Forgiving genocide in Rwanda

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Francois, a stocky second-year with piercing eyes and long lashes, saw his father killed with a machete when he was four years old. The Interhamwe spared him because he was a small child, he said. “For a long time I did nothing but hate.” His voice was gruff, raw. “I hated myself for surviving. I was so angry with the world. But I couldn’t do anything. In order to live I had to move on. I only could do that when I found so many others here, with stories like mine.”

Francois practices meditation and yoga with some of his new family members, and prays every day. Recently, he returned to his village and was introduced to the man who killed his father. “We were civil. He asked me to forgive him, and I did.”

“But how…” blurted Casey, an enthusiastic and emotional first-year university student in our group. “How can you possibly forgive? After what you’ve seen? And lost? How can you possibly move on?” Fabian, also a first-year, responded measuredly. “We have no choice. We don’t forget. But in order to live our lives — to survive — we have to make peace within ourselves. Or we lose the only thing we truly have left. We lose ourselves.”

Reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda is a law, enforced by the National Commission for Unity and Reconciliation. It is a law because, as Fabian made clear, Rwanda has no choice. A million victims, a million perpetrators — that’s what they say. Every single perpetrator can’t be kept in jail for life; every single perpetrator can’t be sentenced to death. In this tiny, densely populated country, everyone must share space. The students explained how, when prisoners are being released back into their villages, both sides receive extensive coaching on how to behave.

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