November 1996

Editorial

Prophets against All Discrimination

Pierre Lucien Claverie, Bishop of Oran (Algeria) was killed on August 1, 1996. Joachim Ruhuna, Archbishop of Gitega (Burundi) was killed on September 9, 1996. Christophe Munzihirwa, Archbishop of Bukavu (Zaire) was killed on October 29, 1996. That in less than three months three bishops of the Catholic Church have been killed in Africa is something that should make people think seriously. They were men who wanted the rivalries exploded in their countries to be solved through dialogue. They wanted peace, a just peace, for their people. It is not an exaggeration to state that they were killed by the forces of evil that are at present ravaging Africa.

It is worthwhile to re-read what these three men had to say, so that their message will not be lost. The following are excerpts from what they wrote a short time before being killed.

Bishop Claverie was born in Algeria of French parents. He wrote:
"I grew up in the protected environment of the colonial elite. I ignored everything about the others, the Arabs, meeting them only as elements on the landscape. Then, with the Algerian revolution the other appeared in my life, and the recognition of the other has become for me an obsession. I asked myself why during my childhood, being Christian, going to church, listening to sermons on the love for our neighbours, I was never told the Arabs were my neighbours. Or, if it was said, I never heard it. Then I told myself: no walls, no boundaries, no divisions any more. It is a must that we recognise the existence of the other, otherwise we foster violence and exclusion.

In that moment started my true personal adventure - a rebirth. To discover the other, to live with the other, to let myself be changed by the other, does not mean to lose my own identity, to reject my values, but simply to conceive a humanity that is plural.

In my experience I have reached the personal conviction that there is no humanity unless in its plural form, and when we pretend - and in the Catholic -church we had some sad experiences in our history - to own the truth or to speak in the name of humanity we fall into totalitarianism and exclusion. Nobody owns the truth, everybody looks for it. Certainly there are truths, but they are beyond us and we can arrive at them through a long walk, rebuilding them little by little, taking elements from other cultures and other human societies. I am a believer, I believe in God, but I do not have the claim to posses Him, not through Jesus, who reveals Him to me, nor through the dogmas of my faith. God cannot be owned. Truth cannot be owned, and I need the truth of the others.

People speak of tolerance. Certainly tolerance is better than rejection, exclusion and violence, but I prefer to speak of respect for the other. If in Algeria we will be able to conceive that the other has the right to exist, that the other carries some truth and that the other has the right to be respected, then we will not run in vain the risks we are facing now." (from a speech given in Marseilles (France) in July 1995).

Archbishop Ruhuna was a Tutsi, and a leader in the reconstruction of unity and reconciliation in Burundi. On July 23, 1996, presiding over the funeral for the victims of the Bugendana massacre, he said:
"Rwandans, my sisters and brothers, let me address these assassins and those who send them. I raise my voice, that everybody hears it! Your crimes are a shame for all humanity. I implore you; put down your weapons, stop these massacres, it is the price for peace. Even you, you aspire to peace. Let the others leave in peace. Let's look for a common path together leading to harmony and co-operation.

To all those who lost their dear ones, I ask you not to give in to the delusion offered by vengeance. Those who have lost their lives, have lost it because of their ethnic belonging, this is evident. Their executioners, thinking they ought to avenge or to defend their ethnic group, have committed a crime which exceed all sins: they have repudiated God, their creator. There should be no others who will revenge their dead led by ethnic feelings. Killing others will not give back life to your dear ones. But you will become an assassin and God will curse you.

Sisters and brothers, fellow Christians. You have welcomed the teaching of Christ and have been baptised. You know well that killing is a sin, a great sin. In the heart of every person worth of his or her humanity there is a law that forbids killing. It is a natural law understood by everyone who has reached the use of reason.

Every time when you have co-operated with an assassin, every time when you have planned a murder, you have already committed the sin. You are not worthy any more to bear the name of Christian. You have cut yourself off from the community of the faithful, you have become runaways."

Archbishop Munzihirwa was outspoken on behalf of his people and the 1.2 million Rwandan refugees who arrived in his diocese in 1994 following the genocide in Rwanda. He had written several pastoral letters, including one sent the day before his death, drawing attention to the situation in Eastern Zaire. In a letter read in all churches of his diocese on September 29, he said:
"Courage asks for solidarity and discipline. Our forefathers have never cultivated hatred or vengeance. When the war was over and peace agreed, the fighters of yesterday met in the same market with the opponent of yesterday. From time to time they inter-married.

We have to be welcoming to everybody, and we will be enriched by the values carried by different ethnic groups and races. The strong nations are those that are able to reconcile their differences. It is foolish to reject good people simply because they belong to this or that ethnic group. Not one of us has chosen his or her parents and his or her tribe. We only accept and protect them.

It is not worthy to profit off the present situation of confusion, to steal or to loot from the house of the neighbour, to harass mixed couples for the only reason that they are mixed. To do this is to go against humanity and against the will of God, who has created all of us different and asks us to join our efforts to build a harmonious society."

In the midst of the enormous tragedies unleashed by the Islamic fundamentalism in the whole of North Africa and by the ideology of tribalism in the Great Lakes region, these three leaders, who defended the truth and their people and died with words of peace on their lips, are prophets. Prophets can be killed, but their message and heritage will be taken up by others.

Africanews staff