Renewed Call to Reveal Location of Remains of Genocide Victims

From Rwanda-

Twenty-five years after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi that claimed the lives of over a million people, Rwandans have been called upon to volunteer information on the location of remains of the victims who did not get decent burial.

The call was made yesterday as hundreds of mourners gathered at Ruhanga Genocide Memorial site to pay their respects to victims who were buried there.

The commemoration event was also an occasion to offer a decent burial to remains of 65 victims at the site.

Ruhanga Genocide Memorial is located at the former Ruhanga Episcopal Anglican Church (EAR Ruhanga) and has a mass grave inside the former church.

This is the only Anglican Church parish in the country which was converted into a Genocide memorial site.

In the wake of the Genocide, thousands of Tutsi flocked to the church as they desperately sought to hide from their tormentors.

More here-

https://allafrica.com/stories/201904160080.html

Growing Christian genocide in Nigeria: Christian death toll exceeds 6,000 in six months

From Nigeria-

According to the Christian Association of Nigeria, more than 6,000 Christians have been murdered by Islamist Jihadists since the beginning of 2018. Not many people outside Nigeria seem to care.

The Nigerian government has frequently attributed these murders to clashes between farmers and herdsmen. During the Obama Administration, U.S. State Department personnel were quick to attribute this violence to inequality, poverty, and unemployment and to assert that the violence could not possibly be related to religion, Sharia Law, or Jihadist ideology. 

Yet brutal attacks specifically and only against Christians have been common since the 1980s, and those responsible are never punished. After an Easter 2012 bombing of a Nigerian church, which left 29 dead, the Obama Administration agreed to spend $600 million in USAID funds to study the “true causes” of unrest and violence in Nigeria.From June 25 to 28, Muslim terrorists attacked a dozen Nigerian villages, desecrated several Christian churches and killed 238 Christians, including a Christian pastor, his wife, and son. According to another Christian pastor, about 50 heavily armed Fulani herdsmen burned the entire community of Gidin Akwatito to the ground and killed almost every one of 100 persons in a neighboring village.

More here-

http://www.thetribunepapers.com/2018/08/16/growing-christian-genocide-in-nigeria-christian-death-toll-exceeds-6000-in-six-months/

Over 150 Genocide victims get decent burial in Ruhanga

From Rwanda-

Thousands of mourners gathered yesterday at Ruhanga memorial site in Gasabo District to accord a decent burial to 157 Genocide victims recovered recently from different parts of Rusororo Sector.

Ruhanga Genocide Memorial is located at the former Ruhanga Episcopal Anglican Church (EAR Ruhanga) and has a mass grave inside the former church.

This is the only Anglican Church parish in the country which was converted into a Genocide memorial site.

Currently over 36,700 victims massacred from both inside the church and from surrounding areas are buried at the memorial site.

Over 25,000 were killed at the church compound where they sought refuge, according to accounts by witnesses.

More here-

http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/over-150-genocide-victims-get-decent-burial-ruhanga

Genocide: The mysterious case of 200 Tutsi killed at Midiho Anglican church

From Rwanda-

Sky-blue is associated with hope and a church extols belief. Put the two together and you have a powerful symbolism that won’t be missed from kilometres away.

St Peter’s Anglican Church of Midiho, in Mukarange Sector, Kayonza District, did just that. The sky-blue theme of its roofing would all but inspire profound belief.

However, to many survivors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and other citizens, the colour and church itself have done little to dispel the shroud of mystery surrounding the fate of some 200 people killed at the scene 23 years ago.

The church is now open to worshippers but survivors in the area everyday live with the grief of not having been able to accord a decent burial to their loved ones killed at the church during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

There is no dispute that over 200 people were killed from the church in 1994, survivors and some Genocide perpetrators say, but no one seems to know where the bodies are buried.

More here-

http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/article/2017-05-24/213035/

Rwanda: Kigali Catholic Churches Yet to Fully Communicate Genocide Apology

From All Africa-

The apology letter penned by the nine bishops constituting the Catholic Episcopal Conference of Rwanda - the Church's supreme organ in the country - over the role of some of the Church's clergymen and faithful in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi is yet to be read out in some of the churches as directed, The New Times can report.

The joint statement, signed by the nine bishops representing nine Catholic Church dioceses across the country, was released last week, with a directive that it be read out during mass last Sunday.

But some Christians who attended mass last Sunday have since told this newspaper the apology was not read out as expected, with many admitting they only heard about it in the media.

More here-

http://allafrica.com/stories/201611230083.html

Welby invokes Holocaust at vigil for Middle East minorities

From The Church Times-

CHRISTIANS in the Middle East have not been treated so badly since the invasion by Genghis Khan in 1259, the Archbishop of Canterbury said on Wednesday. He later invoked the Holocaust when addressing an interfaith vigil at Westminster Abbey.

At a press conference at Lambeth Palace in the morning, the Archbishop said: "It took the barbarism of the jihadist militants to wake us up. But this . . . is a new thing. There has not been treatment of Christians in this region in this way since the invasion of Genghis Khan in 1259, 1260. . . I think we find it hard to believe that such horrors can happen."

More here-

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/5-september/news/uk/welby-invokes-holocaust-at-vigil-for-middle-east-minorities

The facts of killing: how do we write about the Rwandan Genocide?

From The New Statesman-

In the 20 years since the genocide, Rwanda has become a much-studied topic, in writing that has proliferated across genres. There have been official reports by the United Nations and by human rights charities; significant studies such as Gérard Prunier’s The Rwanda Crisis (1995); literary accounts such as Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families (1998); novels such as A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali (2000) by Gil Courtemanche; and a host of witness testimonies, by victims and killers and others, either made to journalists such as Linda Melvern, whose A People Betrayed: the Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (2000) is another important book, or formally under the auspices of the International Criminal Court and other judicial bodies.

More here-

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/04/facts-killing-how-do-we-write-about-rwandan-genocide

Insights from the Sudanese Genocide

From Religion Dispatch-

When evangelical activist Brad Phillips told senior members of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa about what he had seen and heard during a recent trip to South Kordofan, Sudan, they called an emergency hearing.

The stories of atrocities carried out by Sudanese forces and allied militia have riveted world media attention since mass killings began in early June: house-to-house searches, summary executions, collection of bodies like trash loaded on trucks in bags, the digging and filling of mass graves, bombing of farms and villages, and chasing Nubans with attack helicopters into the Nuba mountains.

Fresh, firsthand accounts are the stuff of which great committee hearings are made.

But as compelling as the testimony was, the hearing made clear that there is no apparent solution. The hearing also brought into sharp focus the religious identities of both the perpetrators and the victims, as well as those of some of the participants in the hearing, and shed light on how those identities informed their perspectives.

More here-

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/4979/the_anglican_and_the_evangelicals%3A_insights_from_the_sudanese_genocide__

Witnesses describe Sudan's ethnic cleansing in emergency hearing

From Catholic News Agency-

Witnesses told a House of Representatives subcommittee on Aug. 4 that the Sudanese border state of South Kordofan is descending into racial and religious violence, as the world looks on.

“The Nuba people fear that we will be forgotten, that the world will stand idly by while mass killings continue without redress,” said Anglican bishop Reverend Andudu Adam Elnail, of Sudan's Episcopal Diocese of Kadulgi, in his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights.

“Our hope,” Rev. Elnail said, “is that the United States will lead the international community in taking prompt, effective action to protect tens of thousands of displaced people, including an untold number of civilians being killed house-to-house and bombed by their own government.”

South Kordofan lies just north of the partially undefined border between Sudan and the newly-established Republic of South Sudan, which became independent on July 9. In recent months, a 2005 plan for South Kordofan's self-determination has given way to violence that some observers say is meant to “Arabize” the region, by terrorizing its Black African population.

More here-

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/witnesses-describe-sudans-ethnic-cleansing-in-emergency-hearing/

Rwandan bishop shares stories of reconciliation

From Ft. Wayne-

Earlier this year, Pat Jehl of Fort Wayne felt God calling him to go to Rwanda, and specifically to the city of Ruhengeri in the northwest corner of that African nation.

Jehl didn't know why or what he was supposed to do there, but he went in August.

He happened to meet Bishop John Rucyahana, an Anglican clergyman who is leading his nation's efforts at reconciliation after the genocide that devastated the country in 1994. The bishop also is part of an African-based Anglican Church outreach to people in North America who don't have a faith or church.

At Jehl's invitation, Rucyahana will speak at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. worship and communion services Sunday at Heartland Church on Vance Avenue.

Rucyahana also will speak at 3 p.m. Sunday with any interested local clergy. In addition, he will be in Fort Wayne on Monday and Tuesday, but his schedule on those days had not yet been finalized, said Jehl, a Heartland member.

Wrote book based on Rwanda

Born in 1945 in northwest Rwanda, Rucyahana's family had to flee its homeland in 1959 to escape persecution by the Tutsi tribe, his biography said.

They settled in Uganda, where Rucyahana lived for 38 years. In 1975, he was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church of Uganda, and served as rector of St. Paul's Cathedral in Hoima, Uganda, during the final years of dictator Idi Amin's violent reign.

More here-

http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101009/NEWS01/10090302/1001/NEWS

Rwanda: Will the Vatican Ever Accept That Genocide is Also a Crime?

From All Africa

This church's lack of courage and humility made it develop what philosopher Bertrand Russell, in his book "The Conquest of Happiness" termed "persecution mania" which he says is "a recognised form of insanity."

The fall of the former genocidal regime was not good news for some in the Rwandan church. Out of solidarity with and nostalgia for their defeated ideological allies, they were at a loss.

They were incapable of overcoming their shame and guilt and recognizing their responsibility for the suffering of the Tutsi, which they identified with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), or to get used to the new reality of a non-racist Rwanda.

At the beginning of the war of liberation in October 1990, there was a virulent propaganda by missionary circles, particularly the White Fathers, against the RPF.

They resented the RPF and sought to portray it a communist organisation, "inevitably" aimed at "persecution of the Church."

More here-

http://allafrica.com/stories/201005270077.html

Dr Rowan Williams to visit Auschwitz with Chief Rabbi

From the London Times-

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams will tomorrow visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp for the first time, accompanied by the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks.

The Archbishop and Chief Rabbi will be joined also by leaders of the Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Baha’i, Sikh and Zoroastrian faiths for the day-long visit, the first of its kind.

The faith leaders will visit the site of one of the worst mass exterminations carried out against the Jewish people as guests of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz Project. They will accompany a group of 180 school students aged 16 or more along with their teacher.

“The visit by the UK’s faith leaders will demonstrate their solidarity in standing against the extremes of hostility and genocide which Auschwitz – Birkenau represents and which are represented in Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda in modern times,” said a spokesman for the trust.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5141311.ece

Related article on the Chief Rabbi Sir Johnathan Sacks and his perspective is here-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5146339.ece