Remembering Rwanda

 Photographs of Rwandan Genocide Victims

Now that I am retired I have the luxury of doing other things on Sunday mornings before driving half an hour to Trenton for worship. Some weeks I trundle off to the gym, and I can also listen to The Sunday Edition on CBC radio, often as we are making the drive.

Yesterday I heard Michael Enright's interview with former Canadian Armed Forces general Romeo Dallaire. Dallaire was in Rwanda 25 years ago, heading a United Nations Assistance Mission during what has been described as the fastest genocide in history. An estimated 800,000 Tutsi children, women, and men were murdered in 100 days and it's likely that 40,000 more died of cholera in camps. Hundreds of thousands of others were mutilated, raped, orphaned. 

Dallaire was ordered not to intervene as he anticipated the horror which would unfold. His relatively small group of soldiers were ill-equipped to do so anyway. They were fortunate to escape with their own lives. The United Nations, the United States and other countries were aware of what was unfolding and chose not to act.

Romeo Dallaire returned to Canada a broken man and while he has been an example of dignity and courage he admits he will never be the same, commenting that"I still say a large part of my soul is still in Rwanda." 

Dallaire's award-winning book on his experience is called Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.  He has reflected on the palpable sense of evil which was unleashed in Rwanda and how churches were sometimes complicit in that evil. It all but destroyed his own faith, which is not difficult to understand.

 
Rohingya refugees

Twenty five years later we need to remember what occurred in Rwanda and to realize that that the unspeakable and seemingly impossible could happen again. During the genocide neighbours turned on neighbours and spoke of them as "cockroaches" to be destroyed. I find it chilling when a president of the United States refers to migrants as "vermin" or a Nobel Peace Prize winner turns away from the slaughter and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya in Myanmar/Burma where she is now Prime Minister. 

Did I want to hear about the Rwanda genocide before attending a warm, welcoming church service yesterday? Not at all. Yet as someone who follows the Christ of compassion I can't forget.  

Oh yes, you might recall that I blogged regarding  Black Earth Rising, a Netflix series about Rwanda, on February 12th of this year.