WORLD SOCIAL SUMMIT 2008
'Wss: Esther Mujawayo, we must believe in values to survive the trauma'

"I was born in Rwanda in 1958, in the years of independences, when the Utu started to hunt the Tutsi": this is the beginning of the speech of the Rwandese psycho-therapist Esther Mujawayo during the last day of the World Social Summit organized by Fondazione Roma in collaboration with Censis. The Rwandese psycho-therapist addressed the public describing fear based on her experience. "The fear that I lived in 1994, when the Government planned the final solution against the Tutsi was an actual fear, not an imaginary one, it was a fear linked to the certainty of what would have happened after".

Esther Mujawayo then stated: "The only hope to survive was to continue to believe in one's own cleverness, soul, and until those were present, we still had a chance to survive". Mujawayo then described to the people attending the convention, what is felt when fear is substituted by trauma, after which people discover to be still alive and to have survived fear. "After the genocide, we were all living in an existential emptiness, from wives we became victims, from children we became orphans, from mothers we became lonely women" told Mujawayo who added: "At this point, the fear was to exist without any memory of the past, with no values, and the trauma established itself from this". The Rwandese psycho-therapist explained to have transformed her tragedy into a leading experience, into sometime that allowed others who lived the same tragedy to recall and re-elaborate what had happened in order to re-discover themselves as being part of a community. "In view of this, Avega was born, the association of the widows of 1994 genocide" admitted Mujawayo.

Critics were also made during the speech with regards to the role of international organizations - Onu first of all - that Esther Mujawayo accused "to have abandoned the Tutsi when the genocide was being planned", re-appearing after the worse was over.

Ester Mujawayo reminded to the people present, the violence suffered by her population, especially by women who were victim of serial rapes. "Fear cannot be eliminated if security is not there. If a refugee is denied the permit to stay in a Country, that person will not have a chance to start all over", concluded Mujawayo.