Reconciliation doesn't mean anything to people if you ignore their pain

James Smith

The Aegis Trust project aims to build permanent centres both on the existing memorial site at Gisozi and also at Nyamata and Ntarama.

"They don't want the world to forget what happened here," project co-ordinator, James Smith, told BBC World Service.

"And yet the world has forgotten. People are still standing over the remains of their relatives and yet nobody is taking any notice."

Reconciliation

James and Stephen Smith are planning to set up the memorial centres over the sites where around 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were killed in the genocide.

Rwanda is still recovering from the genocide

The project emerged from the success of the brother's Beth Shalom Holocaust Memorial Centre near Nottingham in the UK.

Drawing on the lessons learnt from this internationally acclaimed educational centre, they plan to build memorials in Rwanda that document the genocide and give survivors the opportunity to share their experiences.

"There are people who have lost their families, who have been raped and mutilated," James Smith told the BBC's Reporting Religion programme.

"Reconciliation doesn't mean anything to people if you ignore their pain.

Memorials are important because it is an acknowledgement of what happened and you rebuild from there."

Without a proper remembrance James Smith insists that there cannot be reconciliation.

"We can't talk about reconciliation and building a better future if the truth of what happened to these people is ignored," he asserted.

Remembrance

The centres are just one stage of development in the Genocide Prevention Research Initiative, known as Aegis.

Launched in 2000, it brings together academics from around the globe to research the causes of genocide and suggest prevention strategies for future intervention by governments and organisations.

In addition, the Smith brothers' believe that remembrance should not be limited to the people of Rwanda.

A special exhibition is being shown at the Beth Shalom Centre in Britain

At a special exhibition about the Rwandan genocide at the Beth Shalom Centre in Britain, Stephen Smith hopes to remind Western Europe of the slaughter.

In his view once the past has been recognised, then the business of building a better future can begin.

"I can't just shake my head and pray to God this doesn't happen again," he explained.

"Part of this is about not only saying we've got to say never again, we've got to be alert to what we've got to do to prevent its repetition to whomever, wherever, however."