大象传媒

Good Morning.
1994 was a terrible year in Rwanda. Over 100 days, between April and July of that year one ethnic tribe set upon another in a campaign of murder and destruction that left as many as 800 000 dead. By the time the Tutsi government regained control things had reached unimaginable proportions, with no respect shown for age or gender. Ordinary Rwandans knew the response had to be as radical as the genocide itself had been. They focussed on reconciliation. Imperfect as the resolution of those terrible events may have been things would have been so much worse if people had not accepted the vision of everyone as Rwandans, not focusing 聽on different tribes but facing towards the hope of reconciliation and its possibilities.
The events of 1994 were all the more terrible because only a year before, on this day in 1993, Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis had signed the Arusha Peace Agreement, the Arusha Accords. Rwandans now know, better than most of us, that signing a peace agreement is not enough. There is hard, unrelenting work to follow. Making peace must be as unrelenting as making war. Rwandans can now say: In peace, daggers are used for shaving.
Lord you teach us to make peace in every aspect of our lives, with enemies, to use daggers for shaving, to beat spears into pruning hooks and swords into ploughshares, Grant us the grace to follow your way. Amen