April 7 2006
BOOKS-RWANDA:
Forgiving the Unforgivable
Lisa Söderlindh
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 6 (IPS) – Exactly 12 years ago on Apr. 6, 1994,
Immaculée Ilibagiza, a young Rwandan Tutsi woman, left the university
campus in the city of Butare to spend the Easter holidays with her
family.
Later that day, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed,
together with Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu president of Burundi, when
his plane was shot down as it was coming in to land at Kigali
airport. The incident was the final spark to a powder-keg of ethnic
tensions dating back to colonial times between the dominant Tutsi
minority and the majority Hutus.
Over the next three months, Ilibagiza’s mother, father and two of her
three brothers were killed in the genocide, as were some 800,000
others. Ilibagiza herself spent 91 days hiding in a closet-sized
bathroom while rampaging mobs outside turned Rwanda into a sea of
blood.
During her ordeal, Ilibagiza says she found the power of faith and
vowed to write about what she had gone through — if she lived to see
the dawn again.
“I think there is a greater story that helps me tell my story,”
Ilibagiza told IPS at the New York launch of her book, “Left to Tell:
Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust”, which has hit the
best-seller lists here. “God spared me my life and gave me the
strength to bear the pain of being left to tell.”
“I am praying every day that that my message will help build the
world, rather than tear it apart,” she added.
As noted by Armenian researcher Vahakn N. Dadrian in his study of
20th century genocide, German colonisers in the late 19th century
helped cultivate different racial profiles by depicting the Tutsi as
the overlords, endowed with physically superior traits, and
portraying the Hutu as mere peasants.
The rift deepened further with the arrival of the Belgians in the
early 20th century, who introduced an ethnic identity card to more
easily distinguish between the two groups.
With the Hutu revolution of 1959-1962 and subsequent upheavals in
1962-1964 came the final institutionalisation of the Hutu-Tutsi
conflict. The existing arrangement of power relations reversed — the
Tutsi minority ceased being the dominant group and the Hutu majority
rose to power.
Ilibagiza says she came from a home were racism and prejudice were
completely unknown, and the terms “Tutsi” and “Hutu” were never used.
“All I knew of the world was the lively landscape surrounding me, the
kindness of my neighbours, and the deep love of my parents and
brothers,” she said.
But her world was ripped apart with the eruption of Africa’s worst
genocide in modern times. Top government officials from the ruling
Movement National pour la Révolution et le Development party played a
direct role in the slaughter, as did the ignorance of the global
community and the failure of international peacekeeping operations,
with the U.N. Assistance Mission in Rwanda fatefully deciding to
reduce its troop strength from 2,000 to 270.
Only in mid-May 1994 did the U.N. Security Council reverse its
decision, but few peacekeepers arrived before the massacres ended in
July, when the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front took power through a
military campaign.
For three months, militia members, armed forces and civilians freely
carried out appalling atrocities, predominately against the Tutsi
ethnic minority. Ilibagiza recalls days of horror during which she
and seven other women huddled in the darkness of the bathroom in a
local pastor’s home, while hundreds of Hutus hunted for them.
“Marked for execution because we were born Tutsi,” she asked herself
how history had managed to repeat itself after the world’s powers
vowed “never again” in the wake of the Nazi atrocities of World War
Two.
Trembling on a path lined alternately with fear, despair, anger, and
burning hatred, Ilibagiza finally found a place in the bathroom to
call her own: “A small corner of my heart,” where she spoke with God
and found some measure of peace.
“[The Hutu perpetrators’] minds had been infected with the evil that
spread across the country, but their souls weren’t evil,” she
believes, resolving that forgiveness was all she had to offer.
The day she faced the man who had killed her family, Ilibagiza
recalls being “overwhelmed with pity… the evil had ruined his life
like a cancer in his soul. He was now the victim of his victims,
destined to live in torment and regret.”
Twelve years on, the message of love and forgiveness is still
Ilibagiza’s answer, and the wish of an awakening among people, “for
them to see that they are needed”.
Nearly two-thirds of the Rwandan population currently lives below the
poverty line, she notes. “We need doctors, homes for survivors, and
therapists that can help people who went through the genocide,”
Ilibagiza told IPS.
On an economic level, progress has been made over the last decade,
but spiritually, “People are not healed. The wounds from the machetes
[the most widely used weapon during the genocide] are still open,”
she said.
There are some 600,000 orphans in the country, many of whom are
forced to live in the streets without adequate food or shelter.
HIV/AIDS is another major problem, partly due to the widespread rape
perpetrated during the genocide.
Yael Danieli, co-founder of the International Society for Traumatic
Stress Studies, said at a recent U.N. forum on the genocide that
helping society recover from such a terrible event requires attention
from both the local and international communities.
“Unless we prevent by healing the aftermath of genocide, the wounds
will not only fester within the generation for a lifelong legacy, but
fester from generation to generation,” he said.
Ilibagiza believes that the complex underlying causes of the
explosion of violence in 1994 are still barely understood. “The root
of the genocide has yet not been uprooted. Why, I believe it can
happen again — in any country.” (END/2006)