Abusive regimes silence civilians and rewrite the past for their own benefit. Once these regimes fall however, the truth about the past can still remain elusive. In some cases, successor democracies in attempting to be forward looking, consider it politically expedient to perpetuate this silence and revised version of history. In these contexts, it is the efforts of civil society that can stop atrocities, and their victims, from being forgotten.

Where there is little political will to face the legacies of a violent past, civil society fulfills the role, collecting stories of victims, gathering testimonies, and collecting as many facts as possible about crimes committed in the hopes that one day they will be used as evidence in front of a truth commission or court.

Civilians and human rights activists who embark in this fight against oblivion face many dangers and risk threats and attacks in their work, traveling to remote areas, speaking to marginalized communities, recording testimonies of violence, photographing victims and scenes of crimes, and speaking truth to power.

“Enough Is Enough!”

In West Papua, indigenous women documented violence and human rights violations which occurred between 1963 and 2009 during the period of its integration into the Republic of Indonesia.

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