"How reliable are the mass media’s stories and images of yesterday let alone of the more remote past? Only by rigorously cross-checking different sources of public or cultural memory might one reach a point that is reasonably balanced and accurate – an exercise in triangulating memory’s ever shifting terrain. This, of course, is the essence of positive revisionist history (rather than its negative counterpart, in which one must beware the hidden agendas of politics, ideology, class, gender, and religion.) The notion of a right to memory is, therefore, fraught with difficulty. Whose memories are being sought? How are they to be (re)constructed? How can their veracity, integrity, and credibility be guaranteed? And, in today’s information-sharing societies, what are the relationships between the right to memory, the right to information, and the right to communication?
In Cambodia, a cultural unwillingness not to speak ill of the past is confronted by the extreme discomfort of survivors of the Pol Pot regime that killed 1.7 million (one sixth of the population). While the Cambodian government pursues reconciliation based on the political expediency of amnesty, the people’s right to communicate their stories stands precariously on their inability to recover the truth of what happened. In Uruguay a freedom of information law passed in 2008 provides the legal framework for public access to a vast quantity of secret state information pertaining to the country’s military dictatorships. The law clearly stipulates that there can be no restrictions when it comes to investigating violations of human rights. In South Africa, after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had completed its work, the essential question was how to generate the will to form restorative relationships that could tackle resentment, bring economic restitution, and forge new political structures that were just and equitable. Restorative relationships require coming to terms with memories that others might wish to forget.
In this respect, a litmus test for a right to memory is how it might be used to transcend traumatic events in ways that overcome hatred, fear, guilt, and revenge. How might a right to memory contribute to a more peaceful and sustainable future? And a litmus test for political, social and cultural responses to the questions at the heart of public memory is how critical and balanced they are when issues of power, privilege, and impunity haunt the present. As Paul Ricoeur has pointed out, ‘The duty of memory is the duty to do justice, through memories, to an other than the self.’" (Editorial, page 2)