ADALBERT: The Saturday after the plane crash was the usual choir rehearsal day at the church in Kibungo. We sang hymns in good feeling with our Tutsi compatriots, our voices still blending in chorus. On Sunday morning we returned at the appointed hour for mass; they did not arrive. They had already fled into the bush in fear of reprisals, driving their goats and cows before them. That disappointed us greatly, especially on a Sunday. Anger hustled us outside the church door. We left the Lord and our prayers inside to rush home. We changed from our Sunday best into our workaday clothes, we grabbed clubs and machetes, we went straight off to killing.
In the marshes, I was appointed killing boss because I gave orders intensely. Same thing in the Congolese camps. In prison I was appointed charismatic leader because I sang intensely. I enjoyed the alleluias. I gladly felt rocked by those joyous verses. I was steadfast in my love of God.
One day, singing hymns at the top of my lungs, I felt uneasy at taking pleasure in their religious words without ever speaking of what I had done to the killed. I looked around at all my praying colleagues in prison uniforms. I thought, We pardon those who have offended us on earth as in heaven, and we muddle over everything we did in the marshes. I thought, Our songs fly up so loud, they must certainly be heard outside the prison. All those blessings promised in the Book to people of good faith tormented me because of my bad faith.
That’s why I agreed to begin confessing a little, first to God, then to the authorities, and why I agreed to tell you.
ALPHONSE: The Thursday when we went to the church in Ntarama, the people just lay there in the dim light, the wounded visible between the pews, the unhurt hiding beneath the pews, and the dead in the aisles all the way to the foot of the altar. We were the only ones making a commotion.
Them, they were waiting for death in the calm of the church. For us, it was no longer important that we found ourselves in a house of God. We yelled, we gave orders, we insulted, we sneered. We verified person by person, inspecting the faces, so as to finish off everyone conscientiously. If we had any doubt about a death agony, we dragged the body outside to examine it in the light of heaven.
Me, I had been sincerely baptized Catholic, but I felt it preferable not to pray traditionally during the killings. There was nothing to be asked of God during that filthy business. Still, to get to sleep some nights, I could not help bowing down in secret to ease some gloomy fears with a timid “Sorry.”
PANCRACE: Men are not created by God in the same way. There are killers with good hearts who agree to make confession. There are killers with hard hearts who feed their hatred in silence. They are very dangerous because faith does not soften their character. They never miss a scheduled religious session. They throw themselves wholeheartedly into prayers and hymns, they observe all the religious gestures like signs of the cross, kneeling, and the like. They seem gifted for religion, but deep down they know they must begin to kill again. They are waiting patiently for the next opportunity.
FULGENCE: I was a deacon, the one who made arrangements for Christian gatherings on the hill of Kibungo. In the priest’s absence, it was I who conducted ordinary services.
During the killings, I chose not to pray to God. I sensed that it was not appropriate to involve Him in that. This choice came up naturally. Still, when dread would grip me suddenly in the night, if I had done too much during the day, I would ask God as a personal favor to let me stop for just a few days.
God preserved us from genocide until the crash of the president’s plane; afterward He allowed Satan to win the match. That is my point of view. Since it was Satan who pushed us into this predicament, it is God alone who can judge us and punish us, not men, who are surpassed by the power of those other two, especially in this unnatural situation.
I know that only God can understand what we did. He alone has looked at every detail, He alone knows who drenched his arms and who did not. And regarding those last, it will not take Him long to count them up.
IGNACE: The white priests took off at the first skirmishes. The black priests joined the killers or the killed. God kept silent, and the churches stank from abandoned bodies. Religion could not find its place in our activities. For a little while, we were no longer ordinary Christians, we had to forget our duties learned in catechism class. We had first of all to obey our leaders—and God only afterward, very long afterward, to make confession and penance. When the job was done.
PANCRACE: In the marshes, pious Christians became ferocious killers. In prison, very ferocious killers became very pious Christians. But there are also pious Christians who became timid killers and timid killers who became quite pious Christians.
It happened for no clear reason. Each person satisfied his faith in his own way without any particular instructions, since the priests were gone or were up to their necks in it. In any case, religion adapted to these changes in belief.
ÉLIE: God and Satan seem quite contrasting in the Bible and the priest’s sermons. The first one blazes with white and gold, the second with red and black. But in the marshes, the colors were those of muddy swamps and rotting leaves. It was as if God and Satan had agreed to cloud our eyes. I mean that we did not give a damn for either of them.
Once we found a little group of Tutsis in the papyrus. They were awaiting the machete blows with prayers. They did not plead with us, they did not ask us for mercy or even for a painless death. They said nothing to us. They did not even seem to be addressing heaven. They were praying and psalming among themselves. We made fun of them, we laughed at their Amens, we taunted them about the kindness of the Lord, we joked about the paradise awaiting them. That fired us up even more. Now the memory of those prayers just gnaws at my heart.
PIO: In the marshes, you heard no children’s cries, not even murmurs. They waited silently in the mud. It was really something. When we uncovered a woman with a nursling, the infant would never even whimper. It was miraculous, so to speak.
Many Tutsis no longer asked to be spared, that was how they greeted death, among themselves. They had stopped hoping, they knew they had no chance for mercy and went off without a single prayer. They knew they were abandoned by everything, even by God. They no longer spoke to Him at all. They were leaving in suffering to join Him and no longer asked Him for anything, not comfort, not blessing, not welcome. They
no longer prayed even to drive away the fear of an agonizing death.
It was too astounding, it was unnatural! Even animals that know nothing of pity, nothing of anguish, nothing of evil—they cry out terribly at the moment of the fatal blow.
That mystery drove us to many discussions. We sought explanations for these Tutsis who went off into death without breaking their silence. That could frighten us sometimes, at night, because it was said that such calmness must be a bad omen from heaven.
JOSEPH-DÉSIRÉ: Me, I was born Hutu, I did not choose this, it was God. I massacred some Tutsis, and then the Tutsis killed some Hutus. I have lost everything, except my life, for the moment. I no longer recognize my own existence in this chaos. It is God alone who can see it, watch over it, and guide it.
After all, what is there to say? There are some who killed and now thrive on their hills or in a villa abroad, others who killed and now sweat in the prison yard of those condemned to death. Why did God direct some toward happiness and others to the ordeal of suffering? Me, I don’t know. I find myself here, in the purgatory of prison, but I still draw breath thanks to the power of God. I fear my capital punishment above everything else. We all fear dying before our day, since we remain human whatever the circumstances. That is why I have chosen to entrust my fate to God. He is the only one who could stop a genocide, He is the only one who can understand me, He is the only one who can save my life now. No human being can step between Him and me. That is what I want to believe from this moment on.
LÉOPORD: We no longer considered the Tutsis as humans or even as creatures of God. We had stopped seeing the world as it is, I mean as an expression of God’s will.
That is why it was easy for us to wipe them out. And why those of us who prayed in secret did so for themselves, never for their victims. They prayed to ask for their crimes to be a bit forgotten, or to get just a little forgiveness—and they returned to the marshes in the morning.
Anyway, it was more than forbidden to speak kindly of the Tutsis to God or anyone else. Even after their deaths, even of a newborn. Even a priest was not to profit from his favor with God to pray for the soul of a Tutsi. He risked too much if someone overheard.
JEAN-BAPTISTE: Only dogs and wild beasts ventured into the church and its slaughterhouse stench. When we walked alongside the parish wall to go to Kanzenze or down into the marshes, that stink turned us even farther away from reading the gospels.
Truly, the times no longer wanted us to worry about God, and we went along. Deep down we knew that Christ was not on our side in this situation, but since He was not saying anything through the priests’ mouths, that suited us.
ÉLIE: All the important people turned their backs on our killings. The blue helmets, the Belgians, the white directors, the black presidents, the humanitarian people and the international cameramen, the priests and the bishops, and finally even God. Did He watch what was happening in the marshes? Why did He not stab our murderous eyes with His wrath? Or show some small sign of disapproval to save more lucky ones? In those horrible moments, who could hear His silence? We were abandoned by all words of rebuke.
On Sunday mornings the radio programs no longer broadcast masses as before. But encouraging hearsay came from well-known monsignors who arrived from Kigali. Sometimes we
heard hymns and services on the radio. Those were tapes without sermons, but the religious music soothed people who felt uneasy. It reminded them of ordinary Sundays—it did them some good.
JEAN-BAPTISTE: We could not ask time to give us a firm deadline for such a long program. Time seemed to smile on us, desiring only that we no longer worry about God. So we obeyed, and we kept on killing, aiming for the last one. Even though the work went on and on because of the looting and the fatigues of drinking, we never doubted, since no one could stop the work. But God slipped in among the killings to hurry along the inkotanyi. In the end God did not accept a definitive conclusion—that’s the lesson.
MARIE-CHANTAL: “Now, the guiltier the killers feel, the more they go to church. Likewise, the more traumatized the survivors feel, the more they go to church. Guilty ones and victims sit shoulder to shoulder praying in the first pew as if they had forgotten. Before the war, religion was not feverish as it is now. Now, many cling to prayers and hymns to get through this shattered life. Many preachers are pleased with this state of affairs. Even if there are no charitable feelings among those praying, there are no troublesome feelings in the churches. There is no fear, as on the hills.
“The less people look at one another with understanding and support, the more they gaze with love at the religious figures on the walls.
“As to Joseph-Désiré, I had thought he might well be killed at some point because of his actions. But prison forever, that, no. So we exchange Bible verses copied onto paper slips, thanks to visiting families, because we do not find much to say to each other about our new predicament.”
CLÉMENTINE: “On their way to Congo, the Hutus carried into
exile the burden of the vanquished and the accursed. Some said the exile was a punishment from heaven, some said the punishment should be more painful. They fled along the roads with shame and terror at their heels. In the camps in Congo, they felt threatened on all sides and also by God. They feared ordinary and extraordinary retribution. They believed that the unnatural things they had done with their machetes would bring down upon them an equally unnatural chastisement.”
LÉOPORD: Through killing well, eating well, looting well, we felt so puffed up and important, we didn’t even care about the presence of God. Those who say otherwise are half-witted liars. Some claim today that they sent up prayers during the killings. They’re lying: no one ever heard an Ave Maria or the like, they’re only trying to jump in front of their colleagues on line for repentance.
In truth, we thought that from then on we could manage for ourselves without God. The proof—we killed even on Sunday without ever noticing it. That’s all.