generalspeaking

Forgiveness? Inconceivable!

After the Rwandan genocide of 1994 when the United Nations peacekeeping troops under General Romeo Dallaire proved incapable of defending the majority Tutsi from the violent upheaval of a minority ruling Hutu administration that turned into a wholesale butchery of 800,000 people, the new Tutsi-led government sought to launch a program of reconciliation.

Those Hutu charged and arrested for their part in the slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutu underwent a healing process.

They were told that if they confessed to their crimes, and served nominal time in prison they would in due time regain their freedom. They would be able to rejoin society. They would have the opportunity to approach those of their victims still living and ask their forgiveness. After having attended government-approved sessions meant to sensitize them to the full extent of their crimes.

Mutual confessions between victims and their tormentors to aid the process of forgiveness.

The Hutu had the opportunity to explain their inhumanely base behaviour to those who would listen to them with sympathy and understanding. That they were led to do as they did. Men and women who had been kind as neighbours to one another, doing things for each other, looking out for one another, and generally behaving as well adjusted and mature human beings, who suddenly turned against the weak and the vulnerable.

In these healing sessions, participants were given the opportunity to explain to each other what had happened to turn them from reasonable and helpful neighbours to slavering beasts, willing and anxious to do their part in the Hutu-government-sponsored genocide. Clan elders, political officials and the military, aided by the media convinced them that their life-long neighbours were their enemies.

They were told that if they did not take the initiative to kill their Tutsi neighbours and friends, they could be certain their friends and neighbours had plotted to kill them. Radio propaganda was ceaseless, inciting the Hutu to riot against the Tutsi, because they were told that the Tutsi had hidden arms, and produced maps to indicate where they should strike against the Hutu.

In the words of one Hutu who had murdered his neighbour, then gone on to help others kill a mother and her five children, relatives of a man he later approached to plead forgiveness from: "Margaret was my close friend, I would lend her money as a fellow shopkeeper. We shared drinks, and I even used to carry her on my motorbike to the bank."

He was convinced by those involved in the reconciliation process that his entreaties for forgiveness would prevail, and he would be able to live in peace with his neighbours, just as he had before the genocidal war. He had his doubts and misgivings, but after his release from prison, and after his new indoctrination, he did approach his neighbour, and to his immense relief, he was forgiven.

The two men often visit one another now, speak often together of better times. They share stories and they share home-made beer, as friends. The sister of the woman he helped murder along with her children, however, refuses to accept his apology, hates him with a fiery passion. Forgiveness does not come from all those who had suffered the loss of their families.

Perhaps the idea of reconciliation is a good one; how else could people of different clans and tribes live together in a country? Those involved in the process placed survivors and perpetrators together in small groups, and encouraged them to speak with one another. They discussed the genocide, why it happened, and how it could be that neighbours could kill their friends, their neighbours, even their own family members.

It was only once full explanations were given, to try to explain to the victims how and why that conflict arose, through mass manipulation and instilling fear in the hearts of those who turned against them, that they were permitted to ask forgiveness. The National Unity and Reconciliation Commission estimated that over 350 groups of perpetrators and survivors existed across the country, attempting to come to terms with one another.

Community justice committees were set up so people could confess to their crimes and ask for forgiveness of those they harmed. There were Tutsi who had blamed innocent Hutu of taking part in the atrocities, and they were imprisoned as being guilty. Some of these people did not survive their imprisonment. So that Tutsi too had occasion to confess to a crime, and beg for forgiveness, lesser crime that it represented.

The vice-president of Rwanda's National Unity and Reconciliation Commission agrees that the country still has large areas where healing has not taken place, and people remain traumatized; it is a work in progress. Reconciliation, he says is "a non-negotiable obligation. An obligation to give ourselves hope for our old age; an obligation to leave to our children a better Rwanda to grow and live in."

What an amazingly pacific attitude. To forgive a horrendous and vicious upheaval of mutual civility resulting in a bloodbath of truly atrocious dementia. Almost a million people killed in a frenzy of hate and passion-fueled genocide. Forgive? I know I would never be able to.

Sounds idyllic in some ways; a government comprised of the wronged, forgiving those who had wronged them, and attempting a mass reconciliation, thus assisting their country to become normalized, if at all possible, and giving their people some kind of closure. Thinking for the future. Enabling themselves as a responsible government and their people to aspire and work toward a better life for all Rwandans.

Yet this same country is involved in violently fractious fighting in neighbouring Congo, where it has accused the Congolese authorities of sheltering and assisting the Hutu militias that had escaped justice from Rwanda and now marauding within Congo, victimizing Congolese Tutsi. As a result, Rwanda is supporting a Tutsi-led insurgency, bringing Congo close to all-out civil war.

Africa, can you not do so much better for yourselves?

Labels: Justice, Societal Failures, World Crises

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, November 02, 2008