On the island of Bougainville, reconciliation is as important as punishment in the judicial process.
By Fr. Cyril Hally
Northeast of Australia lies the island of Bougainville, a tropical land of about 200,000 inhabitants and considerable strife. Bougainville became part of Papua New Guinea in 1973, but it sought independence as its own republic. The result was a violent successionist uprising against the Papua New Guinea government by the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA). This war raged from the late 1980s until a peace accord was signed in 1998. This led to greater autonomy for Bougainville, but the two sides have not fully implemented the peace process, although progress has been made.

At one point during the crisis in Bougainville, John Momis, the governor of Bougainville, invited me to dinner in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea’s capital city. Two other guests had come from Bougainville, hoping to prevent a war crimes trial of both Papua New Guinea Defense Force personnel and BRA members who were guilty of atrocities.

I noticed that one of the men from Bougainville had a fresh scar on his right cheek. He told me he favored closing a Bougainville mine because of the ecological damage and wanted greater political freedom for Bougainville. But he was opposed to using violence to achieve these goals.

One night he was called out by whom he suspects were BRA members who disagreed with his tactics. When he refused to join them he was shot at—the explanation for the scar.

He then told me about the Bougainville justice system. Our Western legal system is mainly concerned with identifying the perpetrator of a crime and punishing that person. The result of such a trial is both a winner and a loser. In Bougainville’s culture, this would lead to prospects for further violence between wantoks (clans) connected to the crime.

But by tradition, Bougainville has a process for establishing reconciliation not only between the victim and perpetrator, but also among their relatives. The process involves the victim telling the truth about what happened.

This begins the personal healing process and is strengthened by a sympathetic and compassionate public hearing of the story. In this atmosphere of mutual trust, forgiveness, repentance and restitution can take place. The result of this process is a new relationship. Using this process, the victim is transformed, my friend concluded.

Healing For All
This Bougainville tradition makes sense because a crime or injury is never a purely personal matter. A crime is a social reality involving many people, all of whom have rights, emotions and memories, who need to be healed. “Forgive and forget” is not always possible. Memories, by definition, persist.

For example, there was a story circulating in the media about a South African policeman, known for torturing people, who had fled to Australia after the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up to deal with the tragedies created by that nation’s apartheid system.

The policeman eventually returned to South Africa to confess what he did because of his memories of one victim. Once when the policeman was torturing a man, the victim said to him, “Can you not be human like me?” The policeman could not forget what the man had meant by this statement: “You are acting inhumanely.”

When the policeman confessed, he disclosed the names of his victims and his crimes against them. His disclosures were healing for the victims’ relatives, but also for himself. Almost always the healing process is initiated by the victim. That’s because God in his compassion reaches out to the vulnerable who know they need help. God gives them the courage to publicly tell the truth. Recognizing the truth may in turn provoke repentance on the part of the perpetrator of injustice.

Turning Wounds Into Cures
Healing occupies a singular and prominent place in the history of religious experience.

When Jesus began his public ministry, “He traveled throughout Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom, and healing every kind of illness and infirmity among the people” (Matthew 4:23-25).

In turn, “He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out unclean spirits and to cure every kind of illness and infirmity” (Matthew 10:1).

In the context of the healing of memories, the Gospel accounts of the apparitions of Jesus after the Resurrection are particularly worthy of reflection.

Luke and John show us the disciples huddled together, full of anxiety and fear. Their leader had been executed as an enemy of the state. They could suffer the same fate. Much worse, they had the awful memory of abandoning Jesus to the temple guards and fleeing for their lives. Peter could never forget that he had publicly denied his master.

Nor could the Risen Christ forget the terrible ordeal of his passion and death, including desertion by his followers in his hour of need. The Risen Christ retained the wounds on his hands, feet and side.

Thomas was absent when Jesus appeared the first time. He would not believe the other apostles when they told him that Jesus had risen. Only if he could touch the wounds would he believe. Jesus does not rebuke him for his lack of faith. Instead He not only heals his memory He transforms him.

The wounds, reminders of the suffering of Jesus, became healing wounds, instruments of reconciliation.

We have lived through a century of unprecedented violence, resulting in millions of individuals who carry terrible memories. We also live in an age where skilled people engage in trauma counseling, listening compassionately to terrible stories, helping restore the dignity of suffering people.

Often their healed memories transform them in turn into counselors, completing was is lacking in Christ’s afflictions, as St. Paul tells us.

In his apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris, Pope John Paul II shared his thoughts about Paul’s words:

“Declaring the power of salvific suffering, the Apostle Paul says, ‘In my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church’ (Colossians 1:24).

“These words seem to be found at the end of the long road that winds through the suffering which forms part of the history of man and which is illuminated by the Word of God. These words have the value of a final discovery, which is accompanied by joy.”