A boy looks on while standing in a graveyard for genocide victims, Rwanda, 1995 (Credit: Gil Serpereau).
“From beyond the rivers of Cush
my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones,
shall bring my offering.”
- Zephaniah 3:10
Jean Bosco Rutagengua could hear trembling in his fiancée’s voice as she whispered into the phone receiver. “They are here; they are surrounding the house.”[1] Just three months earlier, after Christmas, 1993, Jean and Christine had gathered with hundreds of family members to celebrate their marital engagement. It was a time of fellowship and laughter, as two extended families of the Tutsi tribe came together for a traditional Rwandan betrothal ceremony. In a customary role play, the male suitor’s family sits across from the family of his betrothed. A dialogue commences wherein the suitor’s family is expected to persuade the family of the potential bride to give their daughter’s hand, and the family of the potential bride is expected to convince the suitor’s family to choose another woman. Of course, the outcome is a foregone conclusion, and so the ritual becomes a light-hearted banter, full of flattery, tall tales, and humor. In the end, Jean was given the hand of Christine, and plans for a wedding began in earnest. But as Jean spoke with Christine on the phone that day in April, 1994, their family gathering was a distant memory.
One Hundred Days
The plane carrying Mr Habyarimana was shot down by a missile in April 1994, triggering the Rwandan genocide (Rwanda)
“They are here; they are surrounding the house.” Jean knew exactly who “they” were, and a chill went down his spine. Just hours before, Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana was returning to Rwanda from from neighboring Tanzania after peace talks between his cabinet, led by the majority Hutu tribe, and a rebel force known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), led by the minority Tutsi tribe. After ending three years of civil war with a ceasefire in 1993, Habyarimana had promised the implementation of a lasting peace deal which would allow for the return of refugees and a power-sharing government with the Tutsis. Talks had stalled for months, and so as Habyarimana returned home, hopes were stirred among Rwanda’s Tutsis for progress. But as the presidential jet approached the airport outside the capital of Kigali, an unknown assassin ended all such hopes in the blink of an eye. A rocket struck the plane and brought it down, killing all aboard. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, and the identity of the assailants are a subject of disagreement to this day, but radical Hutus in the government and military wasted no time in blaming Tutsi rebels and “spies.” They seized control of the government by forming a “Crisis Committee” in a thinly-veiled coup. Elements of the military and the radical Hutu youth organization, known as the Interahamwe, began deploying across Kigali within minutes. Brandishing automatic rifles, pistols and machetes, they raided the homes and offices of prominent Tutsis and moderate Hutus while setting up checkpoints throughout the city. Tutsi Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a woman, broadcast a statement on the radio that night, urging calm and promising an investigation into the assassination of the president. The prime minister herself would be assassinated within hours. Her naked corpse, violated and shot point-blank in the head, was found next to her husband’s body outside of a UN Compound the next day.
A member of the Interahamwe militia holds his machete during a patrol in Rwanda, June, 1994 (Alexander Joe, AFP, Getty Images).
On the morning of April 7, 1994, Tutis in Kigali awoke to find themselves trapped, as mobs of Interahamwe roved through the streets, plundering Tutsi homes and businesses. The suddenness of the onslaught was only matched by its ferocity, as paramilitaries murdered thousands of Tutsi men, women and children on the first day alone. Jean Bosco Rutagengua watched as “Kigali was in a state of chaos, held hostage by armed soldiers and merciless militiamen whose killing instincts had reached the height of insanity.” So when the Interahamwe surrounded the home of his fiancée, his worst fears were realized. As Jean was about to speak in a futile attempt to comfort her, he heard gunfire and a scream through the phone just before the line went dead. Jean yelled in rage and desperation. He was not alone. All over the capital, Tutsis and moderate Hutus lay dead. Moreover, the UN peacekeeping mission in Kigali was completely overwhelmed. Ten Belgian soldiers who had guarded the late prime minister were captured, tortured and killed by the Rwandan Presidential Guard. Fearing a redux of the “Blackhawk Down” incident in Somalia just six months before, commanders of the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) ordered the lightly-armed, 2500-strong peacekeeping force to not engage the Hutu militia. With no one to stand in their way, the military and Interahamwe began to act beyond the borders of the capital. The Rwandan Genocide had begun.
The remains of victims of the Nyarubuye Massacre at the site of the Roman Catholic Church, where much of the killing took place between Aprili 15-16, 1994 (Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)
Within two days, it became clear that the slaughter in Kigali was not just an isolated, spontaneous reprisal in the wake of an assassination, but a systematic and determined program of Tutsi genocide. The “Crisis Committee” began directing the Interahamwe militia across other provinces in Rwanda. Average Hutus were given machetes, mandated to report their Tutsi neighbors, and pressed into service with orders to “begin your work” and “spare no one.”[2] Rwandan ID cards included designations of Hutu and Tutsi, aiding the killers in their mission. On both a national and local level, governing authorities conspired to identify and eliminate their Tutsi populations. Tens of thousands of Tutsis fled to churches, schools, and stadiums, regarded as places of refuge in previous conflicts. But this was not a war, it was a genocide. Places of sanctuary would become the grounds of extermination. Reports of mass atrocities targeting Tutsis surfaced as early as April 9th, when 110 Tutsi civilians were murdered at a church in Gikondo, Kigali. Then between April 15-16, militiamen armed with rifles, grenades, spears and machetes slaughtered an estimated 20,000 Tutsis inside and around the Nyarubuye Catholic Church east of Kigali. Another 62,000 victims were murdered in the city of Gitesi and the hills of Bisesero beginning on April 18, including 12,000 Tutsi civilians huddled in a stadium.
A Hutu man whose face was mutilated by the Hutu Interahamwe militia. He was suspected of sympathizing with the Tutsi rebels. (James Nachtwey Archive, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth)
The genocide continued almost unabated during April, 1994, climbing to an average of almost 10,000 dead per day. The RPF managed to advance in the north and east, providing sanctuary to over 250,000 Tutsi refugees. In the west and south, the killing slowed only because the entire Tutsi population had been almost completely eradicated. By the time the RPF managed to topple the Hutu regime and consolidate their control over Rwanda in July, almost two-thirds of its Tutsi population was gone. Over 800,000 people murdered in a mere 100 days. The level of sexual violence was equally staggering, with estimates ranging from 250,000 to 500,000 incidents of rape in the same timeframe, as Hutu radicals took tens of thousands of Tutsi women and girls as sex slaves, using their reproductive organs as a means of waging genetic warfare. Between 5,000-10,000 children of rape were born in the following months.
The horrific scale and pace of the genocide required a level of centralized organization which made spontaneity impossible. As years passed, evidence and testimony mounted to suggest that that Hutu radicals in the government and military had planned the genocide long before the assassination of President Habyarimana. So-called “Hutu Power” personalities had been broadcasting hateful vitriol against Tutsi “cockroaches” for months on state-sponsored “free” radio and television. Large caches of weapons had been imported into Rwanda beforehand and staged across the country. Interahamwe leaders were given “hit lists” detailing the names and locations of Tutsis and uncooperative Hutus. Government documents drafted in early 1994 recommend the formation of “civil defense” militias, made up of “reliable civilians” armed by the government. These groups trained in Kigali just days before the genocide for the “tracking down and neutralization of infiltrators in different parts of the city.”[3] Therefore, regardless of who was responsible for the president’s murder, it simply became the convenient pretext for a pre-orchestrated program of Tutsi extermination.
Rwandan refugee girl staring at a mass grave where dozens of bodies have been laid to rest July 20, 1994. (Corinne Dufka, Reuters)
Almost as breathtaking as the speed and savagery of the Rwandan Genocide was the international community’s utter failure to intervene. The world’s inaction was not for a lack of visibility. Foreign journalists began discovering the sprawling scenes of mass murder and interviewing survivors just days after the killing began. Video footage of Tutsis being hacked with machetes in the streets was captured and broadcast on evening news programs around the world. The depth and breadth of the genocide became apparent fairly quickly, and yet, the governments which could have acted to stop the killing did not. The UNAMIR peacekeeping force, charged with the prevention of hostilities and the protection of civilians, was ordered to disengage. Western governments acted only to evacuate their own citizens from Rwanda. Spokespeople for US President Clinton’s administration refused to even acknowledge the genocide as such, instead admitting only that “acts of genocide” were being committed, in an attempt to sidestep international law requiring intervention. It has since become apparent that the Clinton Administration was aware of the reality of events on the ground in Rwanda, and was even presented with options to disrupt it, but decided against taking action which was deemed too costly and potentially “ineffective.” Instead, the truth was simply ignored.[4] In the end, the only nation to intervene was France. Operation Turquoise was announced in mid-June, ten weeks after the killing had begun, and after the RPF had already taken the capital of Kigali. Ostensibly, the French objective was to create a humanitarian corridor in western Rwanda for those fleeing the genocide and civil war. But France’s support for the Hutu government, combined with the timing of its interference, suggests that the mission might have benefitted the perpetrators of the genocide more than its victims. In the end, the Rwandan Genocide stands as the deadliest campaign of human extermination and the worst example of humanitarian failure since the Second World War.
Twelve Hundred Sixty Days
The words of Jesus were unnerving:
“So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.”[5]
Destruction of the Jewish Temple, Francessco Hayez, 1867, Gallerie dell'Accademia
Just moments before, under the imposing shadow of the Temple, the Rabbi had portended the dismantling of that magnificent structure, stone from stone. As startling as it must have been for the Twelve to hear such a thing, it was merely the opening line in a narrative which dove into an abyss of suffering. Messianic pretenders, the rage of nations, and the tumult of nature would increase, but these were just “the beginnings of birth pangs.” Afterward, a very specific omen would appear, a blasphemous sign, followed by something categorically different from the destruction of AD 70. A “great tribulation,” unequaled in all human history, will break out from Jerusalem and spill across the Land. It will move so quickly that those who turn back for a moment will not escape. Was this hyperbole? Was it prophetic embellishment? Certainly those in Jerusalem and Judea will have enough warning to retrieve their necessities before their flight into the wilderness.
The Rwandan Genocide stands as a grim witness to how quickly an unsuspecting population can be trapped and killed. Just minutes after news broke of President Habyarimana’s assassination on the night of April 6, 1994, the army and militia had deployed across Kigali, and the Tutsis in the city were completely cut off. Within 24 hours, thousands were dead. Within 72 hours, tens of thousands were dead. After three months, almost a million bodies lay strewn across Rwanda. It was not a grassroots phenomenon. It was not spontaneous. It was carefully planned and systematically executed. The speed, efficiency and ferocity was intentional. The goal was total extermination, a “final solution” to the “Tutsi question.”
Likewise, the Prophet Ezekiel describes a figure named Gog, the “chief prince” of a nation “from the uttermost parts of the north,” who will orchestrate the coming time of “great tribulation.” The Lord foretells Gog’s strategy against an unwitting populace:
“Thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil scheme and say, ‘I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having no bars or gates.’”[6]
Flevit Super Illam (There He Wept), Enrique Simonet Lombardo, 1892, The Museum of Málaga, Palacio de la Aduana, Málaga.
The words of Jesus regarding the Temple’s destruction were exactly fulfilled. Forty years later, the legions of Titus dismantled the entire complex, stone from stone. Likewise, the warning of Jesus to the residents of Judea should be exactly heeded. When the abominable sign is shown on the wing of the holy place, do not linger for a moment. Flee. By the time you can see trouble coming, it will be too late to run from it.
The shocking degree of savagery against Rwandan Tutsis in the spring of 1994 also bears witness to the magnitude of demonic rage that will be unleashed against the covenant people when the armies of Gog “come up against my people Israel, like a cloud covering the land.”[7] The modern contention between Hutu and Tutsi traces back to 1959, when Rwanda was still a Belgian colony, and when a repressed Hutu majority rose up against the Tutsi ruling class and expelled their European colonial occupiers, establishing the Hutu-dominated government and driving thousands of Tutsis out of the country as refugees. The Tutsi rebellion ensued, causing hostilities that simmered for decades before boiling over into genocide. Likewise, for over a century, Jewish Israelis have been portrayed as Zionist interlopers on Palestinian land by clerics and dictators throughout the world. Although many Arab nations have improved relations with Israel since 1979, regimes and religious leaders in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Gaza, and even Jerusalem continue to demonize the Jewish State and, by extension, the Jewish people. One day, the pressure of these hostilities will vent into a white hot rage, and the prophetic description of that time is chilling:
“Thus says the Lord: We have heard a cry of panic, of terror, and no peace. Ask now, and see, can a man bear a child? Why then do I see every man with his hands on his stomach like a woman in labor? Why has every face turned pale? Alas! That day is so great there is none like it; it is a time of distress for Jacob…”[8]
“Then your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overwhelming scourge passes through, you will be beaten down by it. As often as it passes through it will take you; for morning by morning it will pass through, by day and by night; and it will be sheer terror to understand the message.”[9]
“Behold, a day is coming for the Lord, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped. Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city.” [10]
“Forces from him [the King of the North] shall appear and profane the temple and fortress, and shall take away the regular burnt offering. And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate…He shall come into the glorious land. And tens of thousands shall fall…”[11]
NPR's Jackie Northam reporting from Rwanda during the country's genocide in 1994 (NPR).
In a generation that declares “Never again!” to another Holocaust, it stretches credulity to suggest that the world will stand idle while these horrors unfold. The advent of the Internet and mobile technology ensures that any such calamity will not only be documented by millions, but that it will be transmitted in real-time around the globe. And yet, the Rwandan Genocide exposes the human tendency to turn away from suffering if intervention is perceived as too risky with too little reward. Although reports and images of the killing were beamed across the world by television satellites in 1994 to millions of homes every night, the nations did not act to stop it. Therefore, the slaughter continued until all of the Tutsis were dead or had fled out of the grasp of their would-be killers. Two-thirds of Rwanda’s Tutsi population was murdered in 100 days.
The Hebrew prophet Zechariah foretells a time across the “whole land” of Israel when “two thirds shall be cut off and perish, and one third shall be left alive. And [the Lord] will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested.”[12] This refined remnant will survive in “a place prepared by God, in which [they will] be nourished for 1,260 days.”[13] Even in the midst of the “great tribulation,” the Lord will provide places of sanctuary beyond the enemy’s grasp. And this is where the stories of Rwanda and Israel collide.
UBUMUNTU
“Therefore wait for me,” declares the Lord,
“for the day when I rise up to seize the prey.
For my decision is to gather nations,
to assemble kingdoms,
to pour out upon them my indignation,
all my burning anger;
for in the fire of my jealousy
all the earth shall be consumed.
“For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples
to a pure speech,
that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord
and serve him with one accord.
From beyond the rivers of Cush
my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones,
shall bring my offering.
“On that day you shall not be put to shame
because of the deeds by which you have rebelled against me…
They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord,
those who are left in Israel…[14]
A map of the White Nile (WikiCommons)
In the Book of Zephaniah, the Lord lays out His judgment against Jerusalem in her “desolation.” But as always, the prophetic narrative does not end with Israel’s chastening. “‘Wait for me,” He declares, “on that day you will not be put to shame.” Rather, the “dispersed ones” who were scattered in every direction “shall bring [an] offering” to the One who returns on the clouds to gather them back to their Land. And some of those “dispersed ones” shall return from “beyond the rivers of Cush.”
The Prophet Isaiah describes Cush as the “Land that the rivers divide.”[15] Geographically, this refers to the region of Eastern Africa where the Greater Nile of Egypt forks in two, at the site where Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum sits today. The eastern fork, called the Blue Nile, continues up to its headwaters in modern Ethiopia. The western fork, known as the White Nile, stretches southwest into the interior of Central Africa. It continues up through the great lakes of Albert and Victoria to its headwaters at Mount Kiziki in the modern nation of Burundi, bordering Rwanda to the south. Therefore, the region “beyond the rivers of Cush” could include the nations of the Great Lakes region, including Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This suggests that a land still reeling from its own genocide could one day receive refugees of the world’s greatest genocide. A nation which endured 100 days of painful travail might one day be used to “nourish” the “dispersed ones” throughout their 1,260 days of tribulation.
After managing to escape her attackers, Christine reunited with her fiancée, Jean Bosco Rutagengua. Together, they fled to the Mille Collines hotel in Kigali, where a sympathetic hotel manager named Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu, was sheltering over 1,200 Tutsis and moderate Hutus from the Interahamwe and Rwandan military. The Rutagenguas survived the war by finding a sanctuary in the most unlikely place, at the epicenter of the genocide, in the belly of the beast. Paul Rusesabagina’s story was memorialized in the film Hotel Rwanda. He stands today as an example of those who defy the perpetrators in their own tribe to shelter the afflicted of another tribe. He is a forerunner of those who will one day show Ubumuntu, the Rwandan quality of courage and compassion. In the context of the genocide, the term is used to describe the rescuers who risked their lives to shelter and care for others. In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, in which Ubumuntu towards His Jewish “brethren” will one day be the plumb line for judging the nations after “the Son of Man [comes] on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”[16]
A wall mural at the Kigali Genocide Memorial depicting Ubumuntu. (via Amanda S. Wall on tufts.edu).
Tragically, a spirit of blood-lust persists in the Great Lakes region of Africa to this day. After the Tutsi RPF consolidated its hold over Rwanda in July, 1994, the remnants of the Hutu genocidaires fled west across Rwanda’s border to the dense jungles of neighboring Zaire. There, they began attacking Zairian Tutsis, provoking a guerrilla war with the Zairian and Rwandan militaries that claimed the lives of five million people. That war prompted the collapse of the Zairian government and the birth of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in its place. After a brief peace in the new regime, hostilities have flared up again in DRC’s eastern provinces. Not only are the remnants of the Interahamwe still active there, but an Islamist militia formerly known as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) from Uganda has also begun a cross-border campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide against non-Muslims in the DRC. Rebranding itself as an affiliate of ISIS, the ADF is the latest in a series of African militant groups which seek to expand the borders of Islamic conquest by waging jihad. From Boko Haram in Nigeria, to al-Shabaab in Somalia, the fringes of Islam on the African continent are now more bloody than Syria and Iraq, suggesting that the powers and principalities of the air are determined to deny any sanctuary in the “land beyond the rivers.” But though the enemy plots and schemes, committing violence and shedding blood, he can do nothing to thwart the One called Faithful and True. The desperate prayer of King David in Psalm 140 will one day be the cry of all Israel in her dispersion, just as it is the hope of those who are harassed and helpless among the nations today.
Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men;
preserve me from violent men,
who plan evil things in their heart
and stir up wars continually.
Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked;
preserve me from violent men,
who have planned to trip up my feet.
The arrogant have hidden a trap for me,
and with cords they have spread a net;
beside the way they have set snares for me.
I say to the Lord, You are my God;
give ear to the voice of my pleas for mercy, O Lord!
O Lord, my Lord, the strength of my salvation,
you have covered my head in the day of battle.
Grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked;
do not further their evil plot, or they will be exalted!
I know that the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted,
and will execute justice for the needy.
Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name;
the upright shall dwell in your presence.
Selah, and Maranatha.
Sources for Further Reading:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Rwanda-genocide-of-1994
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26875506
https://www.history.com/topics/africa/rwandan-genocide
https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/rwanda
https://venturesafrica.com/cardinalstone-capital-advisers-closes-its-maiden-private-equity-fund/
Historical and Biblical Citations:
[1] All references to Jean Bosco Rutagengua are taken from his book, Love Prevails: One Couple’s Story of Faith and Survival in the Rwandan Genocide, Orbis Publishers, 2019.
[2] Melvern, Linda. Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide. London and New York: Verso, 2004.
[3] “Genocide: Ideology and Organization.” The Rwandan Genocide: How It Was Prepared : Genocide: Ideology and Organization, www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/africa/rwanda0406/4.htm.
[4] “Refusing to Call It Genocide: Documents Show Clinton Administration Ignored Mass Killings in Rwanda.” YouTube, YouTube, 7 Apr. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j7-X2vVfpY.
[5] Matthew 24:15-21
[6] Ezekiel 38:10-11
[7] Ezekiel 38:16
[8] Jeremiah 30:5
[9] Isaiah 28:18-19
[10] Zechariah 14:1-2
[11] Daniel 11:31, 41
[12] Zechariah 13:8-9
[13] Revelation 12:6
[14] Zephaniah 3:8-13
[15] Isaiah 18:7
[16] Matthew 24:30
[17] Psalm 140