From: joachim omolo ouko
News Dispatch with Father Omolo Beste
SUNDAY, APRIL 6, 2014

As Rwanda prepares to mark 20th anniversary of genocide to morrow, Monday April 7, 2014, Rev Fr Joseph Healey, a Maryknoll priest has shared with News Dispatch with Father Omolo Beste a touching and challenging story of forgiveness and mercy – click here to read the story http://www.afriprov.org/index.php/african-stories-database.html?task=display2&cid[0]=598

The day reminds us of 20 years since Hutu extremists killed between 800,000 and 1 million people — mostly Tutsis — in a devastating slaughter. The French government has announced it is pulling out of the commemoration, following an accusation by the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, that France participated in the mass killings in 1994. Mr Kagame has previously made similar allegations, which France has denied.

The French foreign ministry said the remarks went against reconciliation efforts between the two countries. French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira says this is the time Rwanda should put emphasis on reconciliation, forgiveness and healing.

Speaking to the French-language weekly news magazine Jeune Afrique, Mr Kagame denounced the “direct role of Belgium and France in the political preparation for the genocide”. Rwanda was a Belgian colony until 1962.

The violence was triggered by the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu who was killed in a plane crash on 6 April 1994. It came to an end after Mr Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) – a Tutsi-led rebel group – defeated government troops in July that year.

His party still controls the government and has long accused France – an ally of Mr Habyarimana’s government at the time – of aiding the genocide. In recent years there has been a thaw in relations between the two countries, with a visit by Mr Kagame to Paris in 2011 and the establishment by France of a genocide investigation unit.

Humanly speaking it is not easy to forgive someone who killed members of your family. I am particularly touched by the mercy and courage of Iphigenia Mukantabana whose husband and five of her children were hacked and clubbed to death by marauding Hutu militias. Among her family’s killers was Jean-Bosco Bizimana, Mukanyndwi’s husband.

In Mukantabana’s heart, the dead are dead, and they cannot come back again, that is why she was able to forgive the killers. I must admit that this gesture has challenged and humbled me, especially in forgetting and forgiving everything she lost, everything she witnessed.

Women and girls were raped, and she saw it all. The men and boys were beaten and then slaughtered. The most challenging part is that today as I write this story, Mukantabana shares her future and her family meals with Bizimana, the killer she knew, and his wife, her friend Mukanyndwi.

Bizimana did spend seven years in jail. He then went before a tribal gathering, part of a return to traditional ways by the new government in 2002 with Rwanda’s justice system unable to cope and process hundreds of thousands of imprisoned perpetrators.

The government decided that the master planners and worst perpetrators would face formal justice. But lower-level killers were allowed to publicly confess and apologize to the families of their victims at gacaca courts, where elders would hear grievances and decide on the punishments.

I am just wondering whether this can happen in Kenya following the 2008 post election violence where culprits are still at large. Unlike Rwanda, in Kenya a group of individuals and civil society organizations are filing a petition in the Constitutional and Human Rights Division of the High Court of Kenya seeking to compel the Government of Kenya to address the sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) that occurred during the 2007/2008 post-election violence.

The petitioners claim that the government failed to properly train and prepare police to protect civilians from sexual violence while it was occurring. In its aftermath, the police refused to document and investigate claims of SGBV, leading to obstruction and miscarriage of justice. Furthermore, the government denied emergency medical services to victims at the time, and failed to provide necessary care and compensation to address their suffering and harm.

Although ultimately, the petitioners want the government to publicly acknowledge and apologize to the victims for their failure to protect the rights of Kenyans; to provide appropriate compensation, including psycho-social, medical, and legal assistance to the survivors; to investigate the sexual violence and prosecute those who are responsible; and to establish a special team with some international staff within the Department of Public Prosecutions to ensure that such investigations and prosecutions are credible and independent, I am just reluctant whether the government of Kenya is willing to apologize in public.

Like Rwanda, perpetrators targeted women and girls, in particular, for sexual and gender-based violence, including rape, defilement, gang rape, forced pregnancy, deliberate transmission of HIV or any other life threatening sexually transmitted disease, sexual assault, and other indecent acts. While the vast majority of sexual crimes were committed against women and girls, men, too, were subjected to SGBV including forcible circumcision, sodomy, and penile amputations.

In Rwanda the blame is squarely based on the extremist Hutu government at the time and on vile radio broadcasts that urged on the killers during the 100-day slaughter. They were giving instructions all the time that was from the government.

For Mukantabana, despite his confession and apology, reconciliation would not have happened unless she had decided to open her heart and accept his pleas. She is a Christian and she prays a lot. Still this is not enough reason to forgive unless you truly touched by the message of Jesus Christ on forgiveness.

Today, Rwanda is an African success story. It has one of the fastest economic growth rates in the region, one of the lowest crime rates. Now no one talks about Hutus or Tutsis. There is Rwanda- there are Rwandans, and the common interest.

Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail obolobeste@gmail.com

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