Burundian runner preaches forgiveness despite being targeted by Hutus

Published: 2006-07-17

SAN ANTONIO (CNS) -- Lying beneath the burning bodies of his classmates and teachers for more than eight hours, with a bloodthirsty mob waiting to hack or bludgeon to death any who ran from the conflagration, Gilbert Tuhabonye heard a voice telling him he would survive. It was Oct. 21, 1993, in the village of Kibimba in the central African nation of Burundi, a land long torn by ethnic strife. "God is the one who saved me," said Tuhabonye, now a resident of Austin and author of a new book, "This Voice in My Heart: A Genocide Survivor's Story of Escape, Faith, and Forgiveness." He credits his Catholic faith with keeping him from seeking revenge for what happened on that grim day. Hutu tribesmen -- who had been friends and neighbors of Tuhabonye, then in his final year of high school, and his fellow Tutsi teachers and classmates -- were enraged at the assassination of the Hutu president in an attempted Tutsi coup. They descended on the schoolhouse and began rounding up the Tutsis. "They put everybody in a room and set the building on fire," Tuhabonye told Today's Catholic, San Antonio's archdiocesan newspaper.

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