Rwanda's Catholic Church says sorry for its role in 1994 genocide

[brooklynite]

CNN

(CNN)The Catholic Church in Rwanda has apologized for its members' role in the genocide that saw hundreds of thousands of Rwandans killed in 1994.

Rwandan bishops asked for "forgiveness for sins of hatred and disagreement that happened in the country to the point of hating our own countrymen because of their origin," in a statement read after mass in parishes across the country Sunday.

...snip...

Although the church states it did not send anyone to participate in the killings, it acknowledges that its members were active, apologizing for "Christian leaders who caused divisions among people and planted seeds of hate."

The church released its apology to coincide with the last day of the Jubilee Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis.

Oops...

[Skittles]

1. christians

gawd

[guillaumeb]

2. Can any of the dead hear this apology? eom

[dubyadiprecession]

3. A priest without an oozie?

This is what Mel Gibson was afraid of.

[Act_of_Reparation]

16. For the record, it's spelled "Uzi"

But still funny.

[uppityperson]

4. As is written there, it's a start but not enough

[struggle4progress]

5. Rwanadan Stories

... arguments over history have become important politically ...

... until European colonization, Tutsis (the minority) represented the aristocratic upper classes; Hutus were the peasant masses. The Europeans brought with them an idea of race science ...

... The introduction in 1933 of a mandatory identity card system deepened social divisions. Every Rwandan citizen was obliged to carry the card. which stated his name and ethnic identity ...

... countries which had been under European colonial rule increased their push towards independence ... In Rwanda .. the liberation movement assumed the form of a social, antifeudal revolution... Groups of peasants .. moved against their master-rulers ...

... The Belgians came to recognise the inevitability of Hutu rule, promptly switched sides ...

... The Belgians did little to protect the Tutsi minority from this wave of killings ... “the most horrible and systematic human massacre… since the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis” ...

... Genocide is not really a matter of poverty or lack of education ... In 1959 the Hutus relentlessly robbed, killed, and drove away Tutsis, but they never for a single day imagined exterminating them. It is the intellectuals who emancipated them, by planting the idea of genocide in their heads and sweeping away their hesitations ...

... Many Tutsi fled north to Uganda ...

... As early as 1964, President Kayibanda told Tutsi refugees that if they tried to regain any political power, they “may well find that the whole Tutsi race will be wiped out” ...

... In 1990 rebel Tutsi troops – this was the early Rwandan Patriotic Front – marched out of the Ugandan bush to make war on the Hutu Rwandan army ...

... In 1991 .. speeches at Rwandan political meetings .. consisted almost entirely of threats made against Tutsis. In Butare .. professors vied with one another to publish .. anti-Tutsi diatribes ... Announcers .. used humorous sketches and songs to call openly for the destruction of the Tutsis ...

... In February 1993 ... the RPF moved towards Kigali and might have seized the city had French troops not intervened on the side of the government. The French had long supported Habyarimana and had no wish to see him driven from power by the rebels ...

... By 1994 the de-humanisation was complete ... No sooner had Habyarimana's jet been shot down than the killings began in earnest. The one hundred days of genocide had been launched ...

[struggle4progress]

6. Christian Churches and Genocide in Rwanda

May 11-13, 1997
Timothy Longman
Vassar College

... from April to June, the Rwandan Armed Forces .. systematically massacred as many as 1 million of the country's 7.7 million people ...

... In Rwanda .. religion did not serve as an ascriptive identifier to demarcate a social group as an essential "other." Both Catholic and Protestant churches in Rwanda are multi-ethnic, and the genocide in Rwanda occurred within religious groups. In most communities members of a church parish killed their fellow parishioners and even, in a number of cases, their own pastor or priest ...

In 1989, an explosion of new publications appeared in Rwanda after the oldest paper in the country, the Catholic biweekly Kinyamateka , began to ignore censorship rules and published open accounts about corruption and the country's economic problems ...

As both the demands for democratic reform and the war continued to expand over the next several years, Habyarimana and his allies turned increasingly to ethnic arguments to bolster their support. Even as he publicly accepted political reforms that legalized opposition parties, Habyarimana sought to undermine the new parties by portraying them as traitors to the interests of the Hutu ...

Although the Western media portrayed the 1994 genocide as a product of "centuries old" intractable divisions between Hutu and Tutsi "tribes," in fact genocide in Rwanda was never inevitable. Genocide was the final product of a strategy used by close supporters of President Habyarimana to preserve their power by appealing to ethnic arguments. Since Hutu and Tutsi continued to intermarry regularly and lived together in relative peace in most communities, the strategy required going well beyond reminding the Hutu of Tutsi dominance during the colonial period to create an atmosphere of fear and misunderstanding. The president's allies launched a concerted propaganda effort, using the print media, public meetings, and -- most importantly -- the radio, to characterize the Tutsi as an "essential other" ...

http://faculty.vassar.edu/tilongma/Church&Genocide.html

[struggle4progress]

7. Rwanda: A historical chronology

1918 Under the Treaty of Versailles the former German colony of Rwanda-Urundi is made a League of Nations protectorate to be governed by Belgium ...

1926 Belgians introduce a system of ethnic identity cards differentiating Hutus from Tutsis ...

1959 Hutus rebel against the Belgian colonial power ... 150,000 Tutsis flee to Burundi ...

1963 Further massacre of Tutsis ... It is estimated that by the mid-1960s half of the Tutsi population is living outside Rwanda ...

July 1990 Under pressure from Western aid donors, Habyarimana concedes the principle of multi-party democracy.

Oct. 1990 RPF guerillas invade Rwanda from Uganda ... French and Zairean troops are called in to assist the government ...

1990/91 ... Habyarimana stalls on .. genuine multi-party .. power-sharing. Throughout this period thousands of Tutsis are killed in separate massacres around the country. Opposition politicians and newspapers are persecuted ...

Sept.1993-Mar.1994 ... Extremist radio station, Radio Mille Collines, begins broadcasting exhortations to attack the Tutsis. Human rights groups warn .. of impending calamity ...

April 6, 1994 President .. Habyarimana's plane is shot down ... That night the killing begins ...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rwanda/etc/cron.html

[struggle4progress]

8. How Colonialism Affected the Rwandan Genocide

August 16, 2011
By Troy Riemer

... Hutu and Tutsi could best be described as working classes rather than separate races. The categories of Hutu and Tutsi remained flexible before the arrival of Europeans allowing individuals to move between the two with relative ease. They have intermarried, they speak the same tongue, and they share numerous cultural practices ... Furthermore, according to historical, linguistic, and cultural definitions, the Hutu and Tutsi are not distinct groups ...

... A new kind of racism was brought to Rwanda upon the arrival of Europeans ... Colonists assumed their own superiority and valued those physically and geographically close to themselves ...

... A new history was written ... The first inhabitants .. were .. hunters and gatherers. Then came the Hutu with agriculture and loose political organizations in the form of clans and petty kings. Next came the Tutsi, a superiorly intelligent minority swooping in from Ethiopia and usurping the majority ...

... a bloody .. uprising ensued in 1959. What began as a peasant revolt transformed into a political upheaval and comprehensive restructuring of the government .. into Hutu hands ... In the minds of the Hutu, they had liberated themselves from the oppressive rule of the Tutsi ... In 1964, more violence ensued and for years after a system that described Tutsi as ‘cockroaches’ was instituted ...

https://umuvugizi.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/how-colonialism-affected-the-rwandan-genocide/

[struggle4progress]

9. Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda

... shattering bonds between Hutu and Tutsi was not easy. For centuries they had shared a single language, a common history, the same ideas and cultural practices. They lived next to one another, attended the same schools and churches, worked in the same offices, and drank in the same bars. A considerable number of Rwandans were of mixed parentage, the offspring of Hutu-Tutsi marriages ...

The genocide was not a killing machine that rolled inexorably forward but rather a campaign to which participants were recruited over time by the use of threat and incentives. The early organizers included military and administrative officials as well as politicians, businessmen, and others with no official posts. In order to carry through the genocide, they had to capture the state, which meant not just installing persons of their choice at the head of the government, but securing the collaboration of other officials throughout the system ...

Bagosora and his circle sought first to obtain the backing, or at least the acquiescence, of the majority of military commanders. They began negotiating for this support even as troops under their command slaughtered civilians in the streets ...

As the new leaders were consolidating control over military commanders, they profited enormously from the first demonstration of international timidity. U.N. troops, in Rwanda under the terms of the peace accords, tried for a few hours tokeep the peace, then withdrew to their posts—as ordered by superiors in New York—leaving the local population at the mercy of assailants. Officers opposed to Bagosora realized that a continuing foreign presence was essential to restricting the killing campaign and appealed to representatives of France, Belgium and the U.S. not to desert Rwanda. But, suspecting the kind of horrors to come, the foreigners had already packed their bags ...

By April 15, it was clear that the U.N. Security Council would not order the peacekeepers to try to stop the violence and might even withdraw them completely. By this date, the organizers of the genocide had also expanded their ranks considerably and were strong enough to remove opponents and impose compliance with the killing campaign. On April 16 and 17, they replaced the military chief of the staff and the prefects best known for opposing the killings. One prefect was later imprisoned and executed and the other was murdered with his family. Three burgomasters and a number of other officials who sought to stop the killings were also slain, either by mid-April or shortly after ...

https://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/Geno1-3-02.htm#P22_7285

[struggle4progress]

10. Rwanda genocide: 100 days of slaughter

7 April 2014

... a plane carrying then President .. Habyarimana .. was shot down ... Hutu extremists ... immediately started a well-organised campaign of slaughter ... Lists of government opponents were handed out to militias who went and killed them, along with all of their families ... At the time, ID cards had people's ethnic group on them, so militias set up roadblocks ... The UN and Belgium had forces in Rwanda but the UN mission was not given a mandate to stop the killing ... The Belgians and most UN peacekeepers pulled out after 10 Belgian soldiers were killed. The French .. allies of the Hutu government .. set up a supposedly safe zone but were accused of not doing enough to stop the slaughter in that area ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26875506

[struggle4progress]

11. Rwanda genocide: French officials face investigation

29 November 2016

Rwanda has opened a formal investigation into 20 French officials it says are suspected of involvement in the genocide of 1994 ... At the centre of the dispute is the role of France as a close ally of the Hutu nationalist government of Juvenal Habyarimana prior to the mass killings ... Rwanda has accused France of ignoring or missing warning signs and of training those who carried out the killings ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38152791

[struggle4progress]

12. Rwandan Tribunal Charges Ex-military Officer Over Genocide

KIGALI —

A Rwandan military tribunal began hearings on Thursday against a former army officer deported from Canada last month to face charges over Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Jean Claude Seyoboka is accused of genocide, planning genocide, and murder and rape as crimes against humanity.

He was a second lieutenant in the army when unknown gunmen shot down a plane carrying the then-presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, triggering an uprising by militias from the majority Hutu ethnic group. The militias killed about 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates.

The military prosecution told the court that Seyoboka, who was deported from Canada on November 18, trained the Interahamwe militia and killed Tutsi in several parts of the capital ...

http://www.voanews.com/a/rwanda-tribunal-charges-ex-military-officer-over-genocide/3618948.html

[struggle4progress]

13. Rwanda: The Art of Remembering and Forgetting

By Peter Gwin, National Geographic
PUBLISHED APRIL 8, 2014

... Father .. Sebyiatsi .. believes God is punishing him for something, but not the same thing the Rwandan government is punishing him for. The .. 67-year-old Roman Catholic priest .. is serving 30 years for participating in the genocide ...

"I want to be clear: I did not kill anyone," he says ...

... Terese became pregnant, and when the child was born, Benoit decided .. he should publicly acknowledge both the child and his sin. He baptized the child in the church where he was serving.

... the monsignor was determined to excommunicate him, but the Vatican refused. “They said, ‘No, you must try to rehabilitate him,’ so I was suspended ... Eventually, he petitioned Rome to reinstate him. “I was waiting for their response when the president’s plane crashed,” he says ...

"I was walking down the street and some soldiers had set up a checkpoint. They stopped a man ahead of me who was walking with two young boys. I saw the soldiers shoot all three of them at point-blank range" ...

... as investigations into the genocide began, some witnesses came forward to say that he had encouraged the soldiers to kill the man and the boys ...

... a national court ... asked .. why ... he had not tried to stop the killing ...

... "I was powerless. It was insanity. They would have killed me" ...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140407-rwanda-genocide-today-anniversary/

[trotsky]

14. "Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."

[struggle4progress]

15. What more than an accusation could we possibly need before we form our opinions?

The pastor of a Pentecostal church in Kent led an armed militia Hutu who hacked their Tutsis to death and gouged out their eyes during the Rwandan genocide, a court heard today. Celestin Mutabaruka, who was arrested in Kent in 2013, is one of five men who have been living freely in Britain for more than a decade who are now facing extradition at Westminster Magistrates Court for taking part in the genocide that left more than 800,000 dead in just 100 days ... Dr Vincent Brown, from north London, Charles Munyaneza, from Bedford, Celestin Ugirashebuja from Essex, Emmanuel Nteziryayo, of Manchester, and Mutabaruka, of Kent, are all wanted in connection with the 1994 atrocities. They deny involvement and say they would not receive a fair trial if they were forced to return ...
Celestin Mutabaruka .. allegedly led a Hutu militia who hacked Tutsis to death
By Hayley Dixon 4:57PM GMT 04 Mar 2014

... District judge Emma Arbuthnot at Westminster Magistrates' Court said there was a real risk they would not get a fair trial in Rwanda. The Crown Prosecution Service indicated it would appeal against the ruling. Vincent Brown, also known as Vincent Bajinya, Charles Munyaneza, Emmanuel Nteziryayo, Celestin Ugirashebuja and Celestin Mutabaruka were accused of playing an active part in the killings ... An attempt to extradite four of the men, who are all of Hutu ethnicity, was thrown out by the High Court in 2009 on similar grounds ...
Rwanda genocide: UK judge rejects extradition bid
22 December 2015

The High Court in London will today begin the appeal hearing in a longstanding case concerning extradition of five Rwandans suspected of participating in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The suspects are Vincent Bajinya, a medical doctor; Celestin Mutabaruka, a former pastor; as well as three former mayors Celestin Ugirashebuja, Charles Munyaneza, and Emmanuel Nteziryayo. They were separately arrested in 2013 in the UK after an extradition request from the Rwandan government, which has, for over a decade, requested that they are brought to Rwanda to answer for the crimes they stand accused of ... Westminster Magistrates lower court last year rejected the Government’s appeal to extradite the suspects, saying there was a risk they would not get a fair trial in Rwanda ...
Extradition hearing for 5 Genocide suspects starts in UK court
JEAN D'AMOUR MBONYINSHUTI
PUBLISHED: November 28, 2016