A cross-community board sees the possibility for establishing a South African-style truth-recovery process in the North, writes Patsy McGarry
A report published in Belfast has recommended that all organisations and institutions engaged in the conflict in the North should "acknowledge responsibility for past political violence".
Those institutions should include "the British and Irish states, political parties and loyalist and republican paramilitaries", it said. Their acknowledgement would be "the first and necessary step towards the potentiality of a larger process of truth recovery," the report said.
If this was to take place then serious consideration should be given to "the establishment of an appropriate and unique truth-recovery process" and that a team with local and international expertise should be set up to examine the feasibility of such an exercise.
The report was prepared by the 19-member cross-community board of the Healing Through Remembering Project, set up last year by NIACRO (Northern Ireland Association for the Resettlement of Offenders) and VSNI (Victim Support Northern Ireland). That followed consultation with South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In February 1999 Dr Alex Boraine, deputy chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, met members of NIACRO and VSNI, after which they published All Truth is Bitter in February 2000.
Following that, it was decided to set up the Healing Through Remembering Project, which was launched last October "to identify and document possible mechanisms and realisable options for healing through remembering for those affected by the conflict in and about Northern Ireland".
Its report and recommendations were presented at a press conference in Belfast yesterday. Among its other main recommendations were that an annual "day of reflection" take place as a universal declaration of reconciliation, acknowledgement and recognition of the suffering of so many as a result of the conflict in the North.
It further recommended that "a permanent living memorial museum" be set up to keep memories alive; increase public awareness of the impact of the conflict; provide a diverse account of the conflict; and ensure lessons are learned.
It also recommended a storytelling process, to be known as "testimony", in which those who wish to do so may recount their experiences of the conflict and whose stories would be collected.
And it recommended that a network be set up which would "link the diverse forms of commemoration and remembering work and that a "healing through remembering" initiative be established to take responsibility for the implementation of the report's recommendations.
The project's board invited submissions on ideas as to how healing might be achieved in the North. By April deadline it had received 108 such submissions.
In its summary, the report concluded: "There is no single treatment for the healing process. Processes of remembering, reflecting, informing and educating must be sustained for another generation at least." This would be "a painful and difficult task" but "should not paralyse us and prevent us from moving on".
It concluded: "Our society as a whole will need to grasp the opportunity of remembering in a constructive way, to enable us to move into a new future built on a shared acknowledgment of the past."