Churches Attempt to Respond to Carnage and Chaos in Rwanda
Episcopal News Service. April 21, 1994 [94083]
The Episcopal Church has joined other Anglican churches in prayer and relief efforts to help those caught in the civil carnage and chaos in war-torn Rwanda. Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning wrote to President Bill Clinton to say that he was "appalled and distressed" over the reports of carnage and he implored Clinton "to use all your influence at the United Nations to organize an effective multilateral peace effort to stop the killing and restore order."
Browning also wrote to Archbishop Augustin Nshamihigo of the Episcopal Church in Rwanda (L 'Eglise Episcopale du Rwanda) to express deep concern for "how this crisis is affecting the life of the church and, indeed, the very lives and safety of you and your people." He told the primate that the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief had sent an emergency grant of $25,000 to the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund of the Anglican Church in Canada which is coordinating the Anglican Communion's relief efforts.
The Rev. Canon Samuel Van Culin, secretary general of the Anglican Consultative Council in London, wrote to all the primates urging them to join the relief efforts. "The four components of the appeal are prayer, giving, education and advocacy," he said in his April 19 letter. He pointed out that the Canadian church "has already made a substantial donation to Burundi over the past year, in its special relationship with the francophone church" because of Canada's bi-lingual heritage in English and French.
Van Culin and others have put support of refugees near the top of the list of crises. Information from the All Africa Council of Churches (AACC) noted that there were already 375,000 refugees and internally displaced people in Rwanda and United Nations figures place the number of Burundi refugees in neighboring countries at 800,000.
Eyewitness accounts by those escaping the violence paint a gruesome portrait of a society gone mad. Thousands of corpses lie untended in the streets of the capital city of Kigali and any semblance of public order has evaporated. While the original violence was directed by the Hutus at the Tutsi minority, others now suggest that the killings go beyond what the Western media likes to characterize as "ethnic violence." Initiated by the Presidential Guard in reaction to the death of Rwanda's president in a suspicious plane crash, the violence spread to the regular army and gangs of heavily armed youth, according to AACC sources.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Cape Town, president of the AACC, wrote to the churches and people of Rwanda expressing his grief over "this terrible time in your lives." He said, "We are bleeding with you and upholding you in our feeble prayers during this crisis." He concluded his April 12 letter, "In our beloved South Africa we know of terror and violence too and simply wish to assure you that the people of Rwanda are with us and we with them."