Ex-Rwandan leader finds power to forgive

Posted: Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Joseph Sebarenzi forgave the people who murdered his parents and seven of his siblings along with 800,000 others in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Sebarenzi, the exiled former leader of Rwanda's parliament, hasn't been back to the small central African country since 2000, but he continues to spread a message of peace and reconciliation in the United States - a message he hopes reaches people in his birthplace, where ethnic tensions remain.

"If I can embrace forgiveness, I believe all of you can also do it," Sebarenzi told a small group of students March 11 at Gainesville State College's Oconee Campus. His address was part of the school's Colloquium Series.

It took Sebarenzi, who was out of the country at the time of the genocide, many years to get to where he is now, he said.

He had to realize that harboring grudges and retaliating only makes things worse. In Rwanda, revenge would just perpetuate a violent cycle that's persisted in the country for half a century, he said.

"It leaves a bitterness in yourself and does not allow you to be the person you want to be," he said.

Sebarenzi, 45, saw the early stages of the country's ethnic violence in the 1960s, as members of the ruling Hutu tribe began exacting revenge on the minority Tutsis who had flourished in the early 20th century, before colonial rule ended.

In 1994, while the world stood by, the Rwandan civil war boiled over and nearly 1 million Tutsis were slaughtered in about three months.

When Sebarenzi returned to Rwanda after the Tutsis regained power and began working his way up in parliament, eventually becoming speaker, he easily could have used his position to take part in the backlash against Hutus, he said.

Instead, he joined a small opposition party and worked for reconciliation and human rights. He often butted heads with the country's president, and he signed legislation to wrest power from the government's executive branch, which had directed much of the recent conflict, he said.

The work earned him death threats from government officials, who ousted him from parliament in 2000, he said.

Sebarenzi, who lives with his family in Virginia and lectures around the country, said people sometimes criticize him as uncaring - they say that to forgive the perpetrators of the country's ethnic violence, he must have forgotten about the thousands of people, including his family members, who died.

"I do care about them, but the best way to honor them is to remember the person I was before (the genocide)," he said.

Sebarenzi's message of forgiveness and reconciliation is a good one for people to hear, in light of current ethnic conflicts across Africa, said Kelly Manley, a Gainesville State sociology and economics professor.

"He's a remarkable person to forgive what he's been able to forgive," she said.

His assessment of Rwanda as being in a state of "negative peace" right now - no active violence amid an underlying conflict - is true in other African countries as well, Manley said.

Trending this week:

