Carl Wilkens shares Rwandan insights on restorative justice

Ali­cia Gomez
Jan. 25, 2023
The Dai­ly Campus

The Dodd Cen­ter host­ed Carl Wilkens, a for­mer human­i­tar­i­an aid work­er dur­ing the Rwan­dan geno­cide in 1994, who dis­cussed the con­cept of restora­tive jus­tice and how Rwan­dans restored trust in their for­mer oppres­sors while liv­ing among them. 

This dis­cus­sion, “Rwanda’s Restora­tive Jour­ney: Liv­ing Along­side the Ene­my,” took place at Konover Audi­to­ri­um on Jan. 24.

“Can peo­ple who killed their neigh­bors real­ly live peace­ful­ly with those they failed to kill?” Wilkens asked. 

He told the sto­ry of Maria, a sur­vivor of the geno­cide, and Philbert, the man who killed her hus­band and sons. Maria intro­duced Philbert to Wilkens as her val­ued fam­i­ly friend, Wilkens said. 

“All I could see in Philbert was a killer, a rapist,” Wilkens said as he described his inter­nal con­flict. “I could not see him as any­thing but that.” 

How­ev­er, Wilkens said that Maria reframed Philbert and showed empa­thy for Philbert’s expe­ri­ences as a prisoner. 

“She steps out of the spot­light. She puts Philbert in the spot­light,” Wilkens said. “That must be one of Maria’s super­pow­ers. She could step out of the spot­light and put the guy I could only see as a killer in the spot­light and start to prac­tice empa­thy with him.” 

Wilkens empha­sized how the Rwan­dan geno­cide was not a sto­ry of “trib­al hatred and con­flict that even­tu­al­ly reached the lev­el of geno­cide.” Instead, it was a coup, he said. 

“The archi­tects of the geno­cide had to work hard to break the bonds between the Hutus and Tut­sis,” Wilkens said. “When you speak the same lan­guage, you go to school togeth­er, you go to church togeth­er, you drink beer togeth­er, you do busi­ness togeth­er, of course, you’re going to fall in love. You’re going to build relationships.” 

In some cas­es, these exist­ing rela­tion­ships saved some Rwan­dans from the geno­cide. Even being a part of a soc­cer team was the dif­fer­ence between life and death, accord­ing to Wilkens. 

“So many peo­ple sur­vived because of their soc­cer mates, those bonds of that teamship of that team and that sport togeth­er,” Wilkens said. 

How­ev­er, the extrem­ist gov­ern­ment and orches­tra­tors of geno­cide laid waste to many of those rela­tion­ships. Accord­ing to Wilkens, many were not strong enough to sur­vive the country’s vio­lent divide. 

“They are cre­at­ing and con­struct­ing the ene­my. It doesn’t hap­pen overnight in Rwan­da,” Wilkens said of the extrem­ist group try­ing to fig­ure out a way to orches­trate the country’s divide. “If they mar­ried each oth­er by the thou­sands, it’s hard to build a case that this is built on hate between trib­al groups.” 

“This was a coup,” Wilkens said. “This was an ille­gal seizure of pow­er. One of the first actions of that extrem­ist gov­ern­ment was to elim­i­nate any­one that would stand in their way.” 

What was the dif­fer­ence between rela­tion­ships that sur­vived and those that the geno­cide destroyed? Peo­ple who com­mit vio­lence dur­ing geno­cide may be using their “down­stairs brain,” Wilkens said. 

Accord­ing to Wilkens, the con­cept of the upstairs and down­stairs brain is anoth­er way of fram­ing the amyg­dala and the pre­frontal cor­tex. The amyg­dala is respon­si­ble for our fight-or-flight response, and the pre­frontal cor­tex is respon­si­ble for cre­ativ­i­ty, empa­thy and crit­i­cal think­ing. Wilkens pro­posed that this mod­el may explain why many peo­ple in Rwan­da resort­ed to sense­less vio­lence, espe­cial­ly since the coun­try was on edge after being dri­ven through count­less wars. 

“Dif­fer­ent things hap­pen that can cause us to just go for sur­vival,” Wilkens said. “We fire those path­ways about scarci­ty not enough; it’s no won­der that peo­ple seem to be on edge.” 

Wilkens said mind­ful­ness was the best way to make it to the “upstairs brain,” like Maria was able to do when she empathized with Philbert. 

Mind­ful­ness is how the Rwan­dans restored rela­tion­ships with one anoth­er after the geno­cide, even going as far as being life­long friends with peo­ple who killed their fam­i­lies, Wilkens said. They even imple­ment­ed it in their jus­tice sys­tem, he added. 

Gaca­ca courts, or com­mu­ni­ty courts, are a form of restora­tive jus­tice imple­ment­ed after the geno­cide where pris­on­ers stood in front of the com­mu­ni­ty, con­fess­ing and answer­ing ques­tions to the fam­i­ly and friends of the vic­tims, accord­ing to Wilkens. It is an alter­na­tive to puni­tive justice. 

“It was a restor­ing of human­i­ty,” Wilkens said. “The incen­tive for the per­pe­tra­tor was that you could get your sen­tence reduced and it was a path­way home. The incen­tive for the sur­vivor was that you could learn the truth, which was real­ly important.” 

A stu­dent who attend­ed the event was able to learn about how he could imple­ment restora­tive prac­tices into our jus­tice system. 

William Evans, a senior from E.O. Smith High School, is a “restora­tive diver­sion team” mem­ber. Accord­ing to Evans, his team focus­es on imple­ment­ing restora­tive jus­tice prac­tices in our jus­tice sys­tem in Storrs. He hopes to col­lab­o­rate with Wilkens. 

“He obvi­ous­ly has exten­sive expe­ri­ence with the impli­ca­tions of restora­tive jus­tice,” Evans said. 

In 1994, Wilkens was one of the only two human­i­tar­i­an work­ers who refused to leave Rwan­da as thou­sands of UN sol­diers fled dur­ing the Rwan­dan geno­cide, accord­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut Human Rights Insti­tute. 

The event was spon­sored by UConn Glob­al Affairs, the Dodd Human Rights Impact and the Cen­ter for Juda­ic Stud­ies and Con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish Life.