Read the whole thing! It is truly excellent! I had the privilege of meeting both Bishop John Rucyahana and Pastor Sam Mugisha who are mentioned in the article. Both are great men and give me strong hope and encouragement for the future of Rwanda.The machete gash across the face of Emmanuel Mahuro, a 16-year-old Rwandan native, is no longer an open wound. Today, like a jagged boundary line on a map, a scar juts down the plateau of his forehead, across the bridge of his nose, and up the hill of his right cheek.
It is impossible to look into Emmanuel’s eyes without also seeing this deep-cut ravine, a natural border-line of division etched across his face, the face of Rwanda, 12 years after the genocide.
To recall April 1994 and the onslaught of the 100 days of slaughter is to unleash memories of horror: men, women, and children hacked to death by machetes; mothers forced to dash their own babies against the walls; women raped; children burned alive. The scope of brutality exceeded the capabilities of the imagination; the rate of killing exceeded even that of the Nazis. By the time it was over, more than one million Rwandans were dead--this, in a country of just 8.5 million people.
A few years later, more than 110,000 men and women guilty of these atrocious crimes swelled Rwanda’s overcrowded prisons. Now, as tens of thousands of them are released, old wounds are re-opened. The horrifying memories of these slayings haunt everyone involved, irrespective of their role--survivor, orphan, widow, or perpetrator. One cannot chart a route to restoration in Rwanda without involving all of them and without returning to the boundary lines of genocide’s wounds. If this gash across the face of Rwanda can be stitched back together, repentance and forgiveness are the only thread strong enough to bind.
Here are links to some of my previous posts relating to Rwanda and/or reconciliation:
Also, please be aware of what's currently going on in Darfur. It looks like a repeat of what happened in Rwanda in 1994. Will this be another situation in which the world does nothing until after it's too late?
I visited the Dachau concentration camp just outside of Munich Germany in August, 2004. Here is a picture I took of a memorial there which reads "Never Again".
(click for larger image)
That's the same thing pledged after the Rwandan genocide. At this point, shouldn't we be saying "Yet Again"?
No comments:
Post a Comment