30 Years Since Rwandan Genocide: The Horror and the Graces

by Admin · Published July 16, 2024 · Updated July 16, 2024

By Benjamin Takavarasha – As the world witnessed a genocide in Gaza, the people of Rwanda remembered the 100-day genocide in their country which ended 30 years ago on July 15. Benjamin Takavarasha visited Rwanda and tells the story of brutal murder and the graces of reconciliation.

A few weeks before South Africa celebrated its first truly democratic elections, the Rwandan genocide broke out, lasting from April 7 to July 15, 1994. It was effectively a government trying to exterminate a section of its unarmed populace. In spite of the relatively short period of its duration, it wreaked untold havoc on the back of a much longer period of secret preparation.

The Rwanda Genocide is commemorated annually worldwide on January 27, collectively along with millions murdered in the Nazi Holocaust and in other genocides, such as those in Cambodia, Bosnia and Darfur.

As it happens, the Rwandan genocide had been predicted, if not explicitly, 12 years earlier in Our Lady of Kibeho’s public apparition. On the feast of the Assumption in 1982, Our Lady spoke with tears of rivers of blood.

During this period of around 100 days in 1994, between 500000 and 800000 people were murdered, mainly members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as moderate Hutu and Twa, killed by armed Hutu militias — sadly and incredibly as the world looked on.

The assassination of Rwanda’s long-time Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994, is generally regarded as the trigger for the genocide, but not its cause. It had apparently been planned secretly for several years. The assassination, it turned out, was carried out by a paramilitary group, Interahamwe, with full government backing and support by way of arms and logistics.

Part of the preparation towards the genocide was the sowing of hatred against Tutsis, including indoctrination of the young. The hatred, cruelty and callousness was illustrated by a chilling part of the genocide song which went “a baby snake is still a snake, kill it, too.”

Neighbour killed neighbour

The demographics in Rwanda are unusual in Africa in that there are no distinct ethnic regions, with people living side by side across the country, even speaking the same language, Kenyarwanda. But those with a genocidal agenda, like the Interahamwe, made it their business to know who belonged to which ethnicity. That is why the early days of the genocide were particularly devastating, with many unsuspecting victims killed by their once-friendly neighbours.

With people speaking the same language and being physically indistinguishable, with all the intermarriages over the years, identity books — held over from the Belgian colonial occupation that had ended 32 years earlier — were used to identify one’s tribe. Failure to produce an ID meant that one was designated as Tutsi by default — and thus were “dealt with”.

The genocide is a living reality rather than an event consigned to the pages of history. I had a lump in my throat when my volunteer guide at the sanctuary of Our Lady of Kibeho mentioned in passing that he had lost his father in his infancy — a victim of the genocide.

Immaculee Ilibagiza, the Catholic author of Left to Tell, a book on her experiences in the Rwanda genocide and its aftermath, is seen clutching a rosary next to a Zimbabwean nun on the solemnity of Our Lady of Kibeho last November. Photo: Benjamin Takavarasha

For Catholics, there is the shocking reality that many victims were killed in churches or on church grounds. The most gruesome massacre was on April 14 at the parish church of Kibeho — perhaps the devil’s payback time for Our Lady’s apparitions in the vicinity. People were slaughtered in their hundreds as they ran to seek refuge in the church, brutally killed by guns and machetes and other weapons as they were being pursued by the killers. Those who had managed to barricade themselves inside the church met an even more gruesome death as the building was set alight and they were burned alive.

In the previous rounds of mass killing of Tutsis, in 1963, 1967, and 1973, churches had been no-go areas for the killers, but in 1994 these were no longer sacrosanct.

The Kibeho church now includes a genocide memorial. On one side of the memorial are three mass graves fronted by boards on which the names of the victims are inscribed. Inside are heart-wrenching scenes: piles of bones, heads and whole skeletons. Inside the church itself are stacks of clothes of victims and their pictures, which include those of children and at least two priests.

In 2022 I visited the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz. I believed I had seen the worst of what theologians term mysterium iniquitatis (the mystery of evil), but I believe what I saw in Rwanda last year is in some ways even worse.

Sin of silence and omission

The Catholic Church, by far the country’s biggest Christian denomination with around 60% of the population, has rightly borne the criticism, largely by way of the sin of omission during the genocide, and also by its silence in its build-up. The Church was guilty of the famous dictum by Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Worse still, and unbelievably, some priests and religious actually participated in massacres. Pope John Paul II said that the Church could not be held responsible for the actions of individual members of the Church. In March 2017, however, Pope Francis asked for forgiveness for the Catholic Church’s role in the genocide. The “sins and failings of the Church and its members”, the pope said, had “disfigured the face” of Catholicism.

The shameful participation in the genocide was not restricted to some Catholic clergy. Protestants were involved as well. Immaculée Illibagiza, a survivor of the genocide who has written a well-known book on her harrowing experience, recounts the murder her brother Damascene. A pastor urged the killer to “do the business”, saying: “I am the pastor around here and I bless this killing… I bless you for ridding this country of another cockroach.”

To its credit as a nation, Rwanda has not swept its dark period of the genocide under the carpet. The National Genocide Memorial in Kigali — the final resting place of over 250000 victims of the genocide — and other memorials convey a clear message: Never Again! April 7 is a public holiday, when the president and the first lady light a flame of remembrance, which burns for 100 days.

Like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa, the purpose of the Rwandan Genocide Memorial is not to seek retribution but to serve as a springboard for healing and reconciliation.

Where to find God’s grace

St Paul says: “But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Romans 5:20-21). In that light, the genocide narratives would be incomplete without also giving account of the grace that occurred during the genocide, and especially in its aftermath. Otherwise it would be like having the Paschal Triduum ending with the crucifixion and burial of Our Lord, leaving out his glorious Resurrection.

During the genocide, many Hutus risked their lives, with some paying the ultimate price, by hiding Tutsis as they were being hunted down by the Interahamwe killers. Some were betrayed by their own families.

Immaculée Ilibagiza’s book on the genocide entitled Left to Tell talks about the harrowing deaths and her own survival. But the devout Catholic also writes about her forgiveness of the killers of her parents and siblings.

Immaculée recounts how her brother Damascene bravely faced death, telling his killer: “Today is my day to go to God. I can feel him all around us.” Immaculée, in a vivid dream one night, saw all her deceased family at peace, with Damascene telling her: “We’ll be waiting dear sister. Now heal your heart. You must love, and you must forgive those who have trespassed against us.”

Following the dream, Immaculée came face-to-face with the killer of her parents and siblings in the prison where he was being incarcerated. To the utter disbelief of the prison officer who had facilitated the encounter, she said to the killer: “I forgive you.” Turning to the prison officer, she said: “Forgiveness is all I have to offer.” Only by God’s grace could she have scaled that lofty mountain.

There are more amazing stories of grace. Fr Ubald Rugirangoga lost over 80 members of his family, including his mother, to the genocide, and more than 45000 of his parishioners were exterminated. He escaped through the Congo on foot in the middle of the night. When he left Rwanda, he made a promise to his bishop that he would return to bring healing to his people. After a pilgrimage to the Marian shrine of Lourdes, he heard Jesus tell him: “Ubald, carry your cross.”

In the aftermath of the genocide, Fr Ubald, who died in 2021, gave a beautiful witness of healing and reconciliation wherever he went. The government of Rwanda sought him out for advice on forgiveness and reconciliation as the country continues to rebuild after the devastation of the genocide.

One may think that after the experience of the genocide, Rwandans might have abandoned Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, but that has not been the case, from both statistical and anecdotal evidence. Only God’s grace could have brought this about.

The stories highlighted here constitute only a few of the many examples of the light of God’s grace, manifested through sometimes unlikely sources. The agenda of the forces of darkness has been thwarted!