Genocide survivor to speak on peace at Rockhurst High
By Marty Denzer
Catholic Key Reporter http://catholickey.org/
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Life was good. Immaculée lived with her family in a house on the lake and attended the national university. She and her family did things together and she enjoyed a normal social life. Then in early April 1994, hell broke loose in Rwanda.
She was at home studying for exams when her brother rushed into the house and announced that President Juvenal Habyarimana had been assassinated.
“That was the signal,” Immaculée recounted in a telephone interview. “We were warned to stay home, not go to school or work. It took about three days for the soldiers to get to my hometown.”
There had been hints of trouble since the Tutsis had invaded northern Rwanda from Uganda four years earlier. “We smelled trouble, but weren’t ready for it,” Immaculée recalled. “It (the genocide) came as a total surprise.”
The Rwandan Genocide refers to the 1994 mass murder of close to between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutu political moderates over the course of 100 days by Hutu militiamen.
Immaculée’s mother spirited her daughter to a neighbor’s home, and then to the home of a clergyman, who hid the girl in a bathroom, “for safety.”
Most of the victims were killed in their villages or in towns, often by their own neighbors and fellow villagers. Typically, militia members hacked their victims to death with machetes, although some army units used rifles. Victims were often found hiding in churches and schools, where Hutu gangs massacred them. Ordinary citizens were called on by local officials and government-sponsored radio to kill their neighbors, and those who refused were often murdered themselves.
The clergyman brought in seven other women over the next few days, and the bathroom became hot, cramped and eventually odiferous. Immaculée, a lifelong Catholic, found comfort in the rosary beads her father gave her just before she went into hiding.
“They were killing house by house, searching for hidden people. They crawled through the ceilings, looking for people who were hiding. It was very like what happened in Germany to Anne Frank. I constantly prayed to God and His mother that they wouldn’t find the bathroom door.”
The women had to remain as silent as possible to prevent discovery. Immaculée asked the clergyman for a Bible, “So I could get to know who God is,” and a French/English book. She taught herself English over the next three months.
After a grueling, terrifying 91 days in the bathroom, the door was unlocked and the women, emaciated and weak, stumbled out. They later learned that the Hutu soldiers, in fear of their own lives, had fled the country, and the Rwandan national army had taken over. The genocide was for the most part over.
By the end of that day Immaculée, who by then weighed only about 65 pounds, had crawled and stumbled home to find her entire family, except for a brother who was studying outside the country, had been brutally murdered.
She was fortunate to run into a friend of her mother’s, who took her home, and cared for her until she regained some of her strength. The woman lived just five minutes from the United Nations Consulate and Immaculée decided to try and get a job with the UN.
“I went eight times and each time they told me there were no jobs. I would go home and cry and say the rosary: Please God, I’m going again tomorrow. Help me find a job.”
The next day she’d go back to the consulate and would be told there were no jobs. Finally, when she was at her most discouraged, crying in a consulate hallway, a man approached her, mistaking her for someone else. A fortuitous error; a consulate spokesman, he was also a compassionate man. After learning she had no family and no income, he offered her a job working on the consulate’s computers.
“God was guiding me. It didn’t come easy, but he heard my prayers,” Immaculée said.
Four years later, in 1998, Immaculée immigrated to the United States, working as a consultant for the United Nations in New York. She shared her story with friends; they convinced her to write a book about it — Left to Tell.
She worked for the United Nations until 2005, when she began telling her story to audiences worldwide. She has written two additional books and recently signed a movie contract.
She also takes groups to Rwanda several times a year to visit orphanages and the Shrine of Our Lady of Sorrows in southwestern Rwanda dedicated to Our Lady of Kibeho, the name given to a series of Marian apparitions reported by seven teenagers in the 1980s. The teenagers reported seeing gruesome sights such as rivers of blood and people killing each other. The visions were accompanied by intense reactions: crying, tremors, and comas. The teenagers said the Virgin Mary asked everyone to pray to prevent a terrible war. These are the only Vatican-approved Marian apparitions in Rwanda.
The shrine honoring the Virgin Mary was built in 1992 and named Our Lady of Sorrows.
Immaculée also raises money to build a church at the shrine.
Immaculée Ilibagiza, world-renowned speaker on peace, faith and forgiveness will be presenting her testimony of healing and forgiveness at 6 p.m., Oct. 14, at Rockhurst High School’s Rose Auditorium, 9301 State Line Road, Kansas City. Tickets are available online at www.KCPresents.org, or at the door: $25 general admission, $50 for the reception & admission, or $100 for her book, photo, reception & admission. Questions, please call Jane Peck (816) 363-5699 or Leslie Gasser (913) 948-3971.
A portion of the proceeds will go to the Left to Tell Charitable Fund which directly benefits children orphaned by the genocide.
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