Life and death in Rwanda

by Editor · October 12, 2005

THE 100 days of deranged frenzy that saw more than half a million people murdered in Rwanda in 1994 is a disgrace not only for that country, but also for the long inactive international community�and to some extent even for the country�s Catholic Church.

The Church has acknowledged that some of its personnel were complicit in the genocide, in which militant members of the Hutu group indiscriminately slaughtered Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Some of the massacres even took place on Church property, though not always as a result of collusion by Church workers. Last year two nuns received long jail sentences in Belgium for their part in atrocities, and several Church workers have been convicted in Rwanda and Tanzania.

Yet it must also be noted that many Catholic priests and religious were killed for belonging to the wrong ethnic group or for not colluding in the genocide.

One priest who made it his business to inform the international community about the impending horrors before 1994 was Fr Guy Theunis, a Belgian missionary who had been in Rwanda since 1970.

As part of these efforts, Dialogue, the magazine he edited, quoted a range of opinions, from moderate to militant voices. Among these were quotations from the bellicose Hutu nationalist publication Kangera, a magazine the priest explicitly condemned in Dialogue as early as 1991, and whose editor is now serving a life sentence for his agitation for mass murder.

Fr Theunis, whom many in the South African Church remember as a man of integrity, now is detained in a Rwandan jail, accused of helping to fan the ethnic fires that led to the killing frenzy�the same fires his supporters say he had warned against.

Suggestions from credible sources that the prosecution of Fr Theunis�who could face life imprisonment or even the death sentence if found guilty�is politically motivated are of particular concern.

At the root of these suspicions is Fr Theunis� investigation of atrocities committed by the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Force (RPF), which now governs Rwanda but then occupied only a small part of the country.

His sudden arrest on September 6 after years of travelling undisturbed in and out of Rwanda may be an act of retaliation against a man who evidently did not take sides�other than that of the innocent victims on both ends of the conflict.

It is disturbing that Fr Theunis is now being held in a run-down prison�apparently built in the 1930s and never upgraded�among people his human rights work helped to put behind bars.

If the Rwandan authorities do have evidence which is more persuasive than that so far made public, then it should be issued immediately. If not, then the priest should be released on bail, or his case be transferred to the Belgian authorities, a move requested by Belgium�s foreign ministry.

Whatever the merits of the case, it must be expedited.

Rwanda�s Tutsis have suffered intensely at the hands of those who exercised a distressing contempt for the dignity of the human being. This suffering, however, must not serve as a pretext for the violation of human rights.

If Fr Theunis is indeed guilty of helping to instigate the genocide, then he must suffer the consequences.

If, however, his arrest and trial prove to be a cynical contrivance�and they may very well be�then Rwanda�s ruling RPF will have shown itself to be exactly what Fr Theunis had once warned it was: just as ruthless as the militant Hutus.