Damages the country’s reputation  Rightly or wrongly countries are judged in part based upon the past; In Europe Germany is regularly judged on the basis of the Nazi’s [1] and in Asia Japan on the basis of its atrocities in World War II. [2] Any nation would be sensible to want to avoid such vilification on the basis of actions taken by one’s ancestors and the further back the less sense such vilification makes sense. Digging up past wrongs for the sake of digging is wrong simply because of the souring effect it can have on the present. If there are dark areas of the past that have been forgotten then it is best to leave them forgotten than rather than risk creating new enmities between nations. Although not an exact parallel rather similar would be the creation of the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. The Belgian colonial powers divided the population into several distinct groups where no divide had previously existed. The population was then divided through a census and identity card system introduced in 1933-4 which set individuals ethnicity. This was the root of one of the worst genocides of the twentieth century; [3] essentially through creating an enmity where none previously existed, something that could equally be done by digging up the past rather than inventing a past.  [1] Lowen, Mark, ‘Debt-laden Greeks give vent to anti-German feelings’, BBC News, 27 February 2012,   [2] Komine, Ayako, and Hosokawa, Naoko, ‘The Japanese New History Textbook controversy’, Free Speech Debate, 13 July 2012,   [3] Magnarella, Paul J., ‘Explaining Rwanda’s 1994 Genocide’, Human Rights &amp; Human Welfare, Vol.2, No.1, Winter 2002,