Catholic Complicity and Rwanda Genocide

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4615171

Human-rights advocates are demanding an apology from the Catholic Church for its alleged role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, arguing the church did not do enough to stop the killings.

Now, an international court is trying several Catholic priests for their alleged role in the massacres, in which Hutus murdered 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The Archbishop of Kigali declined to be interviewed but in a written response to questions by NPR he says the church didn't have the power to stop the killings. He adds flatly that no Rwandan clergy were involved in the genocide.

 

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http://healtheland.wordpress.com/20...anda-massacre-why-werent-we-told-this-before/

Genocide term for Rwanda priest – Africa – msnbc.com

ARUSHA, Tanzania – A Rwandan priest has been jailed for life after a U.N. tribunal extended his sentence for ordering militiamen to burn and bulldoze a church with 1,500 people inside. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s ruling came after Roman
Catholic priest Athanase Seromba appealed his 2006 conviction, a statement posted on the body’s Web site late Wednesday said. He was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The tribunal is trying the alleged masterminds of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists over a 100-day period. The tribunal said it convicted Seromba for “his role in the destruction of the church in Nyange Parish, and the consequent death of approximately 1,500 Tutsi refugees sheltering inside.”

Seromba was convicted of leading a militia that attacked the people and poured fuel through the roof of the church, while police threw grenades inside. After failing to kill everybody inside the church, Seromba ordered it to be demolished, the tribunal found.

Thousands of Rwandans have turned away from Catholicism, angered and saddened by the complicity of church officials in the genocide. Priests, nuns and followers were implicated in the killings and some churches were sites of notorious massacres.

The Rwanda war crimes tribunal has delivered 32 judgments, including five acquittals, since the U.N. Security Council established it in November 1994. There are 27 trials under way.