Quotes of the Day

To be honest, I did not even know the people we went to kill," says Gerard Uwize, clutching a Bible and songbook. In 1994, Uwize joined a venomous swarm of Hutu militia that, with Rwandan government backing, unleashed hell against their Tutsi neighbors. In 100 days, using guns, machetes, clubs and spears, they slaughtered some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

And now Uwize and thousands of other killers are coming home. At the end of January Uwize, 37, walked out of a Kigali prison carrying a small green plastic bag containing his entire wardrobe and a sack filled with the odds and ends accumulated during his almost nine years of imprisonment: water cans, pots, pans and an old pair of sports shoes. Along with other prisoners, he boarded a waiting white bus that would take him to his home for the next two months: Gashora Solidarity Camp, one of 22 camps set up in Rwanda to house more than 16,000 genocide perpetrators set free by Rwandan authorities. Most of them are self-confessed killers, released after admitting their part in the genocide. Here they will gradually be re-introduced to community life, part of a mass release designed to ease Rwanda's overcrowded prisons and foster reconciliation among its still-divided community. In late March, they will return home to face survivors and families of their victims.

Shy and nervous, Uwize doesn't seem like a killer. How many of them did? Yet history overflows with examples of average citizens who, motivated by religion, patriotism, tribalism or force, become capable of the most remarkable barbarity. Born in the green hills of Gitarama province, some 120 km south of Rwanda's capital, the former driver had lived in Kigali for only a few years before he says he was compelled to join the Hutu militia by government officials. "We just did what we were told. It was very hard on those who refused, some of them died."

Of all the people he killed, Uwize knew only one man, and vaguely so. "He was called Celestin Yakaremi. We killed him. I do not know if anyone in that family survived — I think we killed all of them." Uwize knows that soon he will have to face his community and the families of those he killed. "It weighs heavily on my mind," he says. "They might even be angry enough to kill me, but I have to try to ask them to forgive me."

It isn't forgiveness that concerns Kigali resident Domitila Nyirakamanzi — it's fear of renewed violence, and anger that the government isn't helping victims like her. Nyirakamanzi, 56, lived through a killing spree in the first few days of the genocide. Her right hand is scarred with machete wounds; a bullet is still lodged there. When the Hutu came she tried to take refuge in the Khadafi mosque, believing it to be a sanctuary. But the killers were not a pious lot. "They shot at us. Those who tried to flee were cut up with machetes. Then they threw grenades."

Last year when she and fellow survivors started testifying in court about the genocide, her house was broken into. She believes the perpetrator was sent by families of prisoners to kill her. "The government needs to do more to assure us that they are taking care of our security," she insists. "We are very worried and uncertain about our security, yet the government seems more concerned about the killers."

Neighbor Alloysie Murekatete knows who killed her husband and son — the sons of her neighbors. And they will be returning in two months. She, too, is frightened and angry. "The men who killed my family are visited every day in prison; the government and other agencies provide them with medicine and food," she says bitterly. "But when my son is sick I have to struggle to find money for his treatment. I have to take care of my son by myself, alone. Now they have gone and released the people who did this to us. If they do not help me look after him, then at least let them give me justice."

Jean Pierre Bucyana was 17 when he took up a machete. After seven years in prison he looks frail and older than his years — and now he's alone. "I helped others kill. But subsequently, my whole family was killed by people seeking revenge," he says in a matter-of-fact way, as if it was the most ordinary thing to kill and then have your whole family killed in return. Perhaps because, at that time in Rwanda, it was.

Killers like Bucyana and Uwize will soon come face to face with survivors like Nyirakamanzi and Murekatete, sharing the same fields, visiting the same shops, worshiping at the same churches. Trouble might seem unavoidable. Yet Genevieve Uwamariya, a Catholic nun who lost her entire family to genocide, has since 1998 run a project in which more than 400 killers have met and talked with the families of their victims. A tall, slim, dark woman with graying hair, she says that one of the participants is the man who killed her father: "When he asked to see me I was unsure. But I said to myself, 'I need to be an example. I cannot tell people to do this if I cannot do it myself.' We have spoken; he told me what he did. He had no reason. I have forgiven him. It is hard, but I forgave."

The prisoners she works with are helping to rebuild the homes of survivors. Rebuilding their faith in their neighbors might take a lot longer.

• MARY KIMANI | Kigali
• Rwandan Hutus jailed for genocide are being resettled. Will they be left alone?