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Research Journal of the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka- Rohana 12, 2020

feelings of community. Addressing them is very important at the transitional justice
phase of conflict resolution (Bloomfield, 2003). The transitional justice paves the

way for healing the war-affected people and also people who are responsible for war
crimes. But in the context of Sri Lanka that was not successful due to the lack of

proper mechanism.

Another essential step of the reconciliation process is truth-seeking. If transitional
justice step were a success, the truth-seeking process could be achieved easily.

However, these steps have also not been successful. The government established the

Lesson Learned and Reconciliation Commission to address these issues. Mainly,
there is a need to understand and address war memories to engage in a meaningful

process of reconciliation. The government is not concerned about easing the war
tension created through war memories. The War memory has been defined as

emotional depictions of war experiences that carry along in the minds and lives of

the war victims. They encompass personal and collective memories of war
experiences.

The Collective Memory is defined by Halbwachs, (2002) as the shared pool of

information held in the memories of two or more members of a group. Collective
memory can be shared, passed on and constructed by a group (Burke, 1989) it can

also refer to the collectively shared representations of the past by community

members (ibid). The collective and individual memory has been memorialized from
the ancient period up to now (Colman, 1992). Memorialization is generally referred

to as the process of preserving memories of people or events. It can be a form of
address or petition or a ceremony of remembrance or a commemoration. The act of

remembering can be considered as a tangible framework for memorialization.
Keeping actual items for the recollection of the past memories within popular

consciousness is a memorialization (Pierre, 2008).

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