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Signifying Places of Atrocity

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Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death

Abstract

In the last decade of the twentieth century the world has witnessed lethal conflict that resulted in genocidal behavior,1 most notably in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Military, social, and political scientists contend that the conditions that foster these behavioral phenomena will persist if not increase in the decades to come. With the intensity of lethal conflict come massacres of noncombatants, characteristics of behavior chronicled in history and visible in prehistoric contexts. Mass graves are often a result of contemporary massacres and known to be scattered throughout both the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

War itself is changing. Traditional conflicts between armies of different nations have been replaced by the bloodiest internal and mixed conflicts. Where civilians are not accidental casualties, but the primary target of attack. Where crimes against humanity and genocide are not only a means but a purpose of the conflict. Where the minimum rules that all nations had agreed would always apply, the “laws of war,” are violated as a policy, not by accident.

—Emma Bonino, former European Commissioner of Humanitarian Affairs, May 12, 1998.

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  1. Ralph Hartley
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Hartley, R. (2006). Signifying Places of Atrocity. In: Santino, J. (eds) Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-12021-2_14

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