Alan writes - According to international media reports, Kenya teeters on the brink of collapse as tens of thousands of people have been internally displaced. Many are now destitute - burned out of their homes and told by machete-wielding youths either to leave or be killed. Some have been burnt alive in a church. For news details see here and here. There have been some hopeful signs over the last week.
This news is shockingly reminiscent of the early days of the 1994 massacre in Rwanda. Ironically a new book describing the Rwandan Genocide centres on the themes of forgiveness and hope. The Bishop of Rwanda: Finding Forgiveness Amidst a Pile of Bones by John Rucyahana is reviewed here.
[Warning – some readers might find the excerpt (below) from the Shallow Graves of Rwanda uncomfortable and sickening. Feel free to skip the italicised section].
Bishop Rucyahana claims that in 1994, at least 1,117,000 innocent people were massacred in the horrible genocide in Rwanda. ‘We lost more than one million people out of a population of only eight million. Of the 6.83 million who were left, 120,000 were sent to prison’. Describing the genocide Shaharyar Khan (U.N. special representative of the secretary general of the UN) – in his book The Shallow Graves of Rwanda, writes - “Never in living history has such wanton brutality been inflicted by human beings on their fellow creatures [as in Rwanda]. . . even the killing fields of Cambodia and Bosnia pale before the gruesome, awful depravity of massacres in Rwanda. . .The Interahamwe made a habit of killing young Tutsi children, in front of their parents, by first cutting off one arm, then the other. They would gash the neck with a machete to bleed the child slowly to death, but while they were still alive, they would cut off private parts and throw them at the faces of the terrified parents, who would then be murdered with slightly greater dispatch.”
Today there is still so much pain, so many real tears, and so much guilt in Rwanda as people like Bishop Rucyahana work for a healing forgiveness. A forgiveness that is hard won and necessitates miles of tears and the Spirit of God. “It cannot be done”, writes Bishop Rucyahana “without God. The reconciliation we are attempting here is not an easy thing. It is very painful. I have seen people try to talk about it and burst into tears for an hour or two before they can even speak.”
Reading this book and watching the news about Kenya prompts two prayers – please God don’t let us let this happen again thank you for the amazing forgiveness and hope evidenced in the lives described by Bishop Rucyahana. More of this in the next post.
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