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Is it possible for former perpetrators, bystanders and survivors to live together following a genocide or period of mass violence? What steps can a society take to prevent acts of vengeance against former perpetrators?
To co-exist peacefully with the person who killed your loved ones might be the hardest task asked of anyone living in a post-genocide society. For many in such a situation, it is asking the impossible. But striving for co-existence without vengeance is the hard and necessary work of communities and nations that have been through the very worst. |
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Like Philip Gourevitch, the late Elizabeth Neuffer also reported on the mass of refugees streaming back into Rwanda from Zaire. Most of the returnees were Hutu and a fair number of them had participated in the genocide. While they were being welcomed back by their President and other Rwandan officials, victims and survivors prepared for the possibility that they would come face to face with the people who murdered their families.
In her book, The Key to My Neighbor’s House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda, Neuffer tells the following story:
Understanding evil, defining repentance, avoiding vengeance, delivering judgment, granting forgiveness: These were issues three-quarters of a million returning Hutu now posed for Rwanda. Indeed, they were issues the country was already meeting head-on.
….Crowds of Tutsi and Hutu stood at the border, looking for enemies as well as friends and relatives. My translator, Françoise, broke into my thoughts as we stood there. All eight of her family have been slaughtered by Hutu militia in Gisenyi; she lived simply because she’d been at a neighbor’s house when the killers arrived. Survivor’s guilt was a burden she, a staunch Catholic who found solace in her faith, bore without complaint.
“See that one?” Françoise said, pointing to a small man shuffling along, bowed under the weight of his suitcase on his back. “I’m pretty sure he’s the man who killed my neighbor up the street.” She strained forward to look. “Yes, that’s him.” She nodded.
Françoise had told me earlier that she had a good idea of who had killed her family. So I asked, “What would you do if you saw those responsible for killing your family?”
“I’ve been looking at the crowd,” she said, continuing to peer at the faces parading by. “So far I
haven’t seen anyone responsible for my family’s death.”
I persisted. “But what if you did?”
Françoise sighed. Conflicting emotions played across her broad face. She was quiet for a good five minutes, searching her soul, asking her God for guidance. “Vengeance,” she said finally, “won’t bring my family back. The answer lies in justice and in God.”1
Connections for the Classroom...
- The scene that Neuffer describes is nearly unimaginable. Write a reflection on the story Neuffer tells and on Françoise’s response.
- Hutu and Tutsi alike consider Rwanda to be home. When Hutu refugees crossed the border, they were returning to their home; yet, the fact that Rwanda was home to them represented terror to Tutsis and other victims. How do you come to terms with this reality?
- This story represents a seemingly impossible tension. How can one reconcile? How can’t one? If people were going to live as neighbors again, is reconciliation necessary? Is it possible to keep living in Rwanda—a small and densely populated country—without reconciliation between survivors and perpetrators?
- Françoise says that the answer lies in part in “justice.“ The call for justice resonated with Neuffer as she watched the returnees cross the border. Thinking about this, she asked Deputy Justice Minister Gerald Gahima how the government planned to protect the returnees from potential violence and from false accusations. And, she asked, what about the people who were so quickly put in jail following the end of the genocide who continue to claim their innocence? Already human rights groups were finding cases of people falsely accused by jealous or angry neighbors.
[Neuffer] asked Gahima, “If the Rwandan government was trying to send a message that impunity was over and a new era of justice had begun, shouldn’t the justice system have to meet the highest possible standards?”
Silence. Then Gahima looked at me. “The problem isn’t just one human being committing a crime against another,” he replied. “But all human beings were doing things that no one could imagine a human could do. It was as if there was a collective insanity….” His voice trailed off.
“What you end up with in a post-genocide society is not justice,” the deputy justice minister concluded. “Perhaps we should think of another word for it.”2
South African Constitutional Court Justice Albie Sachs said, “Justice is not only in the end result. It is also in the process.” Create a working definition of the word justice. What does justice mean to you?
1 The Key to My Neighbor’s House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda, by Elizabeth Neuffer (Picador, New York). 2001, 2002, pp. 254, 256.
2 Ibid., p. 259.
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