Mukaremera Laurence and Nkundiye Thacien, the man who killed her husband three decades earlier, set out to work together in his garden in Mbyo, Rwanda. It took time for Ms. Laurence to forgive Mr. Thacien for his actions in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Mukaremera Laurence lives in Mbyo, a tranquil Rwandan village where cows graze among avocado trees and the air is perfumed with the soft fragrance of eucalyptus. During the Rwandan genocide, 30 years ago, hundreds of people in the village were massacred – and her own family was not spared. The godfather of her children picked up a machete and killed her husband.
As she whispers this haunting story, a man taps her leg gently. This man is Nkundiye Thacien, the murderer of her husband. Since Mr. Thacien’s release from prison in 2003, Ms. Laurence and her husband’s killer have become seemingly inseparable. “I will be honest, I did not forgive him right away,” she told The Globe and Mail. “I could not comprehend how the godfather of my children, our best friend, could have killed the man I loved.”
Mbyo is one of Rwanda’s eight “peace villages,” where survivors and former perpetrators of the Tutsi genocide are seeking to heal and rebuild. In 2003, the Rwandan government, hand in hand with Prison Fellowship Rwanda, a non-governmental organization, constructed 822 houses in the country. They accommodate 4,992 individuals and were the foundation of a broader national initiative focused on reconciliation, aimed at fostering peace in the aftermath of the genocide.
During his eight-year stint in prison, Ms. Thacien met a pastor who helped him to find remorse for ‘killing masses of people’ during the genocide. His release in 2003 gave him a chance to start over.
But the journey has been difficult. Even if she wanted to forget, Ms. Laurence cannot escape from her memories. She struggles to erase from her mind the smell of blood, the long hours of walking barefoot through burning ashes, and the innumerable dead bodies piled up by the thousands along the way. Despite the haunting spectre of those harrowing moments, she remains determined to forge ahead and reconstruct her life.
In the heart of the African Great Lakes region, Rwanda has long been a battleground for ethnic conflict between the Hutus, who form the majority at 80 per cent, and the Tutsis. These tensions, deeply rooted in the country’s Belgian colonial past, were further inflamed by discriminatory policies and socio-economic disparities. The rivalry reached a critical point with the assassination of Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994, when their plane was shot down while returning from a summit in Tanzania. The following day, hateful and accusatory broadcasts against the Tutsis spread rapidly over the radio. This marked the beginning of the genocide.
After Rwanda, I found a path to personal peace. Can the world do that?
Ms. Laurence estimates that about 300 people died in Mbyo. “The massacres started a few days after the plane explosion. It was terrifying. When I saw my Hutu friends arming themselves with machetes, I took my two children by the hand and ran. I heard my husband scream, but I couldn’t turn back – they would have caught me too.”
A former genocidaire listens to the radio in Mbyo. Anti-Tutsi broadcasts in 1993 and 1994, especially on the station RTLM, stoked the Hutu extremism that turned neighbour against neighbour.
Every year, around the anniversary of the genocide, Rwandan authorities bring foreign visitors to Mbyo village to hear the stories of reconciliation and healing. To them, it shows that Rwanda has become a model of resilience and unity. But scholars who study Rwanda are divided on the issue.
Some experts who have studied Rwanda’s postgenocide era, including Timothy Longman of Boston University, have concluded that the country’s official reconciliation programs have helped to consolidate the power of Rwanda’s authoritarian government, which has ruled the country since the genocide.
But regardless of the country’s controversial politics, Ms. Laurence needed to forgive her husband’s murderer for her own reasons. “God told me that to forgive yourself you have to forgive others,” she said. “And when I decided to forgive him, a new life started for me.”
'I could not comprehend how the godfather of my children, our best friend, could have killed the man I loved,' Ms. Laurence says, but forgiving him has brought her peace.