DW-World.de
Deutsche Welle

In 1994, a million people in Rwanda were massacred. Over a space of three months, the East African country was engulfed by genocide. The majority of the victims were of the tribe Tutsi, the perpetrators mostly Hutu. The ethnic polarisation of Rwanda was deliberately engineered, driven by propaganda - because in everyday life Hutu and Tutsi lived in peaceful coexistence.

Today, the trauma of the genocide still casts a shadow over Rwanda. Neighbours murdered neighbours, tens of thousands of girls and women were raped, many gave birth to unloved children. The churches are helping the country along the road to reconciliation, preaching forgiveness. But they are in a tricky position - because they themselves were not uninvolved in the horror. Rwanda is 95 percent Christian, so Christians killed Christians during the genocide. "The churches are entangled in the evil," admits the president of the Presbyterian Church of Rwanda, a church currently celebrating its centenary. Missionaries used to come from Germany, now it is visitors from "partner churches" who arrive in Rwanda. With support from Germany, the churches are trying to help the surviving victims of the genocide - widows, orphans, the women who were raped. The aim is to control cravings for vengeance, to offer spiritual support and to facilitate education and access to a better livelihood. Not an easy task in a country that ranks among the poorest in the world and where suppressed ethnic tensions periodically re-emerge.