1) What is the potential of truth commissions in helping people and communities recover from mass, systematic violence? What are the potential problems or limitations of truth commissions with respect to this goal? Address this set of questions by drawing on the work of three of the following authors: Wole Soyinka, Michael Ignatieff, Aryeh Neier, Edwidge Danticat, Primo Levi ("The Memory of the Offense?, Roger Cohen, or Gerald Prunier (in conversation with Fergal Keane). Your answer should include an explanation of what truth commissions are and how they have varied in different places and times.
             I decided to cite the works of Aryeh Neier, Primo Levi, and Roger Cohen. Each author revealed different aspects of truth commissions, their potentials and limitations in assisting the victims and communities recover from mass, systematic violences. In Levi's, The Memory of Offense, light is shed on the methodical human memory of the victims and victors themselves when it acts as a buffer against revealing the "truths?of violences bestowed upon them. In the case of Neier's, Rethinking Truth, Justice, and Guilt after Bosnia and Rwanda, truth commissions were severely limited due to their inability to attain documentary evidence to indict the violators of human rights and furthermore, the impossibility to obtain custody and to bring to court many of the principal defendents. Lastly, Cohen's, Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo, exploit in detail a government's deceiving propagandas and operational containment from the outside world.
             "The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even grow, by incorporating extraneous features.?(Levi,p.23) One of the major setbacks truth commissions face is recalling the memories of extreme experiences, whether they be the sufferers or the inflictors. Those that suff...