A/HRC/37/55 process allowed them to develop sufficient trust to enter into a new economic relationship: a mortgage on Solms’s farm provided credit for the workers to acquire an adjacent farm that operates as a consortium with Solms’s farm. With the increased income, they improved their housing situation and the educational opportunities of their children. 38 The cultural initiatives provided the opportunity for all to come to terms with the history of exploitation and contributed to the restoration of dignity. 54. Listening to and telling stories opens the path to empathy with the suffering of one’s enemy, which is another important step towards reconciliation. This “involves the ability to recognize the physical, material and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves ‘inside the skin of the other’”.39 55. The capacity for empathy is particularly rare during violent conflicts and in their aftermath, both on the side of perpetrators and of victims. An example of cultural initiatives that have engaged in the difficult work of grappling with these questions is the play Hidden Fires.40 In this play, the same actors portray the stories of Muslims victimized during the horrific 2002 communal violence in Gujarat, India, as well as Hindu rioters describing their own brutal acts. Through theatrical turns, the audience is invited to acknowledge the harms committed and the role of the Government, media and police in creating the conditions that gave rise to the atrocities, and to empathize with all the suffering which was inflicted. While not offering guarantees, better understanding of the impact of past violations contributes to making the recurrence of human rights abuses less likely. 3. Acknowledging and addressing injustice 56. Processes of reconciliation seeking to re-establish relationships of trust in a sustainable manner cannot ignore questions of responsibility and accountability. Conciliatory processes can include judicial processes that focus on prosecution and punishment for perpetrators. However, they often also emphasize reparative, historical, symbolic and restorative justice, which encourages individuals and groups to acknowledge and take responsibility for the injuries they have caused and to restore or create agreedupon cultural, legal and moral frameworks for moving into the future. 57. Through processes of truth telling, acknowledgement, memorializing and artmaking, people and societies can begin to restore the dignity of those whose rights have been violated, contributing to the overall sense of justice. They can prevent the additional assault to victims’ dignity when injuries remain unacknowledged and atrocities remain hidden. This work is sometimes undertaken on a symbolic level, for example, when a perpetrator acknowledges responsibility by drinking a bitter tea from a gourd, as has been done among the Arusha people in the United Republic of Tanzania.41 Artistic and cultural activities can also be designed to support and challenge perpetrators and help others to acknowledge harms done in their names and to take action to avoid repetition of such violence. 58. As an illustration, in 2008, two national-level formal ceremonies in Australia addressed aspects of the divide between descendants of settlers and indigenous peoples. The ceremonies included the performance of a traditional Aboriginal “welcome to the country” at the opening of Parliament and a public apology from the Prime Minister for government policies that resulted in great suffering and in the decimation of indigenous peoples and cultures. Hundreds of thousands across the country witnessed the apology. These ceremonies allowed for the symbolic inclusion of Aboriginal people and the 38 39 40 41 12 M. Solms, “Land ownership in South Africa: turning neuropsychoanalysis into wine”, TEDxObserver Talks, 1 April 2011, available on YouTube. T. Nhat Hahn, Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life (Bantam, 1992), p. 82. See www.theaterofwitness.org. See also R. Margraff, “Hidden Fires: Peaceworks’ invocation as Žižekian response to the Gujarat massacres of 2002”, in C. Cohen, R. Varea and P. Walker, eds., Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflilct, vol. I, Resistance and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence (New Village Press, 2011). H.P. Gulliver, Disputes and Negotiations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (New York, Academic Press, 1979).