The African Union Human Rights Memorial

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    The Memorial Project

    The African Union Human Rights Memorial Project (AUHRM) aims to preserve the memory of mass atrocities, in recognition of past suffering and in the interests of future peace and security. The African Union (AU) established in its constitutive act a commitment to continental cooperation on the basis of human rights principles, constitutionalism, and the responsibility to intervene in the case of crimes against humanity or genocide. The AUHRM will reflect a series of grave crimes committed against Africans, including the appalling case of genocide in Rwanda. Read More...

    Alem Bekagn

    “I lost many family members and friends to the Red Terror campaign. I am still traumatized by the fear and insecurity that one feels when friends are summoned and led to their death or severely tortured.”

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    The AUHRM project aims to post a wide range of articles that depict the true nature of Africa's past genocidal history.  We would like to encourage our readers to send us stories, commentaries, personal experiences that are relevant to our mission.

    Click here to read articles.

    AUHRM will be a dynamic site and will evolve in partnership with a network of groups and associations dedicated to the remembrance of atrocities in Africa. The project is still at an early stage and welcomes ideas and comments from potential partners interested in informing the development of the site and extending its reach across the continent. Please contact us at: JLIB_HTML_CLOAKING .

    Click here to view Partner organizations.

“The site of the construction has its own significance, as it is the former central prison, known as “Alem Bekagn”, which was the location of the 1936 Graziani Massacre, the execution of sixty ministers in the Government of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, and the imprisonment, torture and execution of thousands of Ethiopians during the days of the Derg Regime, especially the Red Terror atrocities of 1977-78 and thereafter. The site is therefore of historic significance for Ethiopia and we see it as our responsibility to honor the memory of the victims of such heinous acts at the Headquarters of the African Union.”

H.E Mrs. Julia Dolly Joiner

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The Unveiling Ceremony


"The Memorial places especial emphasis upon those innocent victims of abuses executed or sponsored by African states and leaders such as the Rwandan genocide, the slaughter in cold blood of the senior officials of Emperor Haile Sellassie’s government and the tens of thousands of youth wantonly slain during the Red Terror – two of the many grave crimes against human rights committed here by the military regime. Though there are no doubt the dirty hands of others in these infamous deeds in Ethiopia and Rwanda, what is being singled out for particular attention are serious crimes for which, above all, we ourselves are to blame. This is one reason why it is important that African states and governments collectively resolved to honor the memory of those lost, innocent African lives. What is being recognized at this site today is a deep moral fact about ourselves that no emergent generation of Africans can ever afford to forget."


Professor Andreas Eshete, Chairman, Interim Board of the AU Human Rights Memorial

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South Africa

Monday, 13 February 2012 23:26
Super User

District Six Museum interior

District Six ex-residents conduct a ritual of memory on the District Six site on the 44th anniversary of the day the area was declared a White Group Area, 11 February 2010. District Sixer's celebrating Heritage Day 2010
Source: District Six Museum Foundation

 

District Six was a culturally rich neighbourhood in the heart of Cape Town in South Africa that was razed to the ground after being declared a White Group Area in 1966. Over a period of twenty years 60 000 people were forcibly removed to the outskirts of the city, forced to live in group areas demarcated along racial lines.

The District Six Museum Foundation was established in 1989 and launched as a museum in 1994 to work with the memories of District Six and displaced people everywhere. It came into being as a vehicle for advocating social justice, as a space for reflection and contemplation and as an institution for challenging the distortions and half-truths which propped up the history of Cape Town and South Africa during apartheid. As an independent space where the forgotten understandings of the past are resuscitated, where different interpretations of that past are facilitated through its education, exhibitions and collections programmes, the Museum is committed to telling the stories of forced removals and assisting in the reconstitution of the community of District Six and Cape Town.

For more information please visit: http://www.districtsix.co.za/

 

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