present and the future. Even though, - and as has been revealed by the recent attack on
the monument “The Eye That Cries” in Lima, - the wounds of the past are still open, they
have not healed. Many wounds take a long time, maybe decades or generations, to heal.
It is true that compliance of the duty to remember is a symbolic form of reparation for
the victims (and their next of kin), but it is also true that the preservation of collective
memory has faced difficulties up to this date.
122. Among said difficulties, we have identified some, such as, for example: a)
memorials do not guarantee that the abuses and atrocities of the past do not happen
again; b) nor has there always been consensus on the inclusion of names of victims in
memorials (v.g., the search to identify “innocent victims"); c) nor is the historic memory
always the most acute little after the occurrence of the facts that violated human rights
(it may occur that it become more acute with the passing of time); d) the perception of
past facts is altered with the passing of time; and e) there is still not a lot of clarity with
regard to the correlationship between the memorialization of past atrocities and the
creation of a stable rule of law in democratic societies97 (in the terms of human rights
treaties).
123. The recent attack on the monument “The Eye that Cries” in Lima has not been the
only one in its kind in recent times. It has been preceded by others, and followed by
three more in the course of the present year 2008, all of equal public and notorious
knowledge. On 06.05.2008, the Belower Wald memorial, built in memory of the victims of
a concentration camp (of Sachsenhausen, at the end of the II World War), and located in
the Oriental State of Brandenburg in Germany, was attacked, as it had been previously
attacked in 2002.98 On 09.11.2008, a stone memorial in they city of Frankfurt an der
Oder, built in honor of the memory of the victims of the persecution against the Jewish
(in the destruction of a temple in the Kristallnacht en 1938) was also attacked.99
124. On 04.10.2008, the Genocide Memorial in Rwanda was also attacked. Said
memorial, - in the Gisozi Genocide Memorial Centre, in the city of Kigali in Rwanda, - had
been inaugurated in April 2004, on the tenth anniversary of the tragedy of the genocide
in Rwanda. The memorial went on to shelter the mortal remains of 250 thousand, of the
total of more than 800 thousand victims, of the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda; even so, it
has been attacked, for the first time, on 04.10.2008, during a vigil organized in memory
of the victims of the mentioned tragedy.100 Said attacks to memorials in honor of the
memory of victims of atrocities, in different parks of the world, raise questions that are
without a doubt disturbing.
125. Memories are uncomfortable, and even so we have to nurture them. Memories
chase us, and even so we have to live with them. More than that, we have to fight for
them. Feelings of hate and vengeance are hard to eradicate,101 as can be concluded from
.
Cf. S. Brett, L. Bickford, L. Sevenko y M. Rios, Memorialization and Democracy:
State Policy and Civic Action, Santiago de Chile, FLACSO/ICTJ, 2007, pp. 1-32.
97
.
DW-World.de Deutsche Welle, 06.06.2008, p. 1.
.
In: Der Spiegel, 10.11.2006, pp. 1-2.
98
99
.
100
In: Afrol News, 11.04.2008, pp. 1-2; Afriquenligne, 11.04.2008, p. 1.
.
The fact that the problem of evil has always marked presence in the trajectory of
philosophical thinking is not at all surprising (cf., inter alia, R.J. Bernstein, El Mal Radical 101
36