LET US REPAIR THE HARM!: INCLUDING HISTORICAL HARM

It is fair that any victim can seek redress at any time in their life, so the right to claim should not expire while they are alive. Nor should it expire during the next generation, so that if they die, their heirs can also claim. If the harmed party is a collective, it is fair that a claim may be made as long as any member of it is alive and during the next generation. Because it is not advisable to make it any easier for abuses to go unpunished.

Read “Let us repair the harm caused”

But what do we do about harm committed prior to that period?

If the abuser is a natural person, they will usually have died after that period, unless they are Methuselah. But this may not be the case for legal persons, especially states, religious organizations, and centuries-old educational institutions.

Read LET US REPAIR THE HARM!: Religious organizations as well

If those entities committed major abuses in the past (such as genocides, imperialist conquests, slavery, torture, rape, land theft, other human rights violations, discriminatory and unjust laws, etc.) for which they were not held accountable, it is only fair that they cleanse that past in the following ways:

• 1. By offering APOLOGIES AND CONDEMNING the harm caused.
  2. By creating MEMORIALS, such as monuments or museums, preferably in the places where the atrocities were committed, to honor the victims.
  3. By preserving HISTORICAL MEMORY so that those horrors are not repeated, in three ways:

• • • In those memorials.

• • • In education—both at school and university in the case of crimes committed by states and educational institutions, and in religious education when the perpetrators were religious organizations. This includes adequately informing students about the wrongdoing committed and then expressing condemnation.

• • • By raising awareness so that they are not repeated, through the media, conferences, events, religious celebrations, etc.

4. By helping NGOs that fight against those evils.

A good model to follow is Germany regarding the atrocities committed during the Third Reich.

And importantly: let us not apply double standards, such as condemning the Nazi Holocaust but not doing so with genocides committed by the group we identify with—for example, the United States, Spain, Great Britain, the Kingdom of Aragon/County of Barcelona, China, Christians, Muslims, Mongols, communists, etc. And even less should we prohibit condemnation of genocide, as happens in Turkey with the extermination it committed against Armenians and other ethnic groups, where even merely affirming the existence of that genocide is punishable by imprisonment.

Read LET US LIVE WITHOUT HARMING! Let us be impartial and not apply double standards

Another way of applying “one rule for us and another for others” is to adopt a victim mentality regarding historical moments when the country or ethnic group we identify with was conquered or oppressed, yet to feel proud and glorious when it did the same to others.

Let us be noble, making peace with the past with an upright, principled, and impartial stance, fully independent of the group or groups with which we identify. To do so, it is necessary above all to be an individual rather than part of the crowd.

Read LIVING WITHOUT HARMING: Let us not follow the herd to do harm

Read HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT HARMING? Let us avoid harmful gregariousness

Read FOR A WORLD WITHOUT HARM: Let us be open-minded

Thank you for sharing if you believe this message helps create a fairer world with fewer abuses.