I could not forgive these people for the atrocities they committed, regardless of the passage of time. Are we willing to forgive the Nazis for their crimes against humanity?
6
Given that the Hutu and Tutsi divide was a completely arbitrary one foisted by the colonial powers upon Rwanda (divide to weaken) I am glad the people are ready to move on. Bravo to Rwanda.
Now if we could only get the stupid borders the British left the Middle East with fixed, then we would be getting somewhere. Really, a third of each of several countries is Kurdish, how absurd!
Those Brits should be very ashamed of their hurtful manipulation.
8
I am struck by the thought of white liberals applauding a reconciliation between African killers and their African victims. Would liberals applaud or expect German Jews to reconcile w their Nazi killers? Is there a racial double standard in the largesse of liberal morality? What about white lynch mobs and black victims? No?
I am disturbed by a nagging feeling of racism in all this. And I think it is not wrong to sentence someone to die for committing crimes at this level.
9
Yeah, I would fully forgive the perpetrators too. Once they pay the price for the lives they took. The price for ruthlessly murdering an innocent person is and should always be - the loss of your own life.
6
This is an interesting but superficial article. For example, why doesn’t it provide more specifics about how surviving victims of horrific atrocities in Rwanda feel about their perpetrators being forgiven and reintegrated back into their local communities? In particular, I would be interested in learning how women who were raped and bore children as a result of those rapes feel about these efforts. Also, how do the children who are now young adults feel about their mothers’ perpetrators being welcomed back into their neighborhoods? I imagine that it would be devastating for most mothers and their children. In short, this article seems to suggest that forgiveness and reconciliation can be relatively straightforward after genocide, which I find highly suspect.
12
If you want to get more insight into the Rwandan genocide, pick up "Left to Tell" by Immaculee Ilibagiza, a remarkable book on the horrors of the Rwandan Civil War, her incredible tale of survival, and her unbelievable ability to forgive.
Immaculee hid in a Hutu minister's tiny 3'x4' bathroom with 7 other Tutsi women for 90 days (!) after her beloved family was slaughtered by Hutu neighbors.
It was an emotionally wrenching, but oddly hopeful book as she recounts her happy family and childhood, educational growth, tale of survival, and relationship with god which ultimately lead to her to forgive her family's murderers.
I'm not into religion, so some of her religious zeal wasn't easy for me to identify with, but I could see how it not only got her through her traumatic experience, but inspired her to actively forgive her murdering neighbors.
It truly is an incredible story. Fast read too.
6
In 2005, I got involved with a project to support an orphanage in Rwanda. I read many books and did much research regarding the genocide and its causes before visiting Rwanda for the twelfth anniversary of the genocide. The most frightening things I learned were how the genocide was instigated -- how talk-radio was used to incite hatred and violence by dehumanizing the minority ethnic groups. This is especially frightening in the U.S., because the talking heads at Fox Opinion and the current President of the U.S. rely on very similar tactics to appeal to the Republican base. What gives hope is studying how the Rwandan government worked tirelessly to institute reforms and to find ways to achieve peace and reconciliation -- including the gacaca courts where townspeople were empowered to try and sentence their own people and to understand what led their neighbors to commit such atrocities.
73
The article, while heartening, omits crucial facts. a) when arrested, or in court, did these people plead guilty and confess their crimes? b) do they admit their crimes now, upon their return?
I am sure that Belgian colonialism, and bad government, played a deadly role, but so does personal responsibility in genocidal crimes. I would guess that the blame-evading deniers are not welcomed home, while the honest, sincerely apologetic confessors are.
16
My grandparents, Assyrian Christians from Iran, survived the Armenian Genocide. They were some of the very few from their families who made it out. They fled on foot several hundred miles, to the relative safety of a British camp at Baquba, Iraq.
Reconciliation? Never. The Turks and the Kurds have never acknowledged their role in this mass murder. They spin the "both sides" lie -- and they've been successful at it for over 100 years. The fact is, the Armenian, Assyrian and Pontic Greek minorities in Turkey, Iraq and Iran made up a tiny portion of the population. There are no "two sides" when 98% of the population wants to exterminate the 2%.
I still have my grandparents' original property deeds from a village in the Urmia region in Iran. They lost everything. They never received any reparations, and my family never will.
Families like mine won't receive even an honest admission that our people were the victims of genocide.
And as long as the perpetrators and their progeny tell me the slaughter of my relatives simply didn't occur, I will never reconcile with any of them. To do so would be complicit in their lies.
Forgiveness? Not even on the screen. Ever.
81
@Donegal
Actually the Kurds did acknowledge their part in the genocide and apologized.
The Turks will never acknowledge their crimes under Erdogan. But the world knows the truth.
17
While attending the "Pathways to Reconciliation and Global Human Rights Conference" held in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2005, I met several victims of the Rwandan genocide. Every one of them told me the held little animus toward their persecutors, wishing mostly to be able to recover from their trauma in order to re-engage their lives more fully. In 1996, I met several people in Cambodia who told me the same the same about the aftermath of the Pol Pot-directed genocide. Indeed, I also met several people in Viet Nam who told me they held the same attitude towards the Americans.
Reconciliation is possible, but only if both victims and perpetrators come to recognize that they both bear the scars of horrific acts. To do that, there must be honesty, a dedication to telling and acknowledging the truth of what happened, and the will to move forward in peace. By remaining dedicated to truth, we can cross the threshold into our new age by constructing and utilizing media to foster the sharing of meaning, both inwardly and outwardly, in order to facilitate the unfolding of personal and societal reconciliation and reconstruction. All we lack is the faith—in ourselves, in each other and in that which connects us all—to match our imagination.
46
It's a hard lesson, but true. Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and even Obama show that hatred only makes things worse. Pain or not, our health requires that we not harm ourselves further by nursing bad feeling.
26
Interesting. After spending an enormous amount of time it became apparent that 1) the government only allows “research” that was favorable to them. Not too long ago the BBC was banned for providing a different point of view in a documentary and a Fulbright scholar was not given a permit to do her research because the outcomes may have conflicted with the party line.
The Reconciliation efforts have been encouraging and have gone on for quite a while. However, deep tensions still exist and I found that often people either would not work together or would be extremely suspicious while doing so. No matter how much forgiveness is given, abiding trust will never return until the generations affected by the genocide are gone.
The key is the children. The Genocide Memorial in Kigali is doing wonderful work in bringing children together to learn trust, cooperation and leadership..all skills for both forgiveness and the future. Their Education Department serves hundreds of children and teens a year from all over Rwanda.
The people of Rwanda are welcoming and warm. The country has made great progress in the past decade. However, until there is freedom of speech, the press, and a government that both respects their opponents and holds fair elections, these people who have been through so much and paid such a huge cost, will never be truly free.
30
Thankfully the vast majority of the human race will never have to endure such atrocities and even fewer yet will ever have to engage in the atrocities themselves.
It's so easy to sit at home in the US in your very comfortable suburban life and proclaim that nobody ever deserves forgiveness, that anyone whoever commits a crime should be punished to the maximum extent, even put to death, but suppose for a moment that our own government were to start asking you to find and murder your neighbors and anyone you may have reason to believe might not vote the way you like. Like a good patriot you follow through and later learn you were duped, that you were engaging in extreme criminal behavior. You go to prison for a very long time and upon release you find out that there really are people willing to forgive you and move on.
Anything short of forgiveness may indeed result in a perpetual civil war with millions upon millions murdered for other reason than feeling hate and contempt in your heart for anyone not perfectly aligned with your world view. That's no way to run a railroad.
Forgiveness may seem like a foreign concept to many Americans, but it's necessary when masses of people lose their collective minds.
35
Even trumpettes will someday be accepted by those they betrayed.
@Idiolect You know..I had many reservations about voting for Trump.
The alternative was to vote for someone who clearly should be serving a 7-10 year federal prison sentence so looking back..I have no regrets.
I still have reservations about Trump's bombastic style, but I'm no longer worried about the policy stuff.
He seems to have learned quite a bit being under assault 24/7 the past 2 years.
2
@Martino
Very well said!!
4
It is almost difficult to grasp this story of forgiveness and reconciliation; I am so disheartened and discouraged by what I see daily in this America of my birth. And I find it ironic that Rwanda, an African country which lacks the wealth and industry of our own nation, is now in a position to mentor, to teach us the meaning of decency, civility, and compassion, indeed human goodness. This goes to the heart of these wonderful people, their culture, their spirituality. Simply put I am both humbled and ashamed by my own, at times, resistance to reach out to those who need love and support. I think perhaps the biggest lesson to glean and heed is the ability of human nature to embrace all, including the "other." Our capacity to love, to transcend those flaws of prejudice and discrimination which we learn at too early of an age, is truly a gift to be nurtured and spread exponentially.
8
This is truly amazing. I wonder how much of it is the passing of time, and how much of it is simply that rage and hatred surely cannot consume people for so long. What amazes me the most is that average people were propelled into committing these horrible crimes against their neighbors. That should be a constant reminder to everyone these days, when divisions seem to be more pronounced and are increasing. This article does give me hope, however. And a reminder the simplest way to avoid any of it is not to be cruel to your fellow man.
3
15% Tutsi ruling 85% Hutu for a hundred years.
It was brewing since the 1950s
2
These actions represent the height of humanity precisely because the act of forgiving and reconciling with a community member who participated in the genocide is so unthinkable it exists beyond the bounds of an exemplary loving kindness I believe most are capable of but will never know.
3
As someone who represented a Hutu who was convicted of inciting people to commit genocide, this article does not fully explain the the issues. When Belgium left Rwanda, the government was turned over to a government controlled by the Tutsi minority. An election turned over the Tutsi government to one controlled by the majority Hutu. The civil war started when the plan carrying Rwanda President Habyarimana, & Burundi President Ntaryarmirand both Hutus was shot down. The long held belief was that this was done under orders of Paul Kagame a Tutsi.
Kagame and his well trained army invaded/liberated Rwanda. Amazingly there has never been any accountability for the actions of his army. Only Hutus were ever brought before the Tribunal. This understanding by the people of Rwanda is that there were atrocities perpetrated on both sides.
6
@Maureen
This could be, however in the US (specifically in Houston, where I was living at the time), the only news reports I heard and saw reported that it was exclusively a Hutu led genocide.
We have only to look at US/Japan relations or relations between Germany and the rest of the western world to know that forgiveness for genocide and nuclear bombs is possible in less than a generation. Humans all seem to have remarkable abilities to be both demonic and angelic.
39
@Alexandra Hamilton
And the US failed to embrace Russia after the USSR fell, and look what has happened. The lesson of vast differences in post-WWI vs post-WW2 remains to be relearned.....
4
Are those friendly neighbors Tutsi relatives of victims or Hutu who share guilt?
4
@Jonathan Katz According to the article, the friendly neighbors include relatives of victims.
@jonathankatz the amazing thing is that they are Tutsis who are forgiving their Hutu neighbors. In some cases, they have killed their own family member. Immmaculeé Illibagiza has written a memoir called Left To Tell. She is the only surviving member of her family in Rwanda. When taken to the jail and presented to the man who murdered her brother and father, she forgave him. Immaculee spent ninety days hiding in a bathroom with a group of women, hearing the killers all around them, hunting for her.
1
It's impossible to apply Western standards to these situations where tribes and clans still determine if you're on the 'inside' or on the 'outside.
And..since Western Civilization is a code word for racism in the USA today...all we can do is hope the clans get tired of killing one another.
Other than that, there's not much we can do.
I would pray...but that's now banned in my city.
"Protais’ experience was not unique. Another man, Straton served almost 21 years in prison for murdering three people."
They call THAT justice?
Life is cheap in Rwanda!
5
Truly wish the best to these folk.
It was a war, both sides did their crimes.
Maybe both sides can move on.
3
@AutumnLeaf
The majority of the atrocities were committed by the Hutu. To say "both sides did their crimes" tries to hide that.
7
@AutumnLeaf You're looking at this through your NYC perspective, and it doesn't apply.
Think of it through your Irish or Italian perspective from 140 years ago in the streets of NYC and dealing with those Americans who didn't want your rotting stinking ancestors anywhere near their women or children.
This stuff (grouping/tribalism) is rooted deep in our DNA.
If you want to see it in action, go to a NY Giants NY Jets football game and just watch the fans in the stands pummel on each other.
Worse...go to Philly and wear your NY Giants jersey.
Good luck.
1
This is a very difficult situation to apprehend. Talking to few people who were forgiven doesn’t tell all the story. 200 people don’t make a nation.
What still bothers me is how United States did not intervene to stop the massacre. We almost routinely invade countries for really no reason at all with some slightest excuse with made up intelligence. This was one place we could have intervened and be praised by the whole world.
But that was not to be. We saved millions in world war but had no desire to save Rwanda.
Question.
If Rwanda was a white country would we have intervened.? Answer most probably is yes.
16
@Eraven If Rwanda were economically beneficial to the US, would we have intervened? Yes.
4
@Eraven NO. One word Bosnia. It took a long time to step up. Europe certainly did nothing on its own - and in their front yard.
1
@Eraven No one intervened in Germany
1
I see a lot of skepticism among the commenters.
I wish I had the source for the following anecdote - perhaps I do not have the details precisely as they occurred but I believe this is the general gist of the story:
Two 17 year-old boys got into a fight, and one killed the other.
The mother of the slain boy went up to the murderer and said to him, "I am going to kill the boy who murdered my son."
She then went on to explain her comment. She said that she planned to adopt the murderer, and love him so thoroughly that the boy who killed her son would simply no longer exist.
I've heard dozens of stories like this over the years, and I have no doubt that at least some of them are true.
****
I remember writing a comment once, in these pages, to the effect that it would be good for liberals to consider that people who voted for Trump might actually be redeemable human beings.
My goodness, the viciousness of the attacks.
So I guess, if you can't believe that a lifelong dear friend of yours who voted for Trump is still a good person, worthy of caring and affection, then i could see that the kind of redemption reported here might be a tad hard to believe.
28
Excellent article. I had no idea that Rwanda did such a good job of pursing the killers. Remarkable, as that did NOT happen in Germany after WW II.
20
@Elliott In Germany after WWII, many Nazis or fellow travelers were allowed to escape justice because the US and other nations thought their abilities were too valuable to lose (see Operation Paperclip). Also, if every Nazi had really been tried, convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned, there would not have been enough Germans to do even basic work. I think it was just the reality of trying to rebuild (doesn't make it right, of course).
2
@Elliott The Germans were better at concealing their actions behind coded language and innuendo. "Resettlement in the east" gave everyone not directly involved in the final extermination plausible deniable.
2
The education system is absolutely key. Rwanda decided to tell the truth: killers are responsible, but not SOLELY responsible. More countries should re-evaluate their history in this way.
16
Reconciliation was possible because the perpetrators atoned for their crimes. We can't do that in the USA because white people refuse to acknowledge any of the things that they have done. "Slavery was sooo long ago, you're not over that yet?" i.e. Same in regards to their treatment of Native Americans, and placing them on "reservations" pretending as if giving them their own land back that was stolen in the first place is a good deed. All the comments of "I wouldn't be able to forgive" are hilarious, honestly.
16
Which white people ? Some ? All ?
Someone like me who’s family didn’t get here till way after slavery was abolished ? While I have sympathy for those who suffer , and I have helped many I have nothing to atone for .
1
No sir, no way.
If someone had massacred my family (my wife and daughter) and then comes back to live with his family in my village, expecting me to welcome him is ridiculous. You simply cannot have peace without justice, and that is justice denied for the sake of peace.
He should consider himself lucky that locals decided not to be like him, and no one troubled his family while he was away. But to later become a peaceful neighbor with him? Sorry, that is simply absurd.
10
25 years after the Genocide against Tutsis, I hope this article ignites a desire to reach out and support thousands of survivors of the Genocide against Tutsis who are still suffering with the aftermath Genocide including extreme poverty after losing members of the families or dealing with trauma.
The tragic irony is perpetrators often return home to their families while survivors especially those living in rural areas often live alone with no family support.
I support genocide survivors who are advocating for reparations - financed by those countries and companies who supported the Genocidaires.
9
"Instead, we highlight how emphasizing complex causes of violence humanizes perpetrators in meaningful ways." I'm trying to reconcile this statement with #metoo, which is relevant, since rape was one of the weapons used against the Tutsi minority. If we were reading a different op-ed piece about rape, I doubt there would be any talk about humanizing the perpetrator. So are we supposed to feel sympathy for the perpetrator? Is the victim supposed to forgive? What is the politically correct position?
10
@Anonymous I agree with you that "complex causes" is a bridge too far. But 20 years from now, if a group of women who were victims of sexual assault decided to reconcile with the perpetrators, I think that would be newsworthy to say the least.
1
Is this a particularly black phenomenon? I remember the reactions of the survivors of the 2015 mass killing at the AME church a couple of years ago. The one, as usual, committed by a white man. The one that Obama memorialized by singing Amazing Grace. It was all about forgiveness.
Forgiveness rarely appears as a caucasian response. It is more typically about revenge and vindictiveness.
I'm caucasian.
6
I agree. I have noticed the same sense of grace among people of color. I am white.
4
@HT that's because most of ya'll just want power....all we care about is peace and stability. Ask most African-Americans (since you refer to yourself as Caucasian and not white, I assume you do also know how to correctly refer to black people) and majority don't want to cause harm to oppressors. We just simply want to be left alone and allowed to move through life the same way everyone else does. Thinking about this aspect you have to ask yourself, who are the real "animals" here?
1
Many black Christians understand suffering, the value of their faith, and the love of Jesus, better than most white Christians (I am one of the latter.)
1
This is a remarkable story of healing after unimaginable violence, but the picture of Rwanda today is both too rosy and too dark. Too rosy in that Rwanda's economic growth and infrastructure improvement have come at the cost of political repression and selective historical amnesia, e.g. Rwanda's role in regional conflicts. Too dark in understating the capacity of traditional cultures in Africa and elsewhere to respond to catastrophic suffering by building a better future, not dwelling on the past. There's no unique African soul at work here but rather a markedly different conception of shared humanity than prevails in the West. Often religious leaders -- not mentioned here -- are key players, stepping forward at great personal risk to bring healing. A notable example in neighboring Uganda is the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, established by priests and pastors and imams during the darkest days of LRA violence. A group of visiting Americans broadcast their own solution to the problem in a viral video ("Kony 2012"): more guns, more aid, more Americans to rescue helpless natives. Ugandans found it deeply offensive. But Protestant, Catholic and Muslim religious leaders helped achieve what decades of military confrontation could not: an end to the war, reunion of divided families, and a restored livelihoods.
[author, "We Are the Voice of the Grass: Interfaith Peace Activism in Northern Uganda" Oxford Univ Press 2019]
29
Numerous issues merit considering when one is willing to be confronted by this article’s descriptions, which do not adequate explain the complexities of human Identities and ranges of our helpful and harmful behaviors.This article summarizes a research project. “Research,” of whatever types, and implemented for a range of reasons follows a relatively standard model:(1)collected relevant data which is measurable; everything isn’t measurable at any given time and place (2) analyze the available and accessible data from generalizable sources using relevant tools, and derive knowledge-information- which may or may not be valid in a ranges of situations/ conditions;there is the “known,” the currently unknown because of gaps in needed information and technology and there can be “ the unknowable.” A caveat: realities interacting dimensions include uncertainties,unpredictabilities, randomness and lack of control, whatever our efforts-timely or not are everpresent;(3) transmute the information into meaningful, valid, understanding, which may or may not be usable given internal and external conditions.To understand all or even some of the multidimensional, dynamic processes of individuals, family and community systems, being described in this article may be beyond the skills, abilities and ken of limited human beings. Consider, try to understand institutional-stimulated genocide THERE, and behaviors towards...fathom an employee kidnapping a child from the arms of parents, HERE, NOW?
3
Resilience. And humanity.
4
My sense of the return is that they are welcomed because it was a vicious war and both sides engaged in it. It was a mass murder and rape hysteria and all sides acknowledge that it wasn't just one side that experienced it. So they agree to forgive and move on with the gift of life, knowing that there are no guarantees in the future or even in the present except that they agree that it is much better now than it was during the collective nightmare their country experienced. The trauma they experienced will be felt for many generations, lots of work to do to build the kind of collective engagement that will unite their peoples in order to prevent future violence and war.
3
@tony Unfortunately, your "sense" of what happened is not based on facts. This article is talking about the perpetrators of the Genocide against Tutsis that took place in Rwanda in 1994. It was not a " a vicious war and both sides engaged in it". A seminal book on the genocide is Conspiracy to Murder by Linda Melvern.
12
It's one thing to look at these stories for what they are: remarkable examples of the human capacity for forgiveness. It's another to suggest we take these second hand stories and consider them in relation to our legal system. The assistant professor and graduate student have never lost loved ones to genocide and, along with their entire society, been forced to live alongside the perpetrators.
Forgiveness isn't always about right and wrong. Clearly here it is a matter of collective survival. It would be a mistake to cite forgiveness by necessity in our application of forgiveness by morality. Dr. Brehm and Ms. Frizzell should refrain from doing so.
4
@Common man-the point he is making is that as Americans we are awfully quick to judge. And we do judge, unwilling to compare our circumstances and history with those who grow up in unfavorable environments. That is why we won't reevaluate the tax systems that end with one school having laptops for all children and another having hardly any.
Let's refrain from implying that our legal system is superior because we devised it. Forgiveness and mercy should be the cornerstones of our legal system and they are far from it.
5
@Mark No. Forgiveness should not necessarily be the cornerstones of our legal system. Restoration of wholeness and dignity for victims should be a cornerstone. Admissions of wrongdoing helps. Asking for forgiveness puts victims in the position of revictimizing themselves as part of a process which all to often, asks them to move along and move on. Mercy - that maybe could be part of a legal system that acknowledged that systems often create perps and victims simultaneously through forgiveness and "shake hands" and "let go" conflict resolution.
3
@Mark Do not misrepresent my words. I did not "imply that our legal system is superior because we devised it". This article has nothing to do with american "tax systems". It's about the aftermath Rwandan genocide, a genocide which you say we are "quick to judge"... How exactly does one judge genocide too quickly? Genocide only occurs when the world judges too slowly.
The genocidaires in Rwanda annihilated the notion of community over a period of months in the spring and summer of 1994. Perhaps -- to borrow a phrase -- this event is simply too overwhelming to fully comprehend, let alone forgive or forget. And yet. And yet.
5
On comparing how these individuals have been treated relative to prisoners who have served their terms in the US, I wonder how many US prisoners return to a social environment where rape and murder are accepted. And I wonder how many of the Hutu ex-prisoners profiled in this article have returned to predominately Hutu areas where their atrocities are still applauded.
8
Much as this is a real story of infinite magnanimity and forgiveness of the Rwandans to their genocidaires, I am sure glad that these people were set free only after completing their sentences for their culpability. Rwandans epitomizes what humans are capable of - humanity! And us? Sadly the reverse!
8
@NNI We have not committed genocide. how are we "sadly the reverse"?
1
Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. Forgiveness is not easy for victims and their families, but it may be the only way to properly heal. An essential part of a successful process of community forgiveness is that the guilty party feel real contrition and take responsibility for his/her actions.
3
For those interested, I would recommend the dialogue project Stories for Hope (http://storiesforhope.org/) that recorded conversations between genocide survivors and present-day youth. Much like the article points out, both Hutus and Tutsis were considered survivors of a genocide that was perpetrated at a much higher level.
6
Thanks so much for this! Dr. Nyseth Brehm, I'd been meaning to write you for ages as I ended up traveling to Rwanda five times between 2011 and 2016. Alas, this will have to do. Thanks so much/murakoze cyane for your work on these issues. Rwanda will always hold a special place in my heart.
4
@Máel Sheridan
Thank you for your love and appreciation of our country. We overcome a sad history. Thank u. Keep in touch here.
1
I wonder how many of these welcoming people were from families of Tutsi that were killed or maimed.
18
An amazing story that could be unpacked at great length. Such a different approach than many Americans would recognize as valid, and yet not unique. Mozambique went through a vicious, prolonged civil war after the colonizing Portuguese left, and went through a similar process of reconciling themselves individually and collectively to the atrocities that were committed. Like the Rwandans, they viewed forces outside the individual as partly to blame, and saw war as a kind of sickness that infected those involved. Reconciliation meant not just accepting some of the individuals who committed atrocities back into society, but going through a process that "cured" them of the war. No doubt incredibly painful for victims and families of victims, but certainly a more humane and nuanced view of criminal behavior than anything present in the west. "Bad people do bad things" is as far as we typically go, with no regard for the trauma experienced by so many of our criminals, no regard for the cost we impose on our society with mass incarceration, and no regard for the human potential that we essentially write off and the cycle of poverty, isolation, and crime we perpetuate. I'm not saying there are any easy answers, but Rwanda, Mozambique, South Africa and other countries have shown that there are other ways to do this.
17
@Neither here nor there
Have the victims forgiven the perpetrators?
I forgot---they're dead so they cannot answer.
3
There is something about this piece that I cannot quite put my finger on, but I feel as though I am being sold a very specific story, fashioned to make a political point for US readers. Given that, I will ask a few questions of the writer(s): out of the 200 people you followed, precisely how many were welcomed home after their jail sentences by those whose family and friends they had slaughtered? How many were not welcomed home? How many (if any) were welcomed home by the Hutu majority as "heroes"? We as readers need a fuller context before we can contextualize the "many" cases you document of what seems like a variation of restorative justice being successful here.
Here is another question: will you follow up in 2 years, 5 years? 10 years? Will this welcoming home of the killers of people's family members be a lasting peace?
Finally we get to the idea of transferring this to the United States. The argument goes like this: systems of power forced people to commit genocide in Rwanda, therefore we should recognize that people are sometimes acting under those systematic stress when they kill, therefore we should take note in the US?Let's be totally clear what happened in part in Rwanda: the government told a majority over the radio to slaughter a minority in the spring of 1994. In what world are the authors living in where this is any way analogues to what leads someone in the US to commit a violent crime and end up in jail? More nonsense from NYT
73
@Dave excellent questions which I hope the authors will respond to. but your last paragraph seems to willfully miss the point since the majority of prisoners in USA are poor. either the poor are just more likely to be bad people or there is something in their situation that contributes to this.
23
@Dave
I agree with Paul. Although I believe your last paragraph is misguided, your questions are excellent and I hope the writers will answer them.
11
@Dave
There is an account of the Dalai Lama's personal physician, regarding his years of torture at the hands of the Chinese communists.
He received an unusually thorough examination by a truly stunned psychiatrist, who declared that he simply could not detect any symptoms of PTSD.
Just to be clear, the physician was brutally beaten and subjected to a variety of other methods of torture, on a daily basis. To stop all of this, he simply had to say the words, "I renounce Buddhism." He refused to do so.
When asked how he coped, he said he spent long hours in deep, reflective (discursive) meditation, contemplating the internal suffering his tormenters will inevitably experience as a result of the way they viewed themselves and the world (just to be clear - this is pointing to an internal, psychological process, not some kind of magical "karmic" effect).
There is already sufficient research on what does and does not work in prisons to know that such things are quite consistent with our deepest understanding, not just of human psychology, but of ethics and morality and the most profound insights of contemplatives throughout the world.
11
Nothing short of astonishing. I just don't think I could forgive, so I am deeply impressed that these victims and their families could find a place in their souls where love of those murdered exists side-by-side with forgiveness of those who murdered them.
4
I recall when that genocide was underway and how the world stood mutely by and did nothing. That same apathy again affects the world as China uses racial profiling to round up those of its citizens who are Uyghurs.
I wonder how the Chinese concentration camp guards, police, railroad workers, construction crews, etc. view their own contributions towards confining over a million Uyghurs?
We can be certain that no Uyghurs have been killed, brutalized, tortured, etc. because the Chinese Communists said that that is none of our business. Oh, they also said we put children in cages, so we should shut up.
22
Trump's key South American ally and protegé Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, a radical right-wing evangelical "Christian", says it is time to forgive the Nazis for murdering 6 million Jews and other minorities. And Netanyahu recently embraced Bolsonaro as an ally.
7
@Jay David: only those not victimized make these cavalier pronouncements of forgiveness for the murderers.
2
@Jay David. Bolsonaro was reflecting a Christian perspective that was roundly rejected by every Israeli leader including Netanyahu. I’m not sure why Israel comes into this discussion at all but I suppose you have your reasons.
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I know a young man whose arms were both cut off during the hacking massacres. He lives in the USA now but one time he returned to Sierra Leone where that happened and was confronted by the person who'd cut off his arms. That person asked him for forgiveness. My friend could not bestow that. He'd also lost both his parents at the same time. I don't blame him for not giving forgiveness; in fact I think that forgiveness was not deserved. But my friend has remained peaceful and has already done a lot of good in the world.
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@J.Sutton
I used to work at Amnesty International, where images of the victims of Sierra Leone machete attacks would cross my desk. They were heart-rending and incomprehensible. I couldn’t imagine the mindset that would motivate a person to hack off another person’s limbs. Then one day, walking through a grocery store, I realized that I was having a fantasy about tying my boss to a chair and leaving him in a room with an anaconda. It sounds a little funny as a fantasy, but I knew with certainty that I have it in me to be just as cruel and violent as the Sierra Leone attackers, and I was shocked and deeply ashamed.
A few days after that realization, I was sitting across from a woman I hardly know when out of the blue I felt a gush of love for her well up like a physical force, something I hadn’t experienced before. At the time, I knew that that surprising force of love had something to do with the shame I’d experienced. Another way of putting it, the recognition of one’s own shadow opens something.
In your story, the perpetrator’s request for forgiveness feels important, even though I completely understand why your acquaintance couldn’t forgive him and why you feel he doesn’t deserve forgiveness. There is no way that act could be condoned, and forgiveness is never condoning.
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@J.Sutton
Thank you for sharing what sounds to me like a more typical experience than this glossy perspective from two apparently white researchers.
My guess is that individuals remaining civil and peaceful during genocidal violence reflects their deep commitment to those values -- even as they were victimized.
So it should not surprise us that those who were violated by horrific acts amid an eruption of mass violence are less inclined toward revenge. Peace loving people recognize that violence exists, but choose otherwise.
That said, commitments to peace and civility do not mandate individuals forgiving one's assailants. For people who love liberty, genocidaires being granted an opportunity to live in freedom represents as profound a form of forgiveness as these perpetrators should wish for.
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@SRF. Just brilliant - thank you for your honesty.
Whatever happened to marooning? One-time transportation cost and you're rid of the problematic person, no upkeep or due diligence required.
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Perhaps this amazing capacity for forgiveness is rooted in the local culture.
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Americans who should have been convicted of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq aka George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet and Condoleezza Rice never left nor faced any justice.
None of them had the honor to resign. Nor were any of them fired or criminally prosecuted. None apologized. Nor did they ever ask for forgiveness.
Instead of kidnapping, torturing and indefinitely detaining people, Barack Obama had his drone missile fired kill lists.
In a 100 days nearly a million Rwandans were slaughtered by clubs, feet, fire, fists, machete and arson. While hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi casualties are faceless nameless statistics.
God's judgment upon them all. In this world or the next.
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Incredible — the range of human behavior.
I doubt I could forgive. Emotionally, I would want revenge.
I remember reading a stat years ago re violent fantasy — 65% of men reported that they had violent fantasies. My thought was — yeah, and the other 35% lied. (Not saying it's that simple.)
More than 30 years, I read about the German genocide of World War II.
I recall reading that when people tried to find or give an explanation, some people would, understandably, get very angry, and say there is no possible explanation.
There is an explanation. And it's a scary one because it's fundamental biology. Genocide, like altruism and jealousy, is an app in the human behavioral repertoire.
From the brilliant scientist, James Lovelock:
“Under pressure, any group of us can be as brutal as any of those we deplore: genocide by tribal animals is as natural as breathing …”
And from E. O. Wilson — “It should not be thought that war, often accompanied by genocide, is a cultural artifact of a few societies. Nor has it been an aberration of history, a result of the growing pains of our species’ maturation. Wars and genocide have been universal and eternal, respecting no particular time or culture.”
I so fear for our future, because I think collapse is already pipeline loaded.
In addition, collapse, or large and relatively rapid structural changes in a networks relationships is when-not-if physics called self-organized criticality. Genocides, plagues & meteor hits are examples.
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The horrific, personal brutality, of the savage "machete genocide" in Rwanda was particularly disturbing. The stunning Netflix film " Black Earth Rising " deals with this event Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece "Blood Meridian", attempts to capture this kind of graphic horror. The fact that some apparent reconciliation is taking place in Rwanda is truly amazing.
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