Empty hearts

1994 the genocide in Rwanda shaked the world. An estimated number of one million People was murdered within a few months, many of them by their friends or even by their relatives. A international conference in Wuppertal Looks back to what has happened 20 years ago and about the developments until now. The conference was organized by the Ecumenical Network on Central Africa (OENZ) and the United Evangelical Mission (UEM). "We remember the unthinkable", Dr Jochen Motte said, spokesman of the coordination committee of the OENZ. "Many of us have lost close friends. And we have asked ourselves: Why have we not seen the obvious? Why have we as church institutions not been able to push the international community to stop the killings?" Esther Mujawayo, trauma therapist in the city of Dusseldorf, told about how she experienced the genocide, how her husband and other relatives were murdered. The worst thing was not to be able to bury her beloved, she said: "How can to mourn somebody if you don't know where his or her body is?" She was lucky to survive. But the hearts stays empty, Esther Mujawayo told. And no foreign power could be blamed for that. It were the neighbours, the doctors, the teachers and even the pastors who killed. "We had to build up the whole society." "The killer is in us" – that is an important sentence in the process of reconciliation, Gloriosa Bazigaga from International Alert stressed. A peaceful coexistence from murderers and people who lost their relatives could only be achieved by showing that the evil is sleeping in every single human being. "The murderers are no life-long demons. They can change." Gerd Hankel from the Hamburg Institute for social research critisised a "authoritarian and one-sided" kind of accounting for the past in Rwanda. Thinking beyond the borders being decreed by the goverment is not wanted, he said. I.E. Christine Nkulikiyinka, ambassador of the Republic of Rwanda in Germany, disagreed. Critical thinking is not only permitted but even supported in schools, she said. For the rebuilding of the nation the building of a common identity was necessary, she said.