Understanding remembrance as a phenomenon that is rooted in human history is significant.
Therefore there is a correlation between remembrance and history. Commemoration is about an event that actually happened and which can be identified. Discussion may lead to the interpretation of an event and its representation, but the reality of the happening cannot be overlooked. As for history, it is a science that scrutinizes the past; it includes a series of things and events that happened, located in space and time using specific methods and techniques to study it.
103 Memory increases the possibility for people to discuss and think about a new society, and people cannot prevent remembrance since it is part of daily routine. Roth (2001: 106) feels that ―if we stop remembering, we stop being‖. The duality of remembering traumatic events cannot be ignored. There is an open discussion concerning the beneficial and the destructive impact of remembering a traumatic event. The challenges lie in how to remember a traumatic event such as genocide or mass killings in a manner that the nightmare does not appear fresh. Some authors such as Seidel (1986), Waintrater (2003) and Roth (2001) feel that remembrance is necessary, but that it imprisons individuals who see or hear the traumatic stories as harmful situations. They argue that people can remember without re-traumatizing community members.
In the present authors‘ view, this emphasizes two important things: (a) it considers that remembrance is part of humanity and thus people should do it; (b) the focal point of the ceremony is not the traumatic aspects of what happened but the lessons drawn from the event which could educate the community, in order to lessen the nightmare of the past during the ceremonies. Those who think the traumatic aspect of remembrance should be removed from the public ceremony propose an approach for remembering. Their proposal can safely guide memories while keeping vulnerable people shielded from emotional aspects.
Many survivors are traumatized by the focus on one hundred days of Rwandan genocide which opens the remembrance ceremonies. The desire for remembrance and its negative impact on the survivors are unbalanced. This needs to be rectified so that the annual remembrance will not reopen wounds. The people who are vulnerable because of the details the testimonies have shown or recounted raise concerns about their individual experiences. What is underlined here is that remembrance makes participants learn something constructive from the past. Remembrance cannot affect those who are still weak.
104 Using the ‗killing place‘ as an environment of remembrance is another issue to be discussed. The time being remembered is a sensitive period. Bringing together the sensibility of the milieu as a physically traumatizing place and the atmosphere of remembering is too heavy for the one who survived those periods, as well as for the rest of the community. Some theorists, such as Winter and Sivan (1999), Yehuda (1997 and Lipstadt (1993), opt to remember the traumatic events such as genocide or mass killings in a very simple manner and avoid invoking fresh images of the events.
They argue that letting those events disappear in the ceremonies of remembrance will not lock the population into tragic fear of the past. They add that repeatedly facing a traumatic event prompts or triggers a desire for revenge and so the vicious cycle will polarize the ongoing process of uniting the community. Considering what happened in Cambodia, Rwanda, Kenya and Zimbabwe gives us an idea of what internal conflict is. Remembrance can traumatize people and as a result the important aim of learning from the past can disappear (Winter and Sivan 1999: 271). On the other hand, people think that remembrance is essential and want the traumatic events to be recalled during the remembrance ceremonies. They believe that the strength of facing past realities and their traumatic aspects is the power to overcoming these nightmares for the individuals who lived through these shocking experiences.
Some kind of pain persists and the best way to diminish its morale destroying consequences is to share that pain with friends, neighbours and the community. Learning from the fatality of the consequences of human action is another route toward change. From this understanding, King emphasizes that war will only be avoided in the future if its horror and suffering is not forgotten‘
(1998: 1). In this context, the underscored aspect of remembrance recalls all the past traumatic events. Similarly, people need to learn and have an implicitly better comprehension of their past.
This is because the understanding of past inferences must be represented through details, including the shocking ones.
105 Although remembrance brings up many questions about the facts, it proves difficult to reconcile these questions positively if we consider the negative emotions which may be conveyed by the memories of the past. When remembering, both the reality of the occurrence and its destructive aspects can be reviewed, with the aim of reducing the negative impacts. Furthermore, despite the fact that unforgettable realities exist, the expected functions of remembrance would not be highlighting only what happened but also drawing some good lessons from the experiences. The dual aspect of memorials contains both sadness and goodness. This reveals the realities of recalling memories but it is possible to reduce the harmful aspect of remembrance (Roth 2001:106). In the same vein, the best safeguard of remembrance cannot be confused with the re- wounding aspects of its details.
Before completing this point, it is relevant to highlight the fact that the social environment in which the population views genocide memorials makes them think of the memorials as consuming symbols, which is biased by their situation of dire poverty (Nkunzumwami 1996:
172-176). This aspect cannot be disconnected from the situation in which Rwandans live, because poverty is defined as a factor that marginalizes human beings by generating social exclusion. In reality, poverty does not allow the poor to participate fully in social, political, cultural or leisure activities (Giddens 2001: 310-342, Haralambos, Holborn and Heald 2004:
236-289).
The United Nations has proposed a definition of poverty. In 1995, the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action: World Summit for Social Development, stated that poverty is ‗a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, shelter, education and information‘. Indeed, all these depend not only on income but also on access to different services. The environment in which people are living lack these basic needs and this continually reminds them of what happened. There is a mixture of severe memory: the atrocious death of their relatives, the national and international community that did not protect their relatives, neighbours that were unable to protect them or participated in killings, children, husbands, wives that betrayed families and neighbours and
106 participated in killings. There is a range of emotions linked to the past memory with various interpretations.