GOOD
Forgiveness
Hands That Once Killed Are Hands That Now Serve BY GARETH GWYN
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Jean Claude’s journey illuminates how empathy for perpetrators can play a vital role in post-conflict collective reconciliation.
I was listening to Jean Claude share his experience as a perpetrator in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It’s been over 25 years since the atrocities, yet he spoke to them with a memory as clear as if it were yesterday. I was curious to learn how he almost instantaneously transitioned from friendship and love with his family and neighbors to being able to kill them, and how he then reckoned with his actions, moving through the reconciliation process.
“During the genocide, did you ever feel or hear your intuition speaking doubts to you that what you were doing might not be aligned with your integrity?” Jean Claude responded without hesitation, “Yes.” “What allowed you to ignore this voice and guidance inside you?” Jean Claude continued, “The Hutu militia held regular pep rallies. So as soon as my doubt would start to creep in, it wouldn’t be long before we’d gather as a group and start singing songs about our superiority and victory. The adrenaline would rise, and my body would fill with justifications as to how what we were doing was righteous. It gave me waves of energy, my intuition drowned out again, and I could continue killing.” It was part of the wartime reality that any Hutu not in compliance would be murdered immediately alongside the Tutsi. Thus Jean Claude’s environment had him perfectly poised to control him through fear of death and viscerally-induced group think. Does this context justify Jean Claude’s actions as okay? No. However, taking the time to empathize with what he was
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experiencing can help us in radical ways to understand humanitarian values. Doing the work to process our grief and empathize with the context of those we’ve deemed as perpetrators is crucial, yet we can still hold them accountable for behaviors. We can also create and maintain boundaries with them in the future. The truth and reconciliation process implemented in Rwandan prisons post-genocide gave perpetrators who were ready the chance to face the magnitude of what they had done. Jean Claude spoke to his experience about the intensity of owning his actions. The pain arising in his body upon seeing who he had become produced the deepest grief he had ever met. Repentance brought him closer to fully feeling himself as he somatically felt the pain of his impact on others. After the inner reckoning, Jean Claude got to a place where he was ready to reach out to those he had hurt. One of these survivors was Claudet. During the genocide, Jean Claude had shot her in the shoulder and threw her into the latrine alongside a pile of dead babies. Jean Claude approached Claudet seven times, bringing his whole family with him, before she felt ready to receive his remorse. Eventually his persistence and sincerity were received by her, and they ultimately developed a deep friendship. Claudet has her own distinct story of liberation within this interdependent reconciliation. The experience of a survivor is clearly a different type of pain to process, yet the challenge presented here is to lean into understanding the
