The Politics of Remembrance

It's Remembrance Day, and every year on this day, I take the opportunity to write about Peace.

In Canada today, perhaps as well as in other places around the World, televisions will show live broadcasts of Remembrance Day Ceremonies, some provinces will have the day off work and most people will wear poppies. But who and what are we remembering?

Traditionally Remembrance Day marks the end of the first World War and reminds us again of the violence and the excessive loss of life associated with World War II. We pay tribute to our soldiers for protecting our freedom, and no doubt securing a political and economic environment which allows us to live in the comfort we do today. Increasingly we are also asked to remember the sacrifices have made in other wars, including the war in Afghanistan. We think about soldiers.

We also sometimes think about civilians. Particularly of those killed as part of the Holocaust, because in Canada we have never been the direct victims of an attack either through war or terrorism, so remembrance day only provides with an opportunity to remember those that die in service and those civilians who have died in politically relevant conflicts, where we helped to save them and the "good guys" won.

Yet, we rarely think about the civilians who have been killed in Afghanistan or in Somalia where our interventions have partially successful at best. The victims of these conflicts are not only collateral damage but they are family and community members worth no less than anyone else on this planet. It is also important to remember that even the soldiers on the other side of these conflicts are no different from our own even when their ideologies may disagree with ours, these soldiers still fight for a country they believe in and also leave families behind when they are killed.

More worrying still, on Remembrance Day no one ever speaks of the millions of people who have lost their lives through genocide and crimes against humanity. Or the people who continue to struggle to survive under repressive regimes.

In the freedom that our soldiers fought and died for we failed to stop the Rwandan Genocide and war crimes in Sudan, we continue to fail to stop the rape and murder of women and men in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and we are making little effort to remedy the global conditions which allow these atrocities to develop and persist.

So today ask yourself, who are you remembering?