Voices from Rwanda Forgiveness in the TrencheS
It’s been 16 years since a horrific genocide tore like a forest fire through Rwanda, leaving over 800,000 dead in 100 days. Faced with overcrowded prisons and a 150-year backlog of untried killers, in 2003 Rwandan President Paul Kagame began releasing elderly, sick, and “common” (not ringleaders) Hutu killers and looters who confessed their crimes. To date approximately 60,000 have been released, returning to their villages where many now live next door to their Tutsi victims and their families. Many of these have been tried in gacaca court, the traditional people’s court. Out of the ashes has risen a small but spreading movement of forgiveness and even reconciliation. The process is slow, ongoing, and extremely costly for both victims and perpetrators. The Rwandan people bravely offer up their nation as a learning laboratory for reconciliation, helping the whole world come to grips with such questions as “What is forgiveness?” and “How do we forgive?” Here we assemble a handful of those voices — victims, pastors, researchers — and ask what the Western church can learn from Rwanda’s tragedy and triumphs.
PRISM 2010
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