Title: Shameful silence
of the Rwandan church
Author: Chris McGreal
Publication: <http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3896583,00.html>
Date: August 28, 1999
A few months ago I asked
a priest in Rwanda, a Tutsi, why the churches had failed so miserably during
the 1994 genocide. Certainly there were courageous priests, as there were
cowards and killers among the clergy. But the Roman Catholic and protestant
church hierarchies remained virtually silent as about 800,000 Tutsis were
murdered. When religious leaders did speak, their statements were so equivocal
or misleading as to be seen by many Rwandans as an endorsement of the slaughter.
The Catholic church in
particular failed because it claims four out of five Rwandans as adherents,
yet it made little effort to influence the killers. That failure continues
today through denial and evasion over its responsibility for the genocide.
The Tutsi priest I was
talking to dug out an April 1972 document from a group of young Hutu priests
pleading for their white archbishop and four Rwandan bishops to purge the
church of Tutsi "domination". The letter lauds the 1959 "revolution" in
which the Hutu majority overthrew the Tutsi monarchy and power structure
with the blessing of their Belgian colonial administrators. Thousands of
Tutsis were murdered. Many more fled Rwanda. The priests deride Tutsis
as counter-revolutionaries and "inyenzi" (cockroaches). They accuse Tutsi
priests of failing to recognise the Hutu "victory".
"After the defeat of
the counter-revolutionaries, the 'inyenzi', one would have thought that
reasonable people, consecrated to God's service, would bow down before
the irreversible reality of the victory of the people. Far from it, because
they are still nurturing bitter regrets or still hoping for revenge," the
letter says. "The Hutu seems to have fallen asleep on the laurels of victory
while the Tutsi is working very hard in order to again become master of
events. How long can we allow our dear [Tutsi] brothers to make fools of
us and to ignore us and the people from which we are descended?"
The priests' language
was the same as that used by the Hutu extremist politicians who ran Rwanda.
The year after the letter was written the church endorsed the purge of
Tutsis from education and the civil service by throwing them out of its
schools. When the abuses grew worse, including periodic massacres, the
church either looked away or focused its criticism on the individual killers,
not the state, driving the policy. Two years later Rwanda's archbishop,
Vincent Nsengiyumva, became a de facto member of the Hutu government as
chairman of the ruling party's social affairs committee.
By the time the genocide
took shape in the early 1990s, the Catholic church - along with protestant
religious leaders - were too deeply embroiled and compromised to find its
way back to moral ground. Eleven priests and religious leaders signed the
letter the Tutsi priest had shown me. Some have since risen to positions
of influence in Rwanda.
One is André Havugimana.
In 1972 he was a young curate in Kigali. Today he carries a slew of titles
inside the Catholic church. Havugimana is secretary of the Episcopal Conference
in Kigali, director of the Catholic aid agency Caritas in Rwanda, and head
of the Rwandan branch of the Legion of Mary, an Irish evangelical network.
If he had not forgotten
the letter, he certainly had buried it far in the past. The sight of the
document left him silent. He just stared at this re-visitation. Eventually
Havugimana said the letter was written in a spirit of "justice and charity".
Then why were Tutsis
described as inyenzi - 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 said.
I asked if he thought
the letter's evident support for the philosophy of Hutu domination embraced
by the church had not contributed to genocide. He thought not. "This document
was written in the context of what existed then. If people misunderstood
it at the time, it's sad. If people saw it as dividing the people it's
very unfortunate. That's why you can't read this document now because it
had a relevance at the time, not now."
For many in Rwanda, the
church's behaviour now is little better than before the genocide. Few bishops
or priests have grieved with the survivors, let alone apologised for the
church's weakness. It took the pope two years to condemn priests who killed,
and then he blamed the individual and not the institution.
When a Catholic bishop
went on trial this week for genocide, the Vatican described it as an attack
on the church despite the evidence against him. Augustin Misago, charged
with dispatching children into the arms of the Hutu militia which led the
killings, explained away the slaughter of unarmed Tutsis in one of his
churches by saying they brought it on themselves by hiding guns.
In 1996, 24 priests,
human rights activists and intellectuals sent a memorandum to the pope
condemning the church's continued self-justification in Rwanda. "One is
struck by the persistent wish to exonerate the hierarchy and the institution
at any price. Our bishops appear to have thrown the responsibility of the
Rwandan tragedy on to the shoulders of the faithful, while freely reserving
for themselves the place of honour," it said.
But Havugimana still
believes the church has little to apologise for. "I admit the church was
silent in 1994 but I understand why. It was from fear for personal security.
You could be taken as an enemy of the government. A few heroes risked their
lives but it was not easy to do that," he said.
. Chris McGreal is Africa
correspondent for the Guardian.
