“It is a long story.” That is Louise Uwamungu’s first response when I ask her about how the Genocide against the Tutsi affected her life. She recounts to me the suffering and pain she went through, starting in 1992 when a one-day pogrom against the Tutsi in Bugesera claimed the lives of her parents, leaving her an orphan, along with her nine siblings. Two years later, the gory 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi broke out, inflicting even more losses to her life. She lost two elder sisters and two brothers, in addition to at least six other relatives including cousins, nieces and nephews. Louise Uwamungu, a genocide survivor in Bugesera District. She lost two elder sisters and two brothers, in addition to at least six other relatives including cousins, nieces and nephews. / Courtesy By the time the Genocide was stopped, Uwamungu, along with six of her siblings were among the very lucky ones who had survived, but their lives were faced with a lot of questions, misery and hopelessness. “We were in hopelessness and sorrow; it was like we were dead. We did not feel like working, we did not want to engage in conversation; we were hopeless people,” she narrates, before adding: “I often thought about how I could get revenge.” In the course of time, Pastor Deogratius Gashagaza, one of the founders of Prison Fellowship Rwanda (PFC), a not-for-profit Christian organisation that reaches out to people involved in and affected by crime to promote reconciliation, started visiting their community and talking to them. “He used to make meetings at the sector offices and would talk to us - the survivors. We would go, sit down and listen to him. He taught about forgiveness and reconciliation. We used to watch him and wonder if such was really possible in our case,” Uwamungu says. After attending the meetings for some time, Uwamungu says they started to feel like God was touching them, changing the state of their hearts. “Time reached and I received the gospel and I felt like I had really forgiven. I felt that God had changed my heart which had been like that of an animal,” she notes. Meanwhile, Pastor Gashagaza was also visiting prisons, preaching to the perpetrators as well, telling them that there is mercy and forgiveness with God. The perpetrators started writing letters to the people they had hurt, asking for forgiveness. “We felt like they were only lying to us. Though we had forgiven them, we remained afraid of them. We thought they were only trying to get out of prison and kill us,” she says. In 2010, Cyprien Matabaro, one of the genocide perpetrators who killed Uwamungu’s family members finished serving a 12-year jail term to which he had been sentenced for the crimes. He returned to the community, and embarked on a journey of looking for the people he hurt and asking them for forgiveness in person. He went to various community gatherings and mentioned the names of the people he killed, trying to see if he could find any relatives of theirs so that he could apologise to them. In 2011, in one of the community gatherings, Uwamungu heard Matabaro speak the name of her cousin called Habineza, saying he had killed him. “When I heard him say it, I was shocked. I went and cried and after I came back to the meeting and I told him: ‘I have forgiven you completely.’” She recalls. During the interview that The New Times had with Uwamungu, Matabaro was sitting by her side, and told us his part as well. He confesses that he killed many people during the genocide. He says the 12 years he spent in jail is a small punishment, considering the crimes he committed. “I would have been sentenced to life imprisonment or death, but I am thankful that I was not repaid according to what I did,” he says. While in prison, he says he always felt like coming back to the community and asking for forgiveness. He went on to accomplish this when he was released from jail. “I ask for forgiveness from everyone in this country, including the young generations because the crimes we did affect everyone,” he says. Uwamungu says her true forgiveness bears “fruits” that can be seen in how she relates with Matabaro. “Forgiveness has to be accompanied by fruits. If I say I forgave him and I do not visit him, then I did not forgive him. If he gets sick and I don’t reach out to him, then I did not forgive him. If I get sick and he does not visit me, then he did not ask for forgiveness,” she says.
