“In 1990, I was a very small, and I saw so many things," Michael Chea recalls. “The war took us away in the forest, and we started running. They killed my grandmother. They killed my grandfather. They killed my auntie.” Chea could have easily become just another anonymous victim of the war in Liberia, but he found a way to preserve his pain. His story has been captured on film by an American college student. The project uses an interactive video system to show others how nations emerging from war can come to terms with their violent past.It is a long arduous process and -- as someone explained -- getting at those truths may require Liberians to sift through some gruesome memories. But ultimately, some transformative truths will allow people to see themselves in a new way. And isn’t that what we all hope for?
1 comments:
Trauma is an interesting thing, in that when someone who has gone through comes to grips with it and talks about it, there is a real change that comes about.
One of the major problems with this, however, is that governments often come to power with a promise to change the dynamics of the past.. the "Old Way" as they might say. When they do this, a sort of officially sanctioned denial of blame or a glossed over retelling of what really happened takes place and the truth simmers in anger.
Look at Kenya after the election. Once the violence subsided, the government acted as if things were moving forward and peace and reconciliation was all that was needed, while a need for justice and a residual ethnic tension is still bubbling below the surface of the Kenyan conscience.
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