Dr. Peter Holmes, co-author of Christ Walks Where Evil Reigned: Responding to the Rwandan Genocide, talks about the book’s subject.

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.

10,000 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 alive without parents.

One of the biggest tragedies of the Rwandan genocide was that the UN 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.

[It] 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 who 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.

[It] was never about racism. 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.

Now, the Rwandese need help moving on. Holmes says the fabric of trust has been shredding from their society, and many don’t know how to begin again. Christ Walks Where Evil Reigned: Responding to the Rwandan Genocide has lists of ways people can get involved, and when it’s ready, www.lifegivingtrust.org will offer news, prayer requests, and opportunities for those wanting to help Rwanda rebuild itself and worship the Lord as they are meant to do.