Anglican Complicity in the Genocide in Rwanda

And Lessons for the Anglican Communion Today

This is a work I pulled together from the internet after reading Genocide in Rwanda: Complicity of the Churches, a series of articles edited by Carol Rittner, John K. Roth and Wendy Whitworth.  One article, “Genocide in Rwanda 1994 – An Anglican Perspective,” by The Rev. Roger W. Bowen (from 1975-1984 with the CofE’s Rwanda Mission and from 1991-1997 General Secretary of Mid-Africa Ministries), contains several telling statements concerning the type of evangelical Anglicanism practiced in Rwanda and how that fertilized the genocidal motivation of the Hutu majority:

Within the Anglican Church it was hard for Tutsis to advance in leadership while the hierarchy remained solidly Hutu.  The issue, which in the past in times of revival had been addressed so powerfully, was allowed to remain unresolved.  The challenge to find a deeper, more fundamental identity “in Christ” where there is no Jew nor Greek, Hutu nor Tutsi, seems to have been forgotten by many.  There were glorious exceptions to this where Christians who were also Hutu helped to protect their Tutsi neighbors for the interahamwe militias.  By and large, however, the Church had allowed these ethnic tensions to continue unresolved, often below the surface, until conditions occurred where the issue exploded beyond their control in horrific violence.  What happened in Rwanda is a salutary reminder that the fear and pain preventing the Church from addressing a painful tension within itself needs to be overcome is one is to avoid the far more horrific consequences of not facing it.  I believe there may be lessons here for us around ethnic issues within our own Church, but also regarding such issues as sexuality.  (Page 41)

Bowen points to possible reasons for the Anglican Church’s (and other Calvinistic and evangelical churches’) willful ignorance of the impending genocide and initial denial of its existence as suggested in what he calls a “sympathetic critique of the East African revival” by Max Warren, who says that with such theology, “sin tends to be simplified to the individual … the corporate nature of man is lost to view and the full magnitude of evil most seriously underestimated.”  (Page 43)

The most exhaustive study of the genocide was done by Human Rights Watch:

Leave None to Tell the Story:

Genocide in Rwanda

Report of Human Rights Watch, 1999

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/

Far from condemning the attempt to exterminate the Tutsi, Archbishop Augustin Nshamihigo and Bishop Jonathan Ruhumuliza of the Anglican Church acted as spokemen for the genocidal government at a press conference in Nairobi. Like many who tried to explain away the slaughter, they placed the blame for the genocide on the RPF because it had attacked Rwanda. Foreign journalists were so disgusted at this presentation that they left the conference. (African Rights, Rwanda, Death, Despair, pp. 900-902.)

From Ephraim Radner, of all people:

http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.org/articles/Vocation_(Radner).htm

It is easy enough to find the secular press evaluating the Christian Church, in such a context, with summary articles that state the obvious most of us acknowledge but refuse to understand. Like this one, from the widely-disseminated Afrol news agency: "The extreme cases [of Christian complicity in Rwanda] include the Anglican bishop Samuel Musabyimana, who allegedly 'was responsible for killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the Tutsi population with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a racial or ethnic group'. Another extreme is the sentence against two Catholic nuns, Sisters Gertrude Mukangango and Julienne Kisito, for their involvement in the slaughter of at least 5,000 civilians that had sought refuge in their monastery at Sovu. Archbishop Augustin Nshamihigo and the coadjutor Bishop of Kigali, Jonathan Ruhumuliza, were seen describing the government responsible for orchestrating the genocide as 'peace-loving' at a Nairobi press conference in early June 1994. The accusations against clergy of the Free Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist and Seventh-Day Adventist Churches are equally shocking. According to survivors, Bishop Aaron Ruhumuliza, head of the Free Methodist Church in Gikondo, Kigali, helped the militia carry out a massacre in his own church on 9 April 1994. Michel Twagirayesu, the President of the Presbyterian Church of Rwanda and a former vice-president of the World Council of Churches, is alleged to have worked closely with the killers in the Presbyterian stronghold of Kirinda, Kibuye, betraying parishioners and fellow-clergy alike, according to a report by African Rights." ["The Cross and the Genocide", a 2001 feature article by Rainier Hennig for the AFROL news service; see Rittner, Carol, Roth, John K., Whitworth, Wendy, eds. Genocide in Rwanda: Complicity of the Churches? [St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2004]; Mbanda, Laurent, Committed to Conflict: The Destruction of the Church in Rwanda [London: SCM, 1997]; Nyankanzi, Edward, Genocide: Rwanda and Burundi [Rochester, VT: Schenkman, 1997]).

And, interestingly, the atheists took an interest in what good Anglicans were doing in Rwanda:

Anglicans in Rwanda

By: Robin Murray-O'hair

http://www.skepticfiles.org/moretext/genocide.htm

ANGLICAN BISHOPS ACCUSED OF COMPLICITY IN GENOCIDE

Protestors name bishops involved; Archbishop of Canterbury admits failure of church during massacres in Rwanda.

Following the killing of the president of Rwanda in April 1994, the country was rent with civil war and at least 500,000 persons were murdered. Now some in that country are accusing bishops, priests, and lay members of the Eglise Episcopale du Rwanda of participating in the genocidal campaigns.

During a visit to Rwanda from May 9 to May 13, Archbishop of Canterbury acknowledged some blame on the part of the Episcopal church, stating that "The church in Rwanda lost an opportunity to be prophetic during the genocide. The church should have been calling out for justice but by and large its voice was silent." During his visit, protesters waved placards naming bishops they claimed were involved in the massacres. Among those named was Augustin Nshamihigo, archbishop of Kigali, who is currently living in exile in Nairobi.

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My goodness, even ENS belatedly recognized Episocopal/Anglican complicity:

From the Worldwide Faith News archives www.wfn.org

Rwandan church rises to 'new day' after genocide

From ENS.parti@ecunet.org (ENS)

Date 04 Mar 1998 08:18:01

98-3005

By Ed Stannard

Bishop David Birney saw the results of the 1994 genocide as a special emissary of the archbishop of Canterbury and it tore at his heart.

 But Birney, the retired bishop of Idaho who now lives in Lexington, Kentucky, recently returned to Kigali, where he witnessed the enthronement of a new archbishop, the entrance of a new house of bishops, the rising of a new Episcopal Church of Rwanda.

"What happened in the Anglican Church was nothing short of a miracle," said Birney after the ceremony January 4 at the national stadium. "It was just a whole new day."

In his sermon, Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini set a new tone for the church in Rwanda, a nation that is still threatened by ethnic conflict.

The church stands "for servanthood and not [as] a symbol of power and prestige," Birney quoted the new primate as saying. "Discrimination has been uprooted, the church is not only salt but also light. ... The church failed to warn, to preserve, to give taste and to transform Rwandan society."

Many suspect that the truth is even more devastating than that, that church leaders helped plan and took part in the murders of thousands of Rwandans.  Four Anglican bishops, including former Archbishop Augustin Nshamihigo and Bishop Jonathan Ruhumuliza of Kigali, have been implicated, but it's unclear if the U.N. War Crimes Commission, now meeting in Tanzania, will seek to put them on trial, Birney said. One has been allowed back into Rwanda because of his age with no apparent retribution. "I think it's very telling," Birney said.

For years, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes, whose language and culture are nearly identical, lived alongside each other and in the central African nation. Intermarriage was common. After Rwanda's president died in a plane crash on April 6, 1994, however, the army and militias, who were mostly Hutu, began murdering their Tutsi compatriots. Half a million people died in three months.

The Tutsi-dominated Rwanda Patriotic Front fought back, forcing millions of refugees beyond Rwanda's borders. Now, although the country is relatively peaceful and recovering from the horror, Hutu militias are still threatening to attack from the former refugee camps in Congo (the former Zaire).

Rwandans also are struggling with rebuilding trust in their leaders both of church and state - who misled their people and even drew them to their deaths. Priests would call their people to church - and then massacre them all, Birney said.

"The bishop of Kigali [Ruhumuliza] was under increasing suspicion of having played a part in the genocide," said Birney. "He vehemently denied this ... but there were groups coming into the cathedral on Sunday morning screaming that 'We will not receive Communion from someone whose hands were dripping blood.' It was just awful. And there was gunfire on the cathedral grounds."

To Birney, the churches' involvement proved that Christianity needed to be proclaimed in an entirely different way. "Obviously people had heard the message of Jesus Christ but they hadn't acted on it," he said.

The pain was personal for Birney, who taught at Bishop Tucker College in Uganda in 1969-72. Only one of his Rwandese students from that era is still alive. He also worked in overseas ministries for the national church from 1976-82.

The bishop said he does not know for sure whether Rwanda's Anglican bishops were truly involved in the genocide. But "I also know the African countries well enough [to know] that those people pretty well know what's going on ... all I can say is where there's smoke there's bound to be fire."

Now, new bishops replace those who fled the country during the genocide. They were elected after the Anglican Consultative Council reluctantly declared the sees vacant in 1996. Before, all but one bishop was Hutu; now both ethnic groups are equally represented.

Misery loves company:

Bishop's trial puts church in dock for Rwanda massacre

Catholic leader accused of handing over dozens of children to death squads in 1994 bloodbath

Chris McGreal, Africa Correspondent

Monday August 23, 1999

The Guardian

A Roman Catholic bishop goes on trial this week accused of acts of genocide in Rwanda, in a case which is being seen as a judgement on the church's moral failure and complicity during the 1994 mass murder of Tutsis.

The trial will throw the spotlight on the Catholic church's silence about the 800,000 Tutsis who were killed, its protection of priests accused of mass murder and what critics describe as its lack of repentance.

Bishop Augustin Misago is accused of handing over dozens of children to death squads and turning away thousands of Tutsis who sought sanctuary within the church, knowing they would be murdered.

The bishop, who denies the charges, says he is being persecuted by a Tutsi-dominated government out to victimise prominent Hutus.

He appeared in court briefly last week in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, to request more time to prepare his defence.

Bishop Misago, 58, was brought to trial after a campaign by genocide survivors who accused him of working with the interahamwe Hutu militias which led the killing. They are particularly angered by his failure to express remorse.

Asked in a Channel 4 documentary why he failed to provide shelter to Tutsis who had little other hope of survival, the bishop said there was no room at the inn. "The reason is very simple. There is no room in the house to take more than two people. A crowd of 5,000 people one cannot put them here," he said.

When Bishop Misago was arrested in April, the Vatican leapt to his defence and called the charges a "wound" against the church. Critics saw the Vatican stance as further evidence of the Catholic church's determination to deny responsibility for contributing to the climate of killing and the murders committed by individual priests and nuns.

The London-based human rights group, African Rights, has accused the church hierarchy of "surrendering in the face of evil".

"Even more than its silence, the [church] must answer for the active complicity of some of its priests, pastors and nuns in the genocide," it said.

While some priests put themselves at great risk to save Tutsis, others despatched their own colleagues to their deaths. But it is the highest levels of the Catholic church that stand accused of promoting Rwanda's "final solution".

The Catholic archbishop of Kigali, Vincent Nsengiyumva, was a de facto member of the cabinet as chairman of the ruling party's social affairs committee for 14 years until the Vatican put a stop to it on the eve of multiparty politics.

The archbishop was a friend of Juvenal Habyarimana, who was president from 1973 until his death in early 1994, and personal confessor to his wife, one of the more notorious Hutu extremists.

Once the slaughter was underway, Archbishop Nsengiyumva attempted to justify it by blaming Tutsi rebels for provoking the bloodshed.

The church's silence was interpreted by Rwandans as endorsement of the killing. Archbishop Nsengiyumva was murdered with two bishops and 13 priests by Tutsi rebels.

The Anglican archbishop, Augustin Nshamihigo, was little better. Also a close friend of Habyarimana, the archbishop held a press conference at which he blamed the rebels for most of the killings.

The churches did belatedly call for the killing to stop, but misleadingly attributed responsibility to "both sides", but stressing the Hutu extremists' claim that killing Tutsis was a form of defence.

Former Archbishop Nshamihigo is living in exile, shunned by the Anglican church and facing arrest in Rwanda. He was last seen in Kenya.

The new Anglican archbishop publicly apologised on behalf of the Anglican Church in Rwanda for its silence during the genocide.

The Pope has taken a different line, saying individual priests may be guilty but the church as a whole carried no responsibility.

The Catholic church has an inglorious history in Rwanda. During most of the colonial period it was allied with the Belgian rulers and the minority Tutsi elite. Shortly before independence, it switched allegiance to the majority Hutus.

Successive archbishops were allied to oppressive Hutu governments. Some missionary organisations, particularly the White Fathers, supported the Hutu extremist philosophy. After the genocide, the White Fathers helped priests accused of murder to escape.

Bishop Misago is among more than 20 priests and nuns awaiting trial in connection with the genocide. Two priests have been sentenced to death for organising the murders of about 60 people and the massacre of about 2,000 Tutsis who sought refuge in a church in Kibuye. The church was bulldozed to the ground with the victims inside.

And in a report to the World Council of Churches meeting in Harare:

Source: African Rights

Date: 2 Dec 1998

Rwanda: The Protestant Churches and the Genocide

PRESS RELEASE: A NEW 24-PAGE REPORT FROM AFRICAN RIGHTS

An Appeal to the World Council of Churches' Meeting in Harare

As members of the Protestant Churches meet in Harare on the occasion of the World Council of Churches' fiftieth anniversary, African Rights asks Church leaders to examine the overwhelming evidence that leaders of the Anglican, Free Methodist and Presbyterian churches-amongst others-were implicated in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It calls upon the WCC to seek new ways to make a contribution towards the process of justice in Rwanda, and through this, to healing and reconciliation in this troubled nation.

The experience of Rwanda highlights an alarming lack of accountability within the Churches. In institutions of such size and influence, which, particularly in Africa, have a key role as the backbone of civil society, this is unacceptable. Ultimately the bishops and pastors concerned are employees of the Church. The overwhelming evidence that they not only failed in their duties, but that they violated Christian principles must surely be grounds for investigation and, if proven, for dismissal. The fact that so many of the accusations come from other members of the clergy shows how just how deep is the crisis for the Church.

In this report, African Rights gives details of the activities of a number of Anglican bishops who gathered at the Parish of Shyogwe in Gitarama during the genocide. Samuel Musabyimana, the former bishop of the diocese, has been accused by two Anglican pastors and several former friends of having betrayed the Tutsis who came to him for protection. Most of them he turned away into the arms of the militia waiting at nearby roadblocks. The few he did agree to hide were educated Tutsis, the first target of the genocide. On 6 May he is said to have brought militia to their hiding places, then to have supervised and encouraged them as they took the refugees away in a van to be killed elsewhere.

Musabyimana was often to be seen with ministers of the interim regime, who are said to have met regularly with him and other bishops at his house. There they planned the propaganda campaign which saw Archbishop Augustin Nshamihigo and the coadjutor Bishop of Kigali, Jonathan Ruhumuliza, describing the government responsible for orchestrating the genocide as "peace-loving" at a Nairobi press conference in early June 1994. The accusations against clergy of the Free Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist and Seventh-Day Adventist Churches are equally shocking.

Again, from The Guardian:

Rwanda 10 years on: not forgiven, not forgotten

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/02/1080544692138.html?oneclick=true

In 1994, 800,000 people were massacred when Rwanda's Hutu majority turned against the Tutsi community. Chris McGreal talks to the survivors - and the killers living among them.

The churchmen

A year after the genocide, the Pope set the line that is maintained to this day: the church cannot be blamed for the crimes of individual priests and nuns. "The church lost its children, and some of the church's children were doing the killings," says Kibuye's parish priest today, Gaudens Murasandonyi, a 33-year-old Tutsi. "But the church does not have responsibility for what happened. It did not cause the killings. If priests were involved they were responsible as individuals, not as the church."

Many of the survivors think differently. "I blame the church with all my heart," says Madalena. "During the massacres in 1973 we went in the church to hide and nobody came to kill us. In 1994, everybody thought the church would be safe again but that is where we died. That archbishop, Vincent Nsengiyumva, was in charge. He never did anything to stop the killing. He could have said nobody must kill anybody in the church, but he did not."

The Catholic church in Rwanda was deeply compromised by its myriad of ties to the Hutu regime. The archbishop, Nsengiyumva, had been a member of the cabinet until the Pope put a stop to it in 1990. At the height of the slaughter, he was living in a compound with cabinet ministers and army chiefs who were directing mass murder, yet he barely raised his voice in protest. Towards the end, he watched silently as the interahamwe led away 16 people, including four priests, seven monks and a Hutu nun who were battered to death with a hammer. Through the genocide, the archbishop kept up his weekly broadcast on Radio Rwanda. In one of them he praised Muyeshyaka for his "good work". In June 1994, Nsengiyumva and 13 priests were captured and shot by Tutsi rebels.

No less compromised was the Anglican archbishop, Augustin Nshamihigo. He had been an obscure military chaplain elevated to the inner circle of Rwandan power. When the killing started, Nshamihigo spent his days in convoluted reasoning as to why he would not condemn the genocide or its organisers.

When, five weeks into the killing, leading Catholics and Protestants finally issued a statement condemning murders on all sides - a dubious document because it effectively equated deaths in war with the extermination of Tutsis - the Anglican archbishop refused to sign even that ambivalent statement. Rwandans took this as an endorsement of the killing.

After the genocide, a priest showed me a yellowing document written in 1972. It was a plea by a group of young Hutu priests to the white archbishop of the time to purge the Catholic church in Rwanda of Tutsi "domination". The letter derides Tutsis as cockroaches and accuses Tutsi priests of failing to recognise the Hutu "victory". Eleven priests and religious leaders signed the letter, among them Andre Havugimana, who was a young curate in 1972 but rose to become secretary of the Episcopal Conference, the third highest position in the church in Rwanda. At his office in Kigali, Havugimana was long on reasoning, saying the document was written in a spirit of "justice and charity", but he had difficulty explaining why it described Tutsis as cockroaches, a word so frequently applied to the doomed by their murderers in 1994.

"I admit that some people can get hurt by that, but that was the language of the day. At that time it could be understood in the context of the country's history, but, I admit, today you can't use words like that," he says.

But he too declines to concede that such views within the church may have some responsibility for creating the climate for genocide.

After the killing, the Catholic church shielded priests and bishops implicated in the slaughter and helped some of the most notorious to flee abroad. Among them was Father Hormisdas Nsengimana, who survivors describe as a particularly cruel killer at his parish in Nyanza. The church gave him a new parish in Cameroon.

Before the end of 1994, the doors to Kibuye's church were bolted. The holes ripped by bullets and grenades through the wooden pews, stained-glass windows and corrugated iron roof remained as a testament to the slaughter. Bloodied handprints on the walls of the priest's rooms behind and above the church, and the macheted metal doors of the toilets peeled away like banana skin, were untouched. Children played with human bones as if they were sticks from the forest.

The government wanted to preserve Kibuye church as a memorial, as it has done in other towns. The bishops resisted, fearing that Catholic churches across Rwanda would become monuments to genocide. A compromise was reached. A memorial to the murdered thousands, whose bodies were slung among the hillside trees and buried in a deep pit near the church doors, was built around the mass grave. A plaque proclaimed that 11,400 people died there. Skulls and bones were propped up inside a glass case, providing a backdrop to a carving of Christ at crucifixion.

The bishops returned to reconsecrate the church in 1997 and services resumed. But many of those who survived the massacre refused to pray there. Louis Rutaganira joined the American evangelist Pat Robertson's church, Assemblies of God. "I cannot go back to that church. It betrayed all of us. The Catholic church has never apologised for supporting the killers," he says.

Madalena returned briefly. "At first I went again and I was OK with it. Later on, I was taking mass and I looked at the man holding the cup. I imagined he was one of the killers. He wasn't. I looked at the church and I kept seeing the bodies. It all came back. I couldn't stand it. I went home and I didn't go back," she says.

Other survivors defected from the Seventh Day Adventists, the Anglican church, and other denominations tainted by the genocide. There was one exception. Islam found new adherents because the imams refused to draw a distinction between Hutu and Tutsi, and called on Muslims to oppose the killing. It was the only practising religion in Rwanda uncompromised by the genocide.

The militiamen dragged Madalena to her bank and told her to empty her account. There was 35,000 francs in it. She was allowed to return to live in hiding in the ruins of her home but the killers were back before long demanding more cash. Madalena sent a note with a child to the bank asking for a loan. There was not much prospect of it being repaid but the note fell into the hands of a young Hutu cashier, Theoneste Nzigiyimana, who withdrew 20,000 francs of his own savings and handed it to the child to give to Madalena.

In the coming weeks, Theoneste was to hand over a lot more cash, even taking out loans, to help 10 Tutsis and their families buy their lives or escape the slaughter.

"I was seeing the leadership was doing things that weren't good, so in my heart I knew it was wrong," says Theoneste. "These are people we used to share things with, living together, marrying each other, working together. And now they were hunted and they could not get money. Some needed it to get boats to escape. They would send notes and I went to where they were hiding, in the roofs of houses or in the sorghum fields. If they had money in their accounts they signed and I gave it to them. If they didn't have money I found it somehow."

Theoneste has kept one of the notes written by Madalena. "She wrote to me on pieces of paper saying that her life is at an end and any time she might be dead and if I can get money it will help keep her alive for a few more days. I thought I may never see her again, I must help this woman. It was everything in my account," he says.

Among the others helped by the bank clerk was Louis Rutaganira, who had fled the church for the hills of Bisesero. After that he slipped away to the forest where he was able to send Theoneste a note asking for cash to hire a dugout to take him across Lake Kivu to the Zairean island of Ijwe. But Louis was among the lucky few. By early May 1994, almost all the Tutsis in Kibuye were dead. Dr Kayishema was rewarded with a visit by Rwanda's new prime minister, Jean Kambanda, whose predecessor was murdered on the first day of the genocide. He congratulated the citizens on defending themselves from the "inyenzi" (cockroaches) and told them to keep up the good work.

A few brave voices were raised in dissent. A doctor, Leonard Hitimana, demanded that the prime minister do something to help children at the hospital who had survived the killing. Kambanda stayed silent. Dr Hitimana was sinisterly warned to mind his health by his erstwhile colleague, Dr Kayishema, and within hours the children were dead.

A fortnight later, President Theodore Sindikubwabo made a similar visit. He told a crowd packed into the town hall to give themselves a congratulatory round of applause for their good "work". Everybody clapped.

By then, Dr Kayishema's efforts had turned to culling the thousands of Tutsis in the Bis esero hills, about 40km south of Kibuye town. No one is sure how many died in Bisesero but they number in the thousands. Many were murdered after the arrival of the French army under a UN mandate to create a "safe haven". The French commander in Kibuye declined to remove the roadblocks manned by the interahamwe on the grounds they were necessary for civil defence. He also took Dr Kayishema's word that he was fighting Tutsi rebels in the hills and allowed the slaughter of women and children to continue for another fortnight.

But the French army did provide a safe haven for the murderers, assisting Dr Kayishema and many of his cohorts to slip away to Zaire when the killing was finally over.

Ask the murderers why they did it and almost all say because their leaders told them to. Ask them what reason there is to think they won't do it again and they say because Rwanda now has better leaders. From that, many of the survivors conclude that another genocide is all too possible if the wrong people came to power again.

For the first time since the Germans colonised Rwanda there is a government that does not promote a message of ethnic superiority. Talk of Hutu and Tutsi is discouraged; the classification erased from identity cards. The new governor of Kibuye, the man who now sits in Dr Kayishema's office, is Deo Nkusi.

"When I arrived in Kibuye I would describe it as a place built on a cemetery and on the top of the cemetery there arose an orphanage," he says. "Changing people here is like bending steel. The people were bent into one shape over 40 years and they have to be bent back. If we do it too fast we will just break them. We have to exert pressure gradually."

The brave decision to begin the gacaca process has forced widespread acknowledgement by the murderers of their crimes when before there had only been denial. But shaping a new Rwanda does not yet extend to trusting the majority with political power.

Rwanda's Tutsi president, Paul Kagame, won last year's election with 95% of the vote in a country where nine out of 10 voters are Hutu and a decade ago many of them would willingly have killed him. Even his foreign supporters concede the ballot was rigged, although they say he would have won anyway because Kagame brought security to Hutus who paid a price for the crimes done in their name. Two million fled Rwanda to die in their tens of thousands of cholera on the volcanic wastelands near Goma, or starved on forced marches through Zaire only to return to the squalid hell of Rwanda's prisons.

Francois Ndangamira, the man who clubbed two young sisters to death, has a "Vote Kagame" election poster on his living room wall. Yet Kagame was concerned enough to effectively bar the leading opposition candidate, a former Hutu prime minister, Faustin Twagiramungu, from the election for "divisionism" - appealing to Hutu nationalism.

The first president after the genocide, another Hutu, is in prison on the same charge after trying to launch a new political party.

To some, this is evidence that Kagame is little better than the fascists who went before. But while the survivors may be willing to tolerate the killers back on the streets as a step toward constucting a new Rwanda, the fear and trauma are still too raw for them to entrust their safety to the hands of Hutu-controlled government.

"If Kagame had lost the election, I would have left the country the same day," says Madalena. "If I had stayed until night, I would have been dead." Dr Kayishema was arrested by the international tribunal while hiding in Zambia. At his trial, he shamelessly denied his crimes and claimed he had been a prisoner of the Hutu extremists, not their leader in Kibuye. He was not alone in rejecting culpability.

The tribunal has been hugely successful at laying its hands on the men and women who oversaw the slaughter. Few have shown any sorrow. Jean Kambanda, the prime minister who visited Kibuye to praise the killing, pleaded guilty to genocide but rejected the opportunity to apologise. Most of the accused maintain the fiction that the Tutsis were victims of a spontaneous bloodletting provoked by the murder of President Habyarimana. Dr Kayishema is serving a life sentence in an air-conditioned cell at a UN facility in Mali, which makes him luckier than his younger brother who has spent nearly a decade in Rwandan jails so overcrowded that the inmates sleep in shifts. In Kibuye, Gregoire Musaby'imana arrives to talk dressed in the standard prison uniform of shocking pink shirt and shorts, dulled by dirt.

"I didn't kill anyone. I have nothing to feel guilty about," he says. Asked if there was a genocide, he hesitates. "For me it was a war and people on both sides died. Both Hutu and Tutsi died. But later on the Hutu had the upper hand and they killed all the Tutsis. I don't know why," he says. Their father had been a leading Hutu extremist and functionary in Kibuye 40 years earlier. Would he have approved of the war against the Tutsis? "My father would have been on the side of defending the Hutu," says Musaby'imana. Theoneste Nzigiyimana, the bank clerk, is uncertain about whether his fellow Hutus are to be trusted today. "They discovered that what happened wasn't good, that it had a very bad outcome. Some were killed and some had to go to prison. But even with the leadership at the moment, it's not certain that it won't happen again," he says.

"The government says we are all Rwandans and we must not have Hutu and Tutsi in our heads but I think there are still many people who think like that. It will take a very long time to stop it but we must try."

The survivors differ, their thinking shaped by their experiences after the genocide. For Madalena, there has been continuing death and suffering but Louis Rutaganira remarried and passionately wants to believe in a better Rwanda for the sake of his three young children.

"Because of good politics, the nation is learning. Even the prisoners are confessing, saying what they did and asking for forgiveness.

If you have someone who comes to you and pleads and says 'I've done something wrong', even writes letters, there's something that it shows. It shows that someone wants to change. Someone is not bad forever. People change," he says. "It takes us who have suffered to be heroes and learn to live together so our children can grow up without the ethnicity in them. Ten years is not enough to drive this thinking out of a person but our children will be different."

Others have made different compromises. Agnes Mukariukaka is a Tutsi. Her husband, Vedaste Sengorore, was a member of a Hutu death squad. Shortly after the genocide, Agnes told how her husband had saved her while killing others. She moved in with a Tutsi army captain. A decade on, the couple are back together after Sengorore was released. Agnes now says he committed no crime.

"He didn't do the killings. I made a mistake. He was just a driver," she says. "There is no point in thinking about the past or the future. I only think about today. There is no point in talking to people. I only talk to God."

Madalena says that mostly she wishes she had not been saved by the gendarme. "Surviving is not what we wanted to happen. Life is not something to be happy about. It is so difficult to live with what we know and what we see."

No one really survives a genocide. A decade on, what is most striking is that so many of the Tutsis left in Kibuye have found the strength to go on living.

- The Guardian

Where is Nshamihigo now?  Or at least in 1996?

Evil Christians

By Elizabeth Neuffer Globe Staff, 12/12/96

Reprinted from The Boston Globe

That sense of ethnic identity continues today. Some Hutu church leaders fled Rwanda and its Tutsi-led government and remain in exile. Anglican Archbishop Augustin Nshamihigo, for example, has set up a breakaway church in Nairobi.. Many priests remain in exile in Zaire, as does at least one Catholic bishop.

Another news report

The Cross and the Genocide

afrol News, 20 September 2002 - The 1994 Rwandan genocide, killing an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, is made even more incomprehensible by the documented participation of many representatives of Rwandan church societies. How could God fearing nuns, and even a bishop, take part in the most cruel crimes against humanity committed on African soil? Even worse, several church societies allegedly were co-responsible for the growing hatred that led to the genocide. It remains an enormous contradiction to the Christian Message of Love.

The Killing Fields

As it became obvious that the radical government was on the defensive in the early 1990s, it embarked on a Hitlerist plan to find a "permanent solution" to the "Tutsi problem". A genocide, that was to kill between 750,000 and one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus, was carefully planned and implemented. Hate propaganda was spread throughout the country and local representatives got their orders on whom to kill and whom to involve in the killings. Surprisingly many took part in the killings, and even more incomprehensible, also many members of the clergy were involved in the genocide in some degree.

The extreme cases include the Anglican bishop Samuel Musabyimana, who allegedly "was responsible for killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the Tutsi population with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a racial or ethnic group". Another extreme is the sentence against two Catholic nuns, Sisters Gertrude Mukangango and Julienne Kisito, for their involvement in the slaughter of at least 5,000 civilians that had sought refuge in their monastery at Sovu.

Archbishop Augustin Nshamihigo and the coadjutor Bishop of Kigali, Jonathan Ruhumuliza, were seen describing the government responsible for orchestrating the genocide as "peace-loving" at a Nairobi press conference in early June 1994.

How could they? A better question may be, "how could anybody participate in this"? Historians still are puzzled by the largest genocide in world history, Nazi Germany's systematic killing of an estimated six million people, most of them Jews. Although the Nazi's Holocaust remains mostly incomprehensible, one sees clear parallels in the systematic tactics behind the organisation of the two genocides. First, the future victims were stripped off their human dignity, official propaganda labelling them "pigs" (Nazi Germany) or "cockroaches" (Rwanda), creatures without a right to live. Hate is systematically spread, the "unworthy" being responsible for all the ills of society. Radicals and hardliners are carefully picked to organise the killings. Others are given tasks slowly making them more and more involved in the actions to come. Suddenly, there exists a nation of perpetuators.

Like the Catholics, many within the hierarchy of the Protestant churches had had close links with the Hutu regimes since independence. These links continued when the government was radicalised step by step. The profound links were clearly demonstrated when most of the Rwandan church leaders fled the country following the military defeat of the government responsible for the genocide. This did not mean that the church hierarchies were systematically involved in the planning of the genocide, but it indicated that the churches as organisations had not taken the responsibilities they were supposed to, due to their too close links to the government.

Not only were Christian members of the congregations of every single denomination in Rwanda responsible for the most appalling atrocities, but many massacres took place in the parishes where the targets of the genocide had sought sanctuary. Many church leaders have since acknowledged that the Church in Rwanda failed as an institution, although individual clergy showed immense courage, risking their lives to save those of others.

Living with the shame

While members of all Christian congregations plaid a part in the atrocities, what most differentiates the Rwandan churches is how they have chosen to live with the shame some members had brought over them. While some have asked Rwandans for forgiveness, other churches still carefully avoid the issue of guilt.

The genocide shook all the Christian churches, and provoked reactions of confessing guilt by most of them. Protestant congregations mostly asked Rwandans pardon for the atrocities committed by their members and excommunicated members suspected of forming part of the genocide. Anglican Bishop Samuel Musabyimana immediately was excommunicated as the charges against him were known.

Begging pardon however seems a more complicated issue for the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul in May 1996 however told the Rwandan people, "The Church ... cannot be held responsible for the guilt of its members that have acted against the evangelic law; they will be called to render account of their own actions. All Church members that have sinned during the genocide must have the courage to assume the consequences of their deeds they have done against God and fellow men."

A statement regarding the guilt of the Churches as institutions is however missed. "They have been less willing to comment upon the specific accusations against certain clergymen," according to African Rights. This has proven especially true regarding the Catholic Church, which in June 2001 stated its "surprise" over a Belgian court convicting two Rwandan nuns for aiding in the slaughter of at least 5,000 civilians. The Vatican spokesman could not understand why the court picked on the two nuns "seeing the grave responsibility of so many [other] people and groups involved." The Vatican has taken no steps towards excommunicating the nuns from the Church.

By afrol News editor Rainer Chr. Hennig

From Episcopal Life, General Convention edition, 2003

Rwandan bishop takes needle and thread to a tattered church

By Jacqueline Boynton

for episcopal life

Kigali, Rwanda

http://arc.episcopalchurch.org/episcopal-life/Rwanda.html

Inside the church compound, surrounded by a high fence and protected by a locked gate, Archbishop Emmanuel Mbona-Kolini works to put his church back together.

"I have been 30 years in the ministry, 18 of them as bishop," said Kolini, who was born in Zaire of Rwandan ancestry. A year ago, he was called as archbishop of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda, a post vacated since the war and genocide of 1994.

Beginning that April 6, Rwanda was torn by genocide in which Hutu extremists murdered nearly 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. By mid-July a Tutsi-led rebel army had taken over the government and stopped the genocide. Forces of the former government, including specially trained death squads, were pushed over the borders along with about 2 million refugees. Among those fleeing with the army was former Archbishop Augustine Nshamihigo, Kolini's predecessor, who, when asked if he would return, is reported to have said that he would -- "with the army."

Then when Rwanda's Hutu president was killed in a suspicious plane crash in April 1994, a match was lit that ignited the recent genocide. Death squads roamed the countryside, killing Tutsis on the spot, their bodies left to rot where they fell. Nearly 1 million, or about 80 percent of the Tutsi population, was killed.

This speaks for itself:

PRESS RELEASE (non official - for media information only)

ICTR/INFO-9-2-263.EN

Arusha, 27 April 2001

ANGLICAN BISHOP ARRESTED FOR GENOCIDE

Samuel Musabyimana (44), formerly Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Shyogwe, Gitarama prefecture, was arrested in Nairobi on Thursday 26 April 2001 and transferred immediately to the Detention Facility of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha. He is charged with four counts including Genocide, Conspiracy to commit Genocide and Crimes against Humanity, specifically extermination.

The arrest was carried out by the Kenyan Police on the basis of a warrant of arrest issued by the Tribunal on 13 March 2001. Musabyimana was originally arrested by the South African authorities on immigration charges in September 2000 and deported to Kenya where he escaped.  The Tribunal’s Prosecutor, Ms. Carla Del Ponte, expressed her satisfaction that the arrest had now been successfully accomplished. 

Speaking from Nairobi, the Registrar of the Tribunal, Mr. Adama Dieng said “I thank the Kenyan authorities for their cooperation and for the efficient execution of the arrest warrant. This bodes well for the work of the Rwanda Tribunal”.

The indictment charges that during April and May 1994, following escalation of the Rwandan conflict in Gitarama prefecture Bishop Musabyimana publicly stated that the situation for the Tutsi was very bad and that their end had arrived. On the arrival of refugees at the Shyogwe Diocese the Bishop instructed his subordinate to register them according to their ethnic groups. The list of refugees was later used to select Tutsi refugees who were taken to nearby sites to be killed. The Bishop is also said to have paid the militias who carried out the killings.

The count of conspiracy is based upon meetings with high level government and military officials organized or attended by Musabyimana. He is said to have consorted regularly with Ministers of the interim Government of Rwanda and acted as an emissary abroad of the Government to legitimize its policies, at a time when those policies were known to include a plan of extermination of the Tutsi and the Hutu political opposition.

Duty counsel will immediately be appointed by the Registrar to assist Bishop Musabyimana and to advise him of his rights during his detention. A date will shortly be fixed for his initial appearance before a judge of the Tribunal when he will enter a plea to the charges against him.

And this before the Rwandan Church became the darling of the Right-Wing:

http://www.evangelical-times.org/ETNews/June01/jun01n22.htm

Anglican Bishop charged with genocide

An Anglican bishop has been arrested by the United Nations over his alleged role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. At the same time, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, has been accused of failing to hold a church inquiry into the bishop’s continued ministry within the Anglican church despite allegations of serious crimes.

While in exile in Kenya, Bishop Samuel Musabyimana continued his ministry for seven years until charged at the end of April by the UN war crimes tribunal with four counts of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Wearing episcopal robes before the tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, the bishop pleaded ‘not guilty’ to allegations that he participated in the 1994 campaign to exterminate Tutsi civilians by instructing subordinates and militias to murder them.

Musabyimana sometimes celebrated holy communion at Nairobi’s Anglican cathedral. According to Lambeth Palace, David Gitari, the Archbishop of Kenya, gave him ‘cautious pastoral support’ after he fled there in 1994.

Yet from the moment Musabyimana arrived in Nairobi from his Rwandan diocese of Shyogwe, he was denounced as a genocide suspect. But Anglican leaders failed to act.

The single sanction imposed (on Archbishop Carey’s advice) was to instruct Musabyimana to return to his Rwandan diocese. Lambeth Palace said last week that when he declined, claiming his life would be in danger, Carey was ‘critical’. The spokesman added that Carey had no legal responsibility for Musabyimana.

An investigation by The Sunday Times established that although Musa-byimana had lost his diocese, he still took part in services and lived in Anglican quarters in Nairobi. In Kenya, he also ran a church charity, ostensibly for Rwandan refugees, and received financial donations from Anglican communities abroad.

UN investigators believe that Musabyimana’s charity was a front for organisers of the 1994 massacres to regroup. Without naming Musabyimana, a UN report in 1998 warned that an Anglican bishop in Nairobi was at the head of a recruitment drive for extremist former Interahamwe militia.

In case you missed the ENS coverage:

Arrested Anglican bishop to appear before Rwandan genocide tribunal

From ENS@ecunet.org

Date Mon, 7 May 2001 12:28:12 -0400 (EDT)

2001-94 Arrested Anglican bishop to appear before Rwandan genocide tribunal

 by Jan Nunley

jnunley@episcopalchurch.org

 (ENS) Samuel Musabyimana, former Anglican bishop of the Diocese of Shyogwe (Rwanda), will appear before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on May 2 to answer charges of genocide, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.

Musabyimana was arrested in Nairobi, Kenya, on April 26 and immediately transferred to the Detention Facility of the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania.

In a statement issued the day of the arrest, Anglican archbishop David Gitari of Kenya expressed "concern" that Musabyimana "might have been smuggled out of the country." "He came to Kenya during the 1994 genocide and has been living in Nairobi since that time with full knowledge of Kenyan Government," said the release. Musabyimana's lawyers claimed the arresting officers "refused to identify themselves or show any document of authority to arrest or even explain the reasons why the bishop was arrested."

Indictment indicates cooperation with genocide

The ICTR indictment alleges that at the Shyogwe diocesan compound, which sheltered both Hutu and Tutsi civilians seeking refuge, the bishop "publicly stated that the situation for the Tutsi was very bad and that their end had arrived and that it was no use trying to hide them."

The indictment said that a subordinate of Musabyimana's, the Rev. Athanase Ngilinshuti, was directed by the bishop to register refugees according to their ethnicity--a list which was later used to round up Tutsis for extermination. When soldiers arrived to transport the Tutsi refugees, the indictment states, Musabyimana "publicly stated that he did not oppose the killing of Tutsis, but that he did not want killings at the diocese and that the Tutsis should be taken to Kabgayi to be killed."

Nginlinshuti also aided soldiers and distributed weapons in cooperation with military officials. He was convicted by a Rwandan military court and sentenced to death in 1999.

Roadblocks and broken promises

Musabyimana is also charged with authorizing roadblocks which were "manned by students and employees of the diocese and were used to identify and monitor and control the movement of Tutsi civilians in the area surrounding the diocese. As a direct consequence, numerous Tutsi civilians were killed at roadblocks adjoining Shyogwe diocese," the indictment said. He is also accused of encouraging refugees to abandon their hiding places, giving them the impression he would help them to escape. "When the refugees exposed themselves, the bishop sped off in a vehicle," while militias attacked and killed them, the indictment continued.

"After being informed that many of the refugees had been killed, [Musabyimana] paid the militias that had launched the attack. Shortly thereafter, [Musabyimana] loaded several remaining Tutsi refugees aboard his vehicle so that they would accompany him in his flight from the diocese. During his exile, [Musabyimana] used the presence of these Tutsi refugees to solicit funds from international organizations and to justify several of his public statements."

 More indictments pending 

In addition, Musabyimana is accused of conspiring with other clergy and government officials, including former Minister of Information Eliezer Niyitegeka and former Minister of the Interior Edouard Karamera, by meeting with them and requesting Kalashnikov rifles and other firearms to be used for the "security" of the diocese, which were then distributed to members of the local civilian militia.

 The bishop's arrest was carried out by the Kenyan police on the basis of an indictment and arrest warrant issued March 13. Musabyimana was originally rrested by South African authorities on immigration charges in September 2000 and mistakenly deported to Kenya, where he escaped.  Although ICTR officials reportedly knew of Musabyimana's whereabouts for several months, sources say his arrest was delayed because of related indictments still pending. More indictments and possible arrests are expected soon. 

The Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of Episcopal News Service. This report includes information from a report by Kate Gehring of Internews.

And another ENS piece as it appeared in the Canadian Church journal:

Anglican Journal, June 2001

But before he could get to trial:

The story of his flight got the reporter an international reward:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/icij/award.aspx

ICIJ Award

The ICIJ Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting is the only one of its kind created specifically to honor transnational investigative reporting. The $20,000 first-place prize and $1,000 finalist awards are made possible by a grant from The John and Florence Newman Foundation to recognize, reward, and foster international investigative reporting.

2001 Winning Report

"The Bishop of Shyogwe" tells the story of Samuel Musabyimana, an Anglican bishop wanted by the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

In 1994, Musabyimana allegedly conspired with the Rwandan government and the interahamwe, a militia force consisting of remnants of the Hutu militias and former Rwandan armed forces, to kill Tutsis who sought sanctuary at his parish. After the genocide, the bishop fled Rwanda to Zaire (now Congo) and then to Kenya, where he continued his support for the interahamwe.

In summer 2000, Pauw traced the bishop from Rwanda to his new hideout in South Africa. Through interviews with refugees, victims and government and tribunal officials, he told how Musabyimana secretly entered Johannesburg in July 2000 to expand his business interests and meet with a network of Rwandan Hutu extremists.

Pauw enlisted the aid of a Rwandan refugee, who for several weeks risked his life by attending and secretly filming meetings the bishop had with Rwandan extremists in Johannesburg. Pauw, posing as a businessman, also met with Musabyimana, who was seeking fake passports so that he and his family could flee to the United States.

The bishop was later detained by South African authorities, acting on the U.N. tribunal's warrant. But before tribunal officials could escort him back to Rwanda for trial, Musabyimana was released by the South Africans because of a "miscommunication" among various departments. On Aug. 23, 2000, Musabyimana was taken to Johannesburg International Airport, his false passports were returned to him, and he boarded a flight for Nairobi.

Tribunal prosecutors served Kenyan authorities with a warrant for the bishop's arrest and, in May 2001, Kenyan police seized him as he entered the country from the Congo.

The bishop stands accused at the Rwanda tribunal in Arusha of genocide, murder, incitement to genocide and crimes against humanity. The refugee who assisted Pauw in his investigation was reunited with his family in Rwanda and now works for the tribunal.