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Keywords: Reconciliation

  • AUSTRALIA

    Accidental white heroes of Aboriginal culture

    • Dean Ashenden
    • 25 May 2012
    5 Comments

    A Yankunytjajara elder has damned a current 'songlines' anthropological  study, declaring that 'white do-gooders need their boundaries defined'. Anthropologists, like missionaries, have a mixed record, but are credited by many Aboriginal people for doing more good than they intended or anticipated.

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  • RELIGION

    Inter-faith perspectives on justice and reconciliation in Cambodia

    • Frank Brennan
    • 16 May 2012

    'The challenge to a Christian living in a largely Buddhist society has some similarities to the challenge to a Christian living in a society where the public square is largely the preserve of those who argue and agitate with a secularist mindset.' Fr Frank Brennan SJ's address to the gathering of church and NGO workers convened in Siem Reap by the Jesuit Refugee Cambodia on 12 May 2012. 

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  • RELIGION

    Reconciliation in the homes of war criminals

    • Frank Brennan
    • 16 May 2012
    10 Comments

    As we drove through the village of Prek Sbeuv in Cambodia, the parish priest who accompanied me, Fr Jub Phoktavi, matter-of-factly pointed to Pol Pot's old house. I remain in awe of Cambodians who have been able to be reconciled, committing themselves to the common good of their nation.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Long road to the Indigenous referendum

    • John Warhurst
    • 27 January 2012
    11 Comments

    The proposed referendum follows the 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations and provides an opportunity for this Labor era to be remembered whenever the Indigenous story is told. Passing a referendum is exceptionally difficult and there is no fool-proof recipe for success.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Songs and stories of Sri Lanka's war

    • Martin Mulligan
    • 23 November 2011
    5 Comments

    After a meal cooked in the distinctive Jaffna way, the multi-talented Professor treated us to a repertoire of his own songs about his mother, victims of the 2004 tsunami, and those who had suffered during the war. Songs and stories of lived experience, translated into all the languages of Sri Lanka, might achieve more than the government's Reconciliation Commission.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The moral challenge of accepting an apology

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 26 May 2011
    6 Comments

    Often the reconciliation debate is framed around matters of the perpetrator's reaction, rather than that of the victim, who holds a superior moral currency. Could it be ever feasible for Australia's Indigenous community to countenance unconditional forgiveness?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Church implicated in Canada's reconciliation project

    • Tom Clark and Ravi de Costa
    • 02 July 2010
    1 Comment

    Survivors of the Indian Residential Schools who testified to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission complained of shocking treatment, violence and sexual abuse. Testimonies left no doubt that Canada's churches were heavily culpable.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    True memories of Bloody Sunday

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 17 June 2010
    5 Comments

    Lord Saville's report this week into a seminal moment of 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland included the admission that the killing of 14 demonstrators by the British Army was 'unjustified and unjustifiable'. True reconciliation can only ever take place with a true recounting of memory.

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  • RELIGION

    A Christian view of budgets and burqas

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 May 2010
    15 Comments

    This week's headlines have been about elections in the UK, the economy in Greece, and justice and law in Australia regarding banning the burqa and monstering asylum seekers. The way these are played out leaves little room for love, altruism, forgiveness, restoration, reconciliation and freedom, and no space for grace.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Plane tragedy prolongs Polish-Russian curse

    • Tony Kevin
    • 13 April 2010
    4 Comments

    The Devil himself could not have better orchestrated Sunday's air tragedy at Smolensk Airport. It was to be a symbolic moment of reconciliation between two neighbouring countries that have been separated by war.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Colombian clues to reconciliation

    • Leonel Narvaez
    • 04 December 2009
    2 Comments

    Following decades of socio-political conflict in Colombia, we have come to understand that a poor person with anger is twice poor; that forgiveness is a powerful way of transforming ungrateful memories into new languages; that in the face of irrational violence, victims must offer the irrationality of forgiveness.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    East Timor needs justice before reconciliation

    • Michael Mullins
    • 31 August 2009
    6 Comments

    There's good reason for East Timor to opt for a tribunal to deliver justice for past crimes. But Australia cannot expect to receive a special hearing. Our attempts to push for justice for the sake of stability would be perceived as a promotion of our own self-interest.

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