The Rwandan genocide looms as one of the great atrocities of our generation. The apathy and inaction of the West was inexcusable. Even more horrible was the complicity of many in the Rwandan church. In the eyes of many, God became weak and lost. And evil, personified by Satan, seemed to become more powerful than God.

 

If God appeared absent during the genocide, He is ever present and active in the healing taking place in Rwanda at this time. Christ Walks Where Evil Reigned is a book of action outlining what needs to be done now in Rwanda and what we can do to be a part of these initiatives. Christ Walks Where Evil Reigned is a personal, first-hand journey of the hell, trauma, forgiveness and redemption experienced during the Rwandan genocide.

 

New Man: In 1994, more than 1 million people were killed in Rwanda in less than 100 days, and yet there are literally millions of people around the world who know nothing about this unspeakable tragedy. Tell us what happened.

 

Peter Holmes: Unlike most of the terrible slaughter in the Great Lakes regions of Central East Africa, the Rwandan genocide was between two vocational groups, people who spoke the same language and lived in the same village. The Tutsi were the herdsmen who owned the cattle, the Hutu the farmers who worked the land, just like Cain and Abel. They developed a profoundly deep hatred and jealousy for each other that were fed by the colonial strategy of dividing the natives in order to use them to control one another.

 

Ten thousand people were slaughtered every day for 100 days. Around a half-million women were infected by AIDS intentionally by men who had infected themselves for that purpose. Several hundred thousand children were maimed or left without parents.

 

One of the biggest tragedies of the Rwandan genocide was that the U.N. ignored it, as did the American and European governments. Much of the communication from the country was from the official government, which was ruled by the Hutus who were leading the genocide.

 

New Man: Tell us about your own experiences with the Rwandan genocide.

 

Holmes: My first visit to Rwanda was several years ago at the invitation of the Archbishop of Rwanda and missionary friends who had benefited from our ministry. Confronting the carnage and its consequences by visiting the genocide museum, and then sitting and inviting people to tell their stories was a most shocking experience.

 

But our purpose in going was to ask a simple question of the Rwandese people: How can we serve you now? The answer was likewise quite simple. “Teach us to let go of the damage of our past so we can help those that we love.” With one in eight of the population killed in the 1994 genocide, every family in the country was impacted. Almost everyone in the country, in conversation with us, admitted they were emotionally sick and needed help.

 

Visiting Rwanda has changed my life forever. I am working to create programs that will offer hope and healing to people deeply traumatized by such conflict.

 

New Man: Describe for us what the Rwandan people endured during this time.

 

Holmes: The genocide did not occur like an army sweeping through the country but was instead made up of neighbors who were Hutu or Hutu sympathizers who were jealous of the person next to them because they had more cows or more wealth. Jealousy, hate and even a fear of over-population helped birth the explosive slaughter.

 

Most people who suffered did so at the hands of people they knew, thereby dismantling the local culture of trust and mutuality that is essential for village life to be lived well. Thousands ran to churches for protection and sanctuary. But a number of the priests and Christian leaders handed over the keys to those committing the genocide. It sometimes took several days to slaughter the 10,000-15,000 people in the buildings.

 

It was a particularly violent strategy and often involved torture. The plan was to kill the men in front of their families, rape the woman and infect her with AIDS, and then maim the children and let them go so that they never forgot whom their enemy was. Many of these children are now young people discovering that they are incapable of sustaining long-term relationships or intimacy and that they have no capacity to build families of their own.

 

New Man: The conflicts between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes have resulted in uncountable deaths over the years. What are your thoughts about the part these struggles might have contributed to what happened during the time of the genocide? Was it about tribal warfare, or was it about something else?

 

Holmes: The genocide in Rwanda was never about racism or tribal differences regarding ethnic language and peoples. Every village had both herdsmen and farmers.

 

The genocide in Rwanda was unlike any other mass slaughter of people in this part of Africa. It was internal, self-generated, with the support of the Belgian colonials, and it made no pretence whatsoever to be anything else but the hate of one person for another.

 

However, one of the key distinctions exploited by the Belgian colonialists for the first half of the 20th century was that the herdsmen fed their children on milk so they tended to grow taller and slimmer than the farmers. The latter fed their children on vegetables, so they tended to be shorter and more muscular because of the demands of the land.

 

So it wasn’t ethnic, or racist in any conventional sense. It was the instilling of hate between two vocational groups living side by side in the same village, with the same language, where their children played together.

 

New Man: Tell us about the people of Rwanda now. How does what happened to them in 1994 affect them now?

 

Holmes: On the surface, the country is returning to normalcy with a stable government and a huge effort to integrate the people again. But below the surface, the serpent of the genocide still lurks. Numerous rebel groups exist on the fringes of the country, while within the country almost everyone carries scars of the events.

 

What becomes obvious to anyone talking to the Rwandese today is that they are all aware that just below the surface of their lives lies a toxic history that they admit they have buried because they have no one to tell them that there is an alternative way to live.

 

Each year they have 100 days of mourning during the spring, remembering the 100 days of slaughter. But increasing numbers want to stop going back, while others can’t leave the trauma because they have no one to teach them how.

 

New Man: What can our readers do to help end the suffering of the Rwandan people?

 

Holmes: The book lists over 20 ways that Western Christians can become involved. Change only comes through awareness. We are just beginning to talk about it again. It is hoped that by using Rwanda as a case study we will heighten awareness of the needs of this part of the world so that people can become more involved.

 

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