I would like to share:

When the target of an activity or a struggle is building something qualitatively new and making the institute of accountability function, the spirits of anger, malice, violence and hostility to the world do not lead to this target; on the contrary, they weaken and degrade the individual and/or group striving for the target. It is essential to be conscious of DIGNITY at individual and collective levels, to restore dignity and contribute to positive structural and cultural change. 

I recall one of the most impressive encounters in my life; during my professional work experience in Rwanda (1994-98) with the target of contributing to the national efforts of building a new-quality of life and of accountability institutions. During my interview with a 11-12 years old girl named Ange (Angel), only a few months after the genocide. Once trust was built between us, she opened up and started to tell me in details how all her family was massacred in front of her eyes and afterwards she was violently raped by a group of men. I asked her – how do you want to continue? Do you want to punish those who killed your family and raped you? The answer of this child (who eventually had become a woman) was incredible; I listened to her with all my modesty, I was hardly suppressing tears and she totally sobered me up. She said: “I don’t want to revenge, because if I let that poison grow inside me, I won’t be able to live and to love; and I WANT to live, I WANT to love, I want to get married and have children. I am ready to call them to justice and make them accountable, so that they can’t do to others what they did to me and my family.” She assured me that she wanted to do that for the sake of ending impunity rather than for personal revenge. “I’m trying to push them out of my personal life, for the sake of healing my mind and spirit and in order to be able to create a new quality of life”, she said. I was so touched, I was absolutely amazed, and her words shook something in all my essence – that was the consciousness of human DIGNITY (irrespective of age, sex, ethnicity, religion, etc.) and the ability, the determination and the positive spirit of restoring that dignity even after having faced the most severe violence. 

Armineh Arakelian
1.08.2013