Monique Mujawamariya

The genocide carried out in the spring of 1994 against the Tutsi minority of Rwanda is a sobering reminder that, a half-century after the Nazi holocaust and only a few years after the fall of Soviet communism, mankind's capacity for inhumanity remains undiminished. While the hundreds of thousands killed in this tragedy cannot be brought back to life, it may be possible to find in the courage of one survivor a foundation upon which to rebuild a broken society and a source of hope and inspiration for the world.

Monique Mujawamariya is such a person. The story of her miraculous from Kigali, when her friends in America and Europe thought she had been killed has become well known. But it is her role before and after the holocaust in Rwanda that demonstrates the full extent of her devotion to the cause of human rights and democracy.

The daughter of a Hutu father and Tutsi mother, Monique founded the Rwandan Association for the Defense of Human Rights and Public Liberties in 1990 at a moment when ethnic tensions, which had led to mass killings a generation earlier, had begun to swell once again. Convinced that such tensions were being stirred and exploited by power-hungry politicians, in particular by the dictatorial regime of Juvenal Habyarimana, the new Association committed itself to the defense of individual rights, irrespective of ethnic identity.

Monique's effectiveness in strengthening coordination among Rwandan activists as well as an-tong American and European rights groups working in the country made her a target of the Habyarimana regime. A victim of an assassination attempt in 1992 which left her face scarred, she was subsequently warned by a military officer suspected of torture that she would be killed if his name appeared in a human rights report that was to be prepared by an international commission. When asked by a member of the commission what to do, she responded, "Why print it, of course." The death threats continued, and in the weeks preceding the outbreak of the holocaust in April 1994, the regime's hate radio called her "a bad person who deserved to die." Yet she remained in Rwanda, providing Western human rights groups with regular reports on the deteriorating situation.

Owing to her own resourcefulness, help from her Western friends who worked tirelessly to get her name on an evacuation list, and more than a little luck, Monique escaped the slaughter in Kigali. But soon after the fall of the Habyarimana regime in July, she returned to Rwanda to reactivate her human rights association, whose ranks had been decimated, and to prepare a report on steps that needed to be taken to document the genocide, to avoid new bloodshed, and to make possible the rebirth of the country.

In few countries have people suffered as much as they have in Rwanda, or are conditions less ripe for peace and reconciliation. Yet from the ashes of this inhumanity there has emerged an individual whose immense courage and idealism should serve as a lesson and an inspiration to us all. However distant democracy may seem as a goal, it is not unreachable as long as there is someone like Monique Mujawamariya whose belief in freedom and the dignity of all human beings can be neither repressed nor denied.