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The Catholic Church and the Rwandan Hutu movement

Creating a Hutu identity
In 1957, the Hutu catechist Gregoire Kayibanda, under the ideological patronage of J.P. Harroy, the Belgian Governor of Rwanda and Mgr. Perraudin, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda, publishes the ‘Hutu Manifesto’ demanding the political authority be granted to the Hutu majority. According to the present Rwandan government, in that year “the Catholic Church encourages Gregoire Kayibanda and his associates to form political parties … to champion ‘Bahutu interests’”.

In 1959 “PARMEHUTU (Le Parti du Mouvement de l’emancipation Hutu) is established under the guidance of the Catholic church by the proponents of delayed independence. PARMEHUTU was also openly sectarian and anti-Batutsi,” again according to the Rwandan government. The same year, the first massacres of thousands of Tutsi is organised by radicalised Hutus, “under Belgian supervision”.

In contemporary Rwanda, politically dominated by Tutsis and moderate Hutus, questions about the Catholic Church’s role in the polarisation of Rwandans, in its extreme leading towards the 1994 genocide, are openly debated. In Rwanda, before the genocide called “Africa’s most Christian country,” over 50 percent of the population is Roman Catholic. Some 12 percent belong to other Christian societies.

As in most African ex-colonies, the missionaries in Rwanda also embarked on a policy of divide and rule, in close cooperation with the colonial administration. In the Belgian Trust Territories of Rwanda and Burundi this meant creating the ethnicities of Hutu and Tutsi and promoting the Hutu majority against the ruling Tutsi.

The Catholic Church, effectively supporting the creation of a Hutu identity and nationalism, thus became part of the Hutu movement. The mission was rewarded by mass conversions of Rwandan Hutus, making Catholicism the dominant religion in Rwanda. As the radical Hutus gained power in Rwanda at independence in 1962, Catholic and other clergymen found themselves with personal friends in all levels of governance and with good access to the centres of power.

Source : Afrol News. click here to read more