RWANDA: Church Moves To Wash Off The Stains Of 1994

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Aug 31 1997 (IPS) - The church in Rwanda is fighting to wash off the stigma it suffered for turning a blind eye to the 1994 genocide in which up to one million people were slaughtered in the predominantly Christian nation.

Over 90 percent of Rwanda’s population is Christian — about 63 percent Catholic, 19 percent Protestant and eight percent Adventist.

“In fact, one can argue that the majority of the genocide perpetrators were Christians,” said Ven S’everin Ndayizeye, who is the general secretary of the Nairobi-based Council of the Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA).

Ndayizeye, whose area of operation include Rwanda, told IPS this week that a group of Rwandese clergymen were now determined to improve the tarnished image of the church by holding a series of painful exercises aimed at reconciling the country’s ba ttered Christian community.

“All dioceses have set up departments of reconciliation. They are holding seminars, inviting people from Europe, America and Africa to speak on the necessity of forgiveness and peaceful co- existence,” he said.

This movement took off in earnest after the new Anglican bishop of Kigali, Emmanuel Mbona Kolini, openly apologised on behalf of the Anglican Church of Rwanda for keeping quiet over the killings.

“The church must exhibit repentance and forgiveness for it to play a leading role in Rwanda’s recovery from the 1994 pogrom,” he told a congregation in Kigali when enthroned as the bishop of that diocese on Aug. 3.

Kolini was in exile in Lubumbasi in the former Zaire — renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo — when up to one million people, mostly minority Tutsis and moderates among the majority Hutus, were slaughtered by hardline Hutu militias.

“In fact, since 1994 we didn’t have a prominent clergyman who stood up to denounce the genocide. Now, Bishop Kolini has repented all what the church did,”said Ndayizeye. “Rwandese must stand up as a family to forget and build a new Rwanda for th e next generation.”

Before the 1994 events, the church in Rwanda colluded with the regime of late president Juvenal Habyarimana, according to Simon Nziramakenga of a Nairobi-based religious organisation, ‘Life Ministry’. However, it is during the genocide that the imag e of the clergy really took a dip because of their failure to do anything to stop it.

“We had wars before in Rwana (the first one erupted in 1959) and whenever one hid in the church, nobody huned you down in the building,” Nziramakenga told IPS. “But this time around the church colluded with the state. This is why we now need cou rageous church leaders who can stand up to any form of abuse against the Rwandese people.”

Ndayizeye said Bishop Kolini, exposed to life outside of his native country, was immune to Rwanda’s dirty politics of ethnicity. “He spent over 40 years in exile in Uganda and in the former Zaire, where he worked for 17 years as the bishop of Lub umbashi. One can therefore say that Kolini is above the petty politics of ethnicity,” he said.

But that does not mean that the bishop will have an easy ride in a country where one’s ethnic origin could mean life or death. “There are extremists on both sides of Rwanda’s ethnic divide. People who want to seek revenge,” said Nziramakenga, himself a Rwandese.

A Roman Catholic nun, now in self-imposed exile in Kenya, told IPS that some 300 priests, six bishops and more than 250 nuns had lost their lives in Rwanda “for telling the truth” since 1994.

“The Catholic church has suffered the most in Rwanda. Six priests and the Archbishop of Kigali, Vincent Nsengiyumwa, were murdered by the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1994,” she said. “And, one of the priests was cruified by the RPF soldie rs.”

The nun, a Hutu, who refused to be named for security reasons, said grenade and parafin were used to torch a church where people had taken refuge.

She said at Cyangungu Catholic mission, 500 kilometres southwest of Kigali and where she was based, no one was slaughtered. “During that period not everyone became an animal. Of course, some did. But the Tutsi and Hutu congregation at Cyangungu was able to hide some 3,000 people, including orphans, who were not slaughtered,” she recalled.

But there have been far more stories in the regional and international press about the involvement in, or at least complicity with, the 1994 killings by Christian clergy.

Religion has always played a leading role in Rwanda’s history. ‘The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience’, a study published by the Danish government last year, noted that the Catholic church worked hand-in-hand with the German and Belgian authorities during colonisat ion.

After independence there was a remarkably high degree of political intertwining between the Church and the state, the study noted. In fact, in the mid-1970s, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kigali, Vincent Nsengiyumwa, became a member of the Centra l Committee of the ruling Mouvement Republicain pour le developpement et la Democratie (MRND). He was also the official confessor to President Habyarimana’s wife and close to the ‘akazu’, an inner circle of Hutu nationalists.

Now, however, the church aims to play a different role in the tiny Central African country. Ndayizeye said he was convinced that the few vocal voices in Rwanda would be strenghtened as soon as the on-going reconciliation process picks up.

In neighbouring Burundi, with similar ethnic mix and problems as Rwanda, Christians have launched a reconciliation exercise, he said, adding: “In the capital, Bujumbura, both the Tutsi and Hutu gather together after work to seek a common ground le ading to reconciliation.”