VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE, WAR AND TERROR MEET TO HEAL THEIR WOUNDS

A vietnam bomb victim describing her relationship with a war veteran; a man who lot
his older brother in the September 11 World Trade Centre attack; a priest who lost
both hands in an apartheid-era letter bomb and a Senegalese women who was
genitally mutilated.

These four people were among 200 victims and relatives of victims maimed or killed
during wars, political repression and terror attacks around the globe in the past 40
years, who gathered on Robben Island to share their experiences and help each other
understand their ordeals.

The four-day Journey Towards Healing and Wholeness Conference ended on
Saturday. It was organised by the Institute for Healing of Memories in partnership with
the Desmond Tutu Leadership Academy to enable participants from different parts of
South Africa and the world to learn from one another how to deal with their
experiences.

One of the organisers, Micheal Lapsley, the Anglican minister who lost his hands to a
letter bomb sent by the apartheid police while he was working in Zimbabwe, said the
conference coincided with the fifth anniversary of the Institute for Healing of Memories
and South Africa's 10 years of democracy celebrations.

Lapsley said he had for years dreamed of bringing people from different struggles
together in one place to share their experiences and how they had dealt with them.

Among the conference's objectives was creating a safe space for sharing and
reflecting. Another was to record the experiences of participants.

The experiences related included those of someone who had spent 18 years on death
row in Uganda, a Vietnam bomb victim who established a relationship with a war
veteran, and Irish Republican Army (IRA) members who were involved in the Brighton
bombing in Britain in 1984, where then prime minister Margaret Thatcher narrowly
escaped injury.

?I think there was a profound sense of unity, deep hope and know that we were
wounded, ? said Lapsley. ?What is so unique about what we are doing is that it
concentrates on human emotion, on issues people don?t often talk about?

Rwandan genocide survivor Jean Baptiste said the event had helped him share in the
humanity of struggle. ?The conference meant we are not alone in Rwanda. I felt healing
and forgiveness was the key,? he said.

Andrew Rice spoke of his older brother David, who worked in one of the World Trade
Centre towers and died in the terror attack. ?We need to avoid retribution and learn
how to deal with (the trauma),? Rice said.

?There are so many people being traumatised and this gave me an overwhelming need
to feel empathy. We are part of a human family. We are connecting a lot with different
people.?

Today sees the start of the The F Word: Images of Forgiveness, an exhibition of
photographs and interviews with the victims and perpetrators of crimes, many of whom
attended the conference. The travelling exhibit is on display at St George's Cathedral.
Marina Cantacuzino, the British freelance journalist who created the exhibit, was
inspired to explore the idea of forgiveness in 2002 after watching a man on television
forgive the doctor who accidentally killed his son.
Her South African interview subjects include Lapsley, Duma Kumalo ? one of the
Sharpeville Six ? and Linda Biehl, whose daughter Amy was killed in Cape Town in
1993.

Cantacuzino says the intention of the exhibit is not to preach forgiveness, but to ?show
the process of forgiveness?.