Forgiveness heals pain of genocide

• By MARK H. HUNTER
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: Aug 24, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

A woman who escaped the 1994 genocide in Rwanda with her life but lost almost all her relatives in the conflict, related her own story Saturday to around 800 area residents gathered in at LSU’s Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

Immaculée Ilibagiza said she clung to a deep faith in God while she and seven other  women hid in her Catholic pastor’s small bathroom for 91 days while more than a million people were slaughtered.

Several times rival Hutu tribesmen looking for members of her Tutsi tribe searched the house, but never discovered the room in which they were hiding, she said. Her faith, she said, also allowed her to forgive the man who killed her mother.

“I went to see him in a prison and when I saw him I began to cry,” Ilibagiza said. “I told him I forgive him but I didn’t ask for an apology. An apology is necessary for reconciliation but forgiveness is crucial for the person who has been wronged. His face fell and all he could say was that he had stuff he’d taken from our house he wanted to give back to me.”

Holding up a Catholic rosary she always wears, she told the group, “My dad gave me this rosary. When he handed it to me it was the last time I saw him.”

“What matters the most to me is God in my heart,” Ilibagiza said to an audience rapt in attention. “People often ask ‘why did God save us?’ and I say, ‘for this reason, to share my story.’”

Ilibagiza was a 22-year-old university student who weighed 115 pounds when the genocide began, said Patti W. Fox, board chair of Echad Awakening, a local non-profit  group that brought Ilibagiza to address Saturday’s inaugural “The Power of One” event. “She exited as a 65-pound person who lost her family. I find strength in her faith to forgive.”

Since her ordeal, Ilibagiza has been featured on network television programs and speaks to audiences all over the world. Her book, “Left to Tell, Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust,” is a best seller and she is the Mahatma Gandhi Peace and Reconciliation Award recipient for 2007.

The day she forgave her mother’s killer, she also changed the life of the prison warden who had lost seven of his own children and hated his Hutu prisoners. “A year later he came up to me and said ‘the moment I saw you forgive him I was able to understand that if they can change, and you can change, I can change,’” she said.

Her forgiveness came slowly, she said, as she repeated the Lord’s Prayer, the Rosary prayers and while she read her Bible during her enforced isolation in the tiny bathroom with the other women and several girls.

“I thought a lot about Jesus hanging on the cross asking God to forgive those who were killing him — yet he loved them,” she said. “He had perfect love in his heart. Then I realized that ‘they don’t get it,’ and we all have a future — a chance to change. It was a moment of enlightenment.”

Following a standing ovation, Rev. Joyce Plummer asked Ilibagiza how she made a choice to forgive her enemies.

“You have to forgive or you will forever stay a prisoner to un-forgiveness,” Ilibagiza said. My anger was like a veil. My forgiveness cut it away.”