[January24th]

"The fact that death is common, familiar and "up close and ugly" facilitates brutal atrocities like the Rwandan massacre. The answer is not to make the sight of death even less of a big deal."

Again, I won't disagree entirely with your point, but my point is, they don't want to forget how awful it was, and this is how they choose to remember. I don't know if their culture finds it repugnant or chilling or boring. I'm completely guessing, as are you. I'm not trying to win an argument over the dead bones of victims. I'm trying to understand the living, what their motivation is, what their thinking may be.

I would think the most effective way to make life more precious is to prove how seriously we'll punish those who would deny it to others.

[prion]

I don't know if their culture finds it repugnant or chilling or boring.

It is repugnant, whether their culture considers it so or not. I've had cultural relativism up to my back teeth, and I have no problem at all calling this wrong. It should be obvious that normalizing the public display of corpses isn't going to make people more sensitive to death.