Romeo Dallaire speaks at MBCI

Romeo Dallaire

On January 10, high school students at Mennonite Brethren Collegiate Institute, Winnipeg, had the great privilege to hear Senator Romeo Dallaire, Force Commander of the United Nations mission to Rwanda during the 1994 genocide there. Dallaire is also author of the prize-winning Shake Hands with the Devil. MBCI teacher Paul Doerksen sent this report and reflection on Dallaire’s message.

Romeo Dallaire’s book, Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure of Humanity, has lain on my shelf for some time now, unread in part because I know in broad outline the horrific events at the heart of the book, namely, the murder of some 800,000 Rwandans over the span of 100 days.

I finally opened the book in anticipation of Senator Dallaire’s visit to the campus of MBCI. What struck me immediately was Dallaiare’s open declaration of the Christian framework from within which he understands things and seeks to live his life.

Dallaire’s visit to MBCI campus was part of a local Liberal candidate’s campaign, so the hour-long presentation carried with it a certain partisan flavour. However, Dallaire’s speech and subsequent taking of questions was not so much a narrow apologetic for the Liberal Party as a humanistic nationalist vision.

Dallaire did a nice job of connecting with his audience. He emphasized that many of the students’ peers around the world find themselves in a very different place – in “blood, mud, suffering” as child soldiers, sex slaves, and so on.

He also called the students to consider a number of questions and challenges. Regarding the quick response of the West to Yugoslavia compared to the deeply inadequate response to crises in Rwanda and Darfur, he asked “Is it possible that some count more than others?”

Much of Dallaire’s presentation circled around the question of what it means to be human. “We are all exactly the same,” he said. “There isn’t one human more human than the other.”

This “common humanity” can be appealed to as the basis of important notions such as human rights, rule of law, values and ethics. This is uniquely present in the Canadian nation, he believes, and challenged the students to assume the responsibility that comes with being a Canadian citizen.

When pressed about the role of the Christian faith in his own life, and in complex scenarios such as the Rwandan genocide, Dallaire stated that he firmly believes in the existence of the devil, whose hand he shook in the form of leaders of the Hutu extremists.

“I know the devil exists, and therefore I know there is a God,” says Dallaire in his book. This is a baffling claim, but does hint that the Rwandan crisis cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the spiritual realities at play in all geo-political events.

Dallaire’s presentation indicated his desire for a peaceful world that offers freedom and justice for all. And yet his vision is not without controversy, and indeed clashes at various points with the vision of God’s peace that we seek to embrace and explore at MBCI.

For example, Dallaire strongly asserts that the military life is a noble pursuit, the aim of which is to protect and assist others, and as such is not in conflict with the Christian faith. In his view, freedom, the right to vote and so on are the result of military strength properly deployed. Thus the hope of the world is liberal democracy, sustained by violence at its center.

To say this is not to denigrate Dallaire’s work, sacrifices, courage or continuing commitment to justice and peace. We were left wondering, however, about the reality of the church as a truly transnational community, Christian practices that sustain peace, freedom in Christ, and the hope founded in the reality of God’s coming reign, when the lion will lay down with the lamb.