Genocide survivor shares message of forgiveness
Catholic Spirit, June 2010, Page One
By Enedelia J. Obregón
Senior Correspondent
How does one forgive the unforgivable? Grow in faith amid despair? Remain hopeful after witnessing the unimaginable?
Immaculée Ilibagiza has done all that and more. She is now traveling the world with her message of faith, hope and forgiveness after surviving the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
In early May, she spoke to a sold-out crowd at the Paramount Theater in Austin. She also autographed copies of her books, including her first, “Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust” published in 2006. The book, co-written with author and award-winning journalist Steve Erwin, recounts her miraculous survival in a tiny bathroom with six other women and a little girl for 91 days while members of her Tutsi tribe were slaughtered by her former friends and neighbors of the Hutu tribe.
Prior to her speech, Ilibagiza briefly addressed the immigration issue in this country in light of the newly adopted Arizona law. As she signed autographs, protestors marched down Congress Avenue near the theater where she spoke.
“It’s important to respect laws,” she said. “What is hard is when people start to see others as less than human who don’t have the same rights. Sometimes people don’t see you as their brothers and sisters because you look different.”
When people are seen as less than human, then people can justify treating them inhumanely, Ilibagiza said.
“That’s what happened in my country,” she said. “People called us cockroaches.”
What we all need to do is recognize that we are all God’s children, Ilibagiza said.
“Think of all those people as your child,” she said. “Look at them and ask yourself how you can help them. We need to treat each other with love.”
Ilibagiza’s presentation opened and closed with songs by the George Powell and Friends Gospel Choir, joined at the closing by Paulist Father Steven Bell, associate pastor at St. Austin Parish in Austin.
During her presentation, Ilibagiza didn’t dwell on the suffering she endured but on the journey of faith she experienced inside the four-foot by three-foot confines of the bathroom.
Ilibagiza whose family was Catholic, went into that bathroom with only the clothes on her back and her father’s rosary. Only she and her eldest brother, attending university in another country, survived the genocide. Her parents and two other brothers perished along with numerous extended family members.
They were among the nearly 1 million who were killed in a 100-day period beginning April 7, 1994. Ilibagiza was 19, an engineering student in college, whose life was saved because she obeyed her father when he asked her to come home for Easter. It was his idea that she go to the local Protestant pastor’s house to hide because he was a Hutu and was a family friend. It was the only house village with two bathrooms.
“God can send you a gift from the most unlikely person,” she said.
Until then, she said, she knew God but didn’t really know him as a father and friend. She believes that she was “left to tell” not only about the genocide, but about the power of God’s love.
“I am here to share with you that he is real and that no matter what you go through or how dark it can be, he is always with you,” she said. “I went through a lot of rage and anger. In my mind I was shooting people. But forgiveness gave me such great freedom. Trust in God is the only real thing that lasts forever.”
While hiding, Ilibagiza prayed like she had never prayed before. She dug deep into her heart, dissecting the meaning of every word as she prayed.
She decided at one point while praying the Lord’s Prayer that she would not say “as we forgive those who trespass against us” because she didn’t believe it and God knew it, so she could not lie to him.
She thought about Jesus on the cross and his forgiveness of those who hurt him.
“How do you tell Jesus he’s wrong?” she said. “For the first time, I understood the meaning of surrendering. I got on my knees and asked for help to forgive. I said, ‘I don’t know how. I say the prayer but you know that I don’t mean it. I don’t want to do it out of fear.’”
The more she prayed, the deeper her faith grew. Time and again, she came close to being discovered. Time and again, God protected her, she said. At one time, a group of machete-wielding Hutus came looking for her, calling out her name. Never did they discover the bathroom door hidden behind a tall dresser she had asked the pastor to place in front of the door.
Every step she has taken, Ilibagiza said, has been through God’s grace and love. This included her decision to learn English so she could get a job at the United Nations after the war. She already spoke French.
Her knowledge of English brought her to the U.S., where she met her husband, with whom she has two children. That’s also how she met author Wayne Dyer, who suggested she write a book about her experiences.
“He said, ‘I promise you if you write a book I will publish it,’” she said. “I came back a week later and said ‘I finished the book.’”
What Dyer didn’t know was that Ilibagiza had already written and rewritten a draft of her first book a few weeks before meeting him.
After she finished writing, she prayed for help in publishing the book. Three days later she met Dyer at a book signing, even though she didn’t know who he was.
“I didn’t know God answered prayers after three days,” she said with a laugh.
Ilibagiza said that if she can forgive, anyone can.
“I am not special,” she said. “If my family could come back they’d tell you I was the weakest one. But if you hold onto God, even if you think you’ve lost everything, you can come back to life with God.”
Ilibagiza said profits from book sales have allowed her to create a foundation in Rwanda so children can get educated. She also rebuilt her parents’ home as a museum.
It also allowed her to write more books. In 2008, she wrote “Our Lady of Kibeho: Mary Speaks to the World from the Heart of Africa,” about the apparition of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ to eight young people in the remote Rwandan village of Kibeho 13 years prior to the genocide.
“Our Lady told us terrible things were going to happen if we didn’t love one another,” Ilibagiza said. “We didn’t listen.”
She ended her talk by saying that if one has to choose between being right and being kind, “always choose kindness.”
Ilibagiza’s books can be purchased at www.immaculee.biz.