the possible roles of government leaders in the reconciliation process: I think of President Richard von Weizsaecker's notable speech (http://www.hariguchi.org/yoichi/weizsaecker.html)  to the Bundestag on May 8, 1985, in which he catalogued in  vast detail the sins of the Nazi era. He just confessed, so to speak, without asking for forgiveness. The latter may well become possible precisely because of the confession.  But it cannot be required, or maybe should not even be requested.  Perhaps it has to be the gift of the offended in response to the offenders' acknowledgments.   DWS

We agree that it has to start with the victims telling their stories and being heard.

The trouble is;

1.      You can't legislate to compel that. The SA Truth and Reconciliation Commission could only create a framework to make it easier. I will never forget watching Winnie Mandela's appearance before the Commission live on TV. She admitted that bad things happened but could not take responsibility for them. Archbishop Tutu, chairman of the Commission and an old friend of the Mandela family was practically on his knees and near to tears as he begged her to acknowledge she needed forgiveness. You will fail with some. Maybe next time . . . . . so keep trying.

2.      There was no process of reconciliation here in Zimbabwe in 1980. The word was used by a politician nobody expected it from, both parties interpreted it as 'let's forget' and continued with business and social life as usual till all that was swept under the carpet festered and erupted in volcanic proportions. If anyone is interested, I expanded on this in an article in a volume commemorating the 80th birthday of the Sri Lankan theologian Tissa Balasuriya, How can I send you a copy? We certainly haven't reached the point where legislators from both sides can tackle this one. The usual path for members of the perpetrating party who reached a point of acknowledgement has been to leave the party and, usually, the country. Still, we begin where we can and live in hope.I know survivors who see that as meaning they need to make acknowledgement as easy as possible for their persecutors. 

 Well, it turns out that this dialogue has become very difficult to segment into 'themes' as all the themes overlap so much! Thank you for your contribution, Tony. The conundrum you point out is troubling - but I wonder - is it possible that reconciliation requires acknowledgement? Acknowledgement has been mentioned several times already in this dialogue, and I wonder what you think of substituting 'acknowlegement' for 'forgetting'? And furthermore, I would like to hear others' comments on the relationship between 'forgetting' and 'healing'. 

Lastly, could you please share more about your work in Zimbabwe? How have you used the 'Tree of Life' to heal and empower communities?

Thank you! 

Kristin Antin, New Tactics Online Community Builder

Tony,

Thank you for sharing these outcomes when using the Tree of Life methodology. We would be very interested to learn when the manual and other methodology materials are available and help to provide access to this methodology. 

Nancy Pearson, New Tactics in Human Rights Program Manager

Only partially related to the issues raised in your message I want to add that i believe that we encounter many problems when not critically approaching two issues.

1)      The hegemonic power of nation state as a the most influential ideology od modernity in need of identity and collectives to survive and,

2)      the issue of class the main category disregarded today in the social sciences

The first is important because it creates a strict connection between collectives and suffering/forgiveness/reconciliation and the second because many times the ones free to deal with needs of reconciliation/forgiveness are the middle classes (the poor if able to find work through structural change are happy just because things have changed)

Clearly the above should be understood within the Israeli context in which I live, still I think it has implications for other contexts.

YES YES YES to the first paragraph and let us add Israel to the list.

and also YES to "But, we who are engaged in the process of healing and getting on to life and its possible happinesses--need to find new tactics to embrace such ideological hegemonies and begin to change them tipping point by tipping point."

The question is if this should be done through therapeutic practices which sustain the paradigmatic features theat imprison us in the hegemonic perspectives or if it could be done by pointing at the national influence and criticaly trying to deconstruct it through deeds of resistence...in other words careful political active education towards social justice and structural change.

We need not attack the individual (who has already suffered from attacks) but the system...i think

zb 

Thank you for sharing that wonderful story. There have been some wonderful films that have illustrated the healing, redemptive qualities of music in the midst of terrible times. I'm sure there are many such examples from countries around the world. I offer this example for those who might want a resource to show and use for discussion.

• Paradise Road (1997) - Fact-based recounting of a group of women who are imprisoned on the
  island of Sumatra by the Japanese during World War II and used music as
  a relief to their misery. They wrote out musical scores that one of the women remembered and scored then for human voices.

Nancy Pearson, New Tactics in Human Rights Program Manager

One contributor records an address to young musicians in Boston about
the healing, orienting power of music. I commend this address in its
entirety, especially what it said about the experience of 9/11 among
many New Yorkers: we could sing, we could listen to Brahms' REQUIEM.
But we had no words for the trauma. Music gave us sub-vocal sharing of
our griefs.

- Don Shriver

I too am deeply grateful for your sharing this lecture, this contemplation on the importance of music.  It would be wonderful if your comment could elicit many titles, creating a resource on music.  I have found the film Mozart: The Requiem from Sarajevo (1994) filmed in the bombed ruins of the Sarajevo National Library absolutely awe-inspiring. 

I always close my talks with a musical selection that allows a double description.  In 2005, I gave an address to a large international audience "On Hating to Hate."  I closed with a clarinet solo from Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time," the piece that Karl Paulnack refers to in his lecture.  My point was that Messiaen was given paper and pencil because someone, a guard, unimagined the rules and imagined that this music should be heard.  There are times we must be able to unimagine the rules so that we can imagine what we don't have: peace, tolerance, healing....