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[Hutu extremist] organizers of the [Rwandan] genocide, who had themselves grown up with... distortions of history, skillfully exploited misconceptions about who the Tutsi were, where they had come from, and what they had done in the past. From these elements, they fueled the fear and hatred that made genocide imaginable.(Des Forges 1999, 31)

A country’s history is often a central concern after violent, identity-based conflicts, regardless of where they occur. Why does history take on such significance? As expressed in Alison Des Forges’s explanation of Rwanda in the epigraph, all sides tend to blame cross-group hatred and ensuing conflicts, at least in part, on past injustice. Citizens of countries that have experienced such devastation can often see how political leaders distorted and then exploited national history to incite violence. As countries seek social repair, many believe that a new and more truthful history …