 We have a wonderful panel for you tonight and as Anna already mentioned we will Start by listening to mama Lambert Who is herself a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda that took place? 21 years ago And she will give the introduction herself. I will not do that, but I think it is Good to mention to this audience that she actually wrote a book about her life story And that book is entitled for those who do not believe in miracles and It was published by Wolf legal publishers and the publishers also here with us and she got some help with the Writing of the book and also the translation from Hans Decker who is sitting in front Welcome also to you and Brigitte Maras who did the translation from French to Dutch So welcome also to you and there are no copies yet of the book tonight But there will be very soon available through Wolf legal publishers Now next to mama Lambert you will see Mr. Herbert who is here tonight to translate the first part of the evening because what we have done we will start the evening by listening to mama Lambert's Story on the justice processes and her experiences there and that will be translated by mr. Herbert Now after the break we will talk about forgiveness and we will talk about mama Lambert's own experiences with her Forgiveness process and that part she will do in English But for this part before the break there will be translation Now we also have two excellent speakers from academia who are sitting now in front of me But later will be joining us in the panel Welcome to you as well. Dr. Real Vermeunt who is a Professor in Leiden University, and he is a social psychologist who is an expert on justice related topics. I Can give you a whole CV, which I will not do and we also discussed that but for his outstanding academic work has received a lifetime achievement award and One of his famous books is entitled the good the bad and the just how modern man shape the world Later you will hear all about his views on justice and forgiveness Can you please stand up a little bit so that the audience can already see you? Okay, and then we have another foreign guest from Scotland Dr. Alan Moore just back from maybe stand up as well He just came back actually from Rwanda where he followed or participated in one of the study tours that also our university Organizes each year now Alan is a lecturer in criminal justice and criminology. So we have a social psychologist and a Criminologist and he works at the School of Media Culture and Society at the University of West Scotland West of Scotland, I should say he has many areas in which he is an expert. I will also not list that entire All these areas, but it's amongst others victimology criminal justice human rights and public international law So also for you a very warm welcome Let's start the program now. We will first listen for Some 25 minutes to Mama Lambert's story. So I give the floor to you She's happy to be here and she's happy for your presence here today as we remember In the spirit of forgiveness and justice We are glad that the Netherlands has been our sole companion in this journey of remembrance and forgiveness Because through Netherlands, we've been able to realize most of our dreams and achievements As they told you I'm called Mama Rambelle, but that's that's not my original name Mama Rambelle is a name of the of the history of the genocide history My my birth name is Beata Beata in translation it's The blessed one Indeed I was blessed. I had a family. I had children. I had a husband. I had loving I had I had loving parents. I had a job. I was blessed But the 1994 genocide against the tootsie came and wiped all that away I'll be quick my father was Hucked to death in three pieces and thrown and the pieces are thrown in the river called Nyabarongo My mother Was thrown live in that in that river called Nyabarongo But like enough she didn't she wasn't taken out by the river but when she By God's will she she managed to Survive when she returned home. They killed her through in a ditch of 15 meters Oh Her husband was taken on the 11th of April and till today they've failed to reveal where they Where they dumped his body She had eight children of whom five were killed and now she she survived with three Of the five she managed to to bury properly bury them after after the one who killed them revealed where he had dumped their bodies So they are buried She buried them I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't I Seblings all all perished she's the only one surviving in our family All her property houses she had four houses the all destroyed the hainy adding to eaten, and her being blessed, now came a curse. My surviving was because of God's will. I saw death in front of me, but by God's will I survived. And from the point of my survival, I feel death, I mean she felt death was better than surviving or better than living. By the time of the genocide, she was, she had a young daughter called Rambe. A young boy called Lambert, and they spent three months running through the bushes, through the heavy rain, running, running, till the genocide was stopped. I'm going to call her by her name. Beata should reply, I'm not Beata, that period is past. Because she had no feeling of Beata with nothing. Beata had something, now it's Beata with nothing. Stop calling me Beata. And one of the people she managed to survive with insisted to name her at least Mamma Lambert, instead of being nameless. She accepted being called Mamma Lambert because looking at her situation with a baby boy, she had carried all those three months through the rain, through the heavy power, she accepted to be called Mamma Lambert. She couldn't sleep. All the way she was going, she would meet, she would come across people who were looking for her to kill her and Rambe. She couldn't sleep as for the whole night, she would always keep on recalling and calling her husband, all her five children were killed, just calling them psychological torture. At the time, all she wanted was justice, justice for all those for the ones who killed her family. Without getting justice, it is so hard for you to determine where you are in such a situation. In 1959, when she was seven years old, a similar situation happened after the death of the king. A certain party called Parimehutu came to power, they killed, they destroyed, they rooted, but there was no justice. At the time, in 1959, those who killed were rewarded with heavy posts in the government given high jobs just because of the killing. And because of the random nature, we tend to forgive. So when it happened, they said, okay, it has happened, what has happened has happened, let's unite and be together, they live together. However, in 1973, the same happened and there was no justice. The essence of justice is to prevent one that wants to do wrong and to prevent one that wants to do wrong. The essence of justice is to prevent one who wants to do wrong and is to prevent one who wants to do wrong. If you don't do justice, the criminal or the culprit feels like it's his right to do wrong all the time. And that's how we felt because it was like a normal business and we felt that the Hutu where it was the right to kill the Tutsi and nothing was to be done. And for them to get the energy that they used in the genocide was because they had this feeling that whenever you do wrong there's no justice, there's nobody going to punish you. So it was like a normal routine, just killing, killing normal routine. And even at a certain point the Tutsi felt like, yes, it's alright now we have to die because Hutus have the right to kill and nothing was being done in the justice sector. But in 1959 and 1963 they couldn't, I mean they were not killing women and children but in 1994 things turned around, they started killing children and women. So the point of bisecting a pregnant woman to see the snake as they used to term the Tutsi, to see the snake, just bisecting her and killing the baby and the mother. For those of you who get a chance to visit Randa you will see that at a certain point young children or babies, those who are just being cut out of their mother's stomachs were being killed just because they were Tutsi. So justice is there to put people in the proper order. And justice is there for the weak. Justice is there for the poor for the weak. Justice is there to put things in the proper channel in the proper way. Justice unites. Because of justice it prevents the one who is going to do a crime. But in a situation where there is no justice people are in competition, criminals or culprits are in competition to do wrong, to do crime. Because there is no justice it encouraged the genociders to get into the act of killing massively. In 1994, massive children, men, women, the old, all engaged into the acts of killing, to the acts of genocide leading to the hardships in providing justice. And the advantage of justice is that it brings back the memories, it brings back the culprit in proper line of thinking and provides him the opportunity to ask for forgiveness. And because of justice the criminal or the culprit feels shame and guilt of the crimes he did. That's why our government, the Rwandan government, for us so that wrong shouldn't be rewarded with wrong, but rather established the gacha-cha courts where people were brought together to confess their crimes and seek forgiveness. At the exact spot where the killings took place, that's where the courts were conducted and that's where everything was conducted. And the cases would be decided from the very spot that you the culprit, you the survivor, your family members and the community are sitting and all judge you, the culprit according to what you did. I thank very much, she calls her hero, Anne Marie, who managed to escort her all the way through the gacha-cha courts, because Mama Rambe was scared of meeting the perpetrators who killed her family, but Anne Marie escorted her through all the way in the gacha-cha courts. It's hard for her to express her feelings at that point where she stood face to face with the killers of her whole family while the killer's family is standing there. So it was another cross to carry seeing the killer's family and the killer himself in front of you and you're standing alone knowingly that your whole family perished because of this person. Seeing somebody who raped you, infected you with HIV, now you're looking at him face to face. It was a heavy exam to face. But because of gacha-cha, we managed to identify two categories of killers. Those who confess their crimes and seek for forgiveness, despite the fact that they are few. And those who still deny that there was no genocide. And what hurts is seeing somebody denying that genocide didn't happen, yet you exactly know. You saw him kill your family, kill your husband, kill all your children, but still he says there was no genocide. Instead of denying genocide, one tarnishes the genocide image by saying that I just cut him on the neck and I didn't kill him. I stabbed him, I didn't kill him. Or I killed him because he was actually, he intended to die. Something that actually frustrates you. Accepting, you know, just saying, yes I raped her, I infected her with HIV, the government is helping them, so what? And he stops there, so that's what's hurting them more. A country with no justice is a doomed country. And it will be doomed forever. Today we have a voice because our government has helped, has managed to give us justice. We've managed to bury our beloved ones in proper places. Please, please, please always seek justice. We thank you very much for your kind attention because when you listen to our speeches and our testimonies, we feel touched and blessed. Thank you. Before we go to the discussion, we thought it to be a very good idea to also have a lighting of the candle ceremony as it is called, because this is also the period, the official period of commemoration in Rwanda. So I will speak out some of the official words and then I will ask Mama Lambert and our ambassador and Anna to light the candle. So we will now take some time to commemorate the innocent lives lost. We remember the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their lives 20 years ago in Rwanda. In particular, we would like to pay tribute here to the family members of Mama Lambert, her husband, Placide Rutjahana, her children, joyeuse Claudette, Germain, Rutajicire and Olivier, her parents, Eligé and Marie, her sisters and brothers and their families, her grandmother, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends, that these crimes may never be committed again, anywhere in the world. We pray for Mama Lambert and others like her who have shown great commitment, strength and inspiration for many genocide survivors who did no longer feel like living. May she continue to find this strength. We are now going to listen to one song related to the genocide in Rwanda against the Tutsi. And the song in Kini Rwanda is about bringing comfort to others and it's called Humura. I would like to invite the two of you now to come to the stage. We've been just listening to Mama Lambert talking about how she actually views justice and how it unites, how it can put people back in the right order as you mentioned it. I would like to hear first from our social psychologist. What is your reaction to her view on her very personal story on justice? Yeah, it is, of course, difficult to listen to those very, very, very sad stories about the atrocities that were committed in Rwanda 21 years ago. But Mama Lambert, in her way of thinking, still has a recognition of what justice is. One of her sentences was justice is to put the people in the proper way, in the proper place. The yellow one is justice is for the weak, for the poor. Justice unites. These are different ways of looking at justice. And the first one, putting people in the proper place, is something that reminds me or connects me with the way I see justice in the work I did in the last 25 years. Justice, for me, is in fact that this is a feeling, first of all, it's a feeling that there is a balance between what you keep for yourself and give to others. There must be some balance that may be equally that you give something to yourself or keep for yourself a gift to others. There must be a balance between it. If you kill other people, it's totally unjust. It's an atrocious thing. You don't do that. But this idea of giving to self and giving to other, that can be done in economic terms, that can be money or that can be goods. But also respect. You give respect to yourself versus you give respect to the other. And there must be a balance between it. If you give too much respect to yourself, you are a narcissistic person. If you give too much respect to the other, you are a doormat. So there must be a balance between those two. But also in terms of love or affection, there must be a balance between what you give to yourself and what you give to others. And also care. Giving care must be a balance between what you give to yourself or keep to yourself and give to others. The whole discussion now in the Netherlands about care, et cetera, et cetera, is something that has to do with the vision of what time and care you give to other people. Can I ask you a little bit further about how you, from your own research, link this to this balance in the justice process? Does that mean that from the results in your research that actually the restorative justice approach might be more appropriate to get that balance? Or would that be too much of an overstatement? No, the ideal is to get that balance. And in most cases, it's equality. You give so much to yourself as you give to the other, or give to the other, or give to yourself. But in modern society, we don't do that. We have not the idea that, for instance, a person with higher education will certainly earn more than a person with lower education. But we all accept it. And we even say, yes, that's fair. That's just, why is that? Because we have reasons. Reasons that education is so important that it may be, that it can be rewarded more than no or lesser education. That's what we, all of us, agreed upon. And that becomes another way of thinking of justice. Equality becomes equality by, let's say, evaluating education more than, for instance, working hard or working in bad circumstances. That's the idea. So we, as a society, we deviate every time from equality. And is that something you also see within the criminal justice system? Or, and then I'll go to our next speaker. In the criminal justice system, we see exactly the same. Someone who has done a big crime is punished more than someone who has committed a lesser crime. We don't say it's a crime. You have done something wrong. So we punish you equally. No, we say, there's more. You get more. I wonder what the criminologist thinks about that, because that's quite a statement maybe. If you, well, also based on your experience being in Rwanda, but also in the domestic sphere in your own country, how do you, what is your idea of justice? When do you find this proper balance? When does it indeed unite as Mama Lambert has expressed? I honestly find it very difficult to have an overarching definition of what you call justice when it comes to criminal justice. Before I went to Rwanda, the literature review that I produced was based on trying to define justice. And it's so hard. For anyone that studied justice, criminal justice, any sort of justice, social justice, it's such a difficult concept to define. Justice can be very, very different from one person to another, depending on the types of crimes that have been committed against them, depending on the length of victimization, depending on even things like the age or gender of the victim or the perpetrator. And as a result, what somebody wants out of justice can really be different. So, you know, you have restorative justice we've talked about. You've got distributive justice. You've got retributive justice. You've got punitive justice, all different types of justice. And, you know, from my perspective, looking at what victims want, it's very difficult to find a clear dialogue. There are some clear threads that do come out. So, when I read the accounts of a number of survivors from Rwanda, for example, you had some survivors that said, for example, you know, if you live by the spear, you die by the spear. If you live by the sword, you die by the sword. It should be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But then, there are other accounts of survivors who say, you know, killing somebody isn't justice because that doesn't bring back your own relatives. It doesn't heal the wounds that you have. And likewise, imprisoning somebody, unless you're talking about life meaning life, eventually they come out of prison. But if they still harbour those ideologies. Now, when it comes to Rwanda, that's obviously a genocide ideology. But when it comes to any sort of crime, somebody could have some sort of view and if that's not changed, then justice hasn't been served. And if you take now your experience from Rwanda, where you've been listening to people who were participating in the gacha cha and who have been part of the officials, can you say something about your own estimation or evaluation of that process? Would that be a fair balance that was trying to be met there, if even you can answer that question? Well, it's a different system, the gacha cha system, as anyone knows about it will tell you, of course. Unlike jury systems, for example, in Europe, where the majority of the time, those that are judging somebody on their crimes have no awareness of this individual. In fact, often it's a crime to even discuss those crimes in the public prior to going into the courtroom. You're told to judge somebody based purely on the facts that are presented to that courtroom at that time. Now, the gacha cha system, of course, is based in the notion that it is those from the community that know the people, that know whether it's the perpetrators, the survivors, then judging that individual, as Mama Lambert said, in the very spots that these crimes took place. So there's a very, very personal link there. Now, from a justice perspective, of course, the difficulty is trying to minimize bias in that location, in that environment. Trying to say that somebody's personal feelings won't come into the situation. It's very, very difficult to stop that happening. But what do you mean, as in jeopardizing maybe rights for the defendant, or as in the bias? Where do you see the bias coming in within the gacha cha procedure? Well, theoretically both. But at the same time, I had this discussion with a number of people that were on the study trip. We had the discussion about what system would be perfect. Now, the problem is, you can conceptually create a perfect justice system, but in reality that might not work. Now, for example, you talk about the genocide in Rwanda. At the end of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, there were, I think, around about 250 people from the legal profession, from the judiciary still alive, of which approximately 200 were living in diaspora. So they had been displaced to other countries, to Tanzania, to Burundi, to the Congo, etc. And there were less than 50 members of the judiciary left in the country to actually deal with the aftermath. Now, when you're talking about the number of regions, the number of areas to be covered, the question has to be, well, using a conventional justice system, an existing justice system, how do you then deal with the workload you have to deal with? And the answer is very simple. You can't. It's impossible. So what Rwanda had to do was design a system that was the best justice system they could under the circumstances that would be effective, that absolutely would not be foolproof. But then the international community often seems to criticize the system based on some of these bias. Without thinking about the reality, well, the reality is, if you weren't with a conventional justice system, you know, experts say it would have taken anywhere between 15 and 130 years to try all of the suspects. Now, obviously, that's an impossibility. So some people would never see justice. You know, survivors, victims, families, et cetera, would never see justice being done. And likewise, the perpetrators wouldn't come to justice. Was it because we've had these discussions many times, and often what you see is that western scholars criticize systems, in this case, in Rwanda, without any knowledge of the country, without ever having been there, and measuring it against, for instance, human rights instruments. And my final question to you is, was it important for you to go to Rwanda to come to this understanding, or was that for you something also before this visit that you had as an overarching idea of how you should deal with these complexities and then find an effective or efficient justice system? So did you need the Rwanda visit to come to this view? Yes. The short answer is yes. I would say that it's very important to go. I think that obviously you can learn a lot from literature, especially in the modern age, where it's, you know, information is relatively easy to get hold of. But the danger of that, of course, is that any quality control effectively on literature is also very difficult. So assessing, you know, seeing the wood for the trees and seeing, you know, amongst all of the different stories, narratives, what is the true one, it's very difficult to do from reading alone. And I think even as I'm sharing with anyone that has been to the country will verify, it's very difficult to really understand the nature of the problem and the scale of the problem until you've actually visited some of these locations and you see the scale of the issues that resulted from the genocide. And, you know, the result of course is that a huge number of victims have been created and a huge demand for justice as a result. It's a call for everyone working in this area, in the audience, to make sure you go to the area where you're writing or researching or studying on. Is there someone in the audience that would like to pose a very urgent question? We have some time, not too much. We have two students with microphones. Anyone that would like to raise a question, now is your chance. So my question would be, is it possible? And if in what way can we unify these different understandings and ideas of justice in order to obtain the highest extent justice for people who suffer? I will pose this question to Dr. Vermeunt, okay? Or you'll pose it, but I will give it to you. Yeah, it's always the question researchers are looking for, that is to try to find a general rule of what is just or unjust, and we can't find it. Because, first of all, it's different between different cultures, what is just or unjust. Secondly, society changes what was just 50 years ago, might be unjust 20 years ago and even now. For instance, let's say of the bankers, that's unjust what they did by providing themselves with a lot of money at the cost of all of us. That's unjust, maybe that it was over 10 years that we think completely different, that we find it normal that those people get so much money. In the second place, football players, they earn so much money, there's no one who's saying that's unjust. So it depends on the situation, on the culture, and on the time we live in. So a general rule of what is just is not, it is not a Kantian idea of that, happily not. We ourselves would define what is just or unjust. That's important. Yeah, maybe it was good to add that from many victimological studies we also know that victims are not a homogeneous group with all the same needs. So that's also the difficulty that a justice system faces in order to be able to meet those needs, which are not the same. When I talk about justice, I feel like I'm excited to talk about it because you know that you get something from justice. But also we know that justice is a wall that prevents wrongdoers from putting into practice their wrongdoings. You feel like you are secure, you feel like you have security because it does punish those who commit wrongs indeed. But forgiving implies that a wrong did indeed happen. The wrong did of someone who did some wrongdoing against you. But before forgiving of course you go through a process. You ask yourself many questions like should I forgive but what would that imply? Will I get my husband, my family, my children back? Sometimes you are very insecure at the beginning. And can you imagine forgiving but the person you forgive, basically you even forgive refuses to give forgiveness. Let me rephrase. Can you imagine asking for forgiveness but then the person to whom you ask for forgiveness refuses to give forgiveness? So it's a very difficult test to forgive. You don't learn, nobody teaches you to forgive. Forgiving is a process. It's taking a step after another in order to move from the wrong which did happen towards some brighter future. At a given time I thought I don't really want to hear someone asking me for forgiveness. I don't want to be there in that sport. We went through a process and that was the background to that. In 1959 crimes were committed. We forgave and after we lived together as if nothing happened, some even intermarried. We went to churches together. We had baptisms as if nothing happened. We thought that was over but in 1963 the same happened. The same guys who were involved in crimes in 1959 did precisely the same again. In 1973 I was 20 years old. In 1973 I was 20 years old. In 1973 I was 20 years old. In 1973 I was 20 years old. In 1973 as I said there was a group of people who run after me saying that they were going to rape me. I saw them, I knew them. I was served by a very little short man so being brave is not nothing to do with hate. He was a very little man who ended up shielding me in 1973 and me and my sisters and relatives. He had a spare basically where he made them run away but again after that we forgave. Of course those relatives who were shielded with me in 1973 were killed during the genocide in 1994. Our father told us that the hotels will exterminize us. We will punish the criminals. We thought that had not happened because we had the United Nations, the people who did it ask for forgiveness. The current president promised not to condemn the killings because of, like his predecessor. So we felt somehow we assured that that would not happen because of all of that. We forgive. But the prediction of my father turned out to be pretty much true because in 94, indeed, they pretty much were close to exterminating people. But the reason why it was easy for them to kill was also that because we were somehow dehumanized in the process of killing us. They stripped us of our clothes. We had to go naked, young people together with husbands and young children or grandparents. And in that process, then, those who killed us felt like we were fair again. And when our father saw that he said, as you see this, for sure in the end, we will end up being exterminated. That was the reason he said that. But in that process, during all of those years, you need to understand what forgiving meant. For example, people were refused to study because of the ethnic policies that were in place. And forgiving basically meant that you are prevented from having that opportunity and had to find some other ways of surviving because you didn't get education. But still, you managed to forgive that person and live with him, doing probably jobs which are under your potential. But if then that person was to ask you for forgiveness, you would say, what did I do to you in order to do all of that to me? So what happened in my case was that, well, I was, as I said, in a situation where I didn't want to hear anyone asking me for forgiveness. I was not in that state of mind. But in 1998, that came in the form of a piece of paper. So one of the people who was involved in the killing of my children wrote a letter describing what he did, how they were killed, what weapons were used, who was part of the attacks which killed my children. And he described to us. And I can't describe to her in which state I was when I read that letter. Probably through the description, you see what she did of the piece of paper when she read it. Basically, think of the person who killed all of your elder children. By the way, what she said earlier was that those who were killed were all of the elder children. Those who survived were the younger ones. So think of that person who did that. All what I did was I felt like I took the paper and almost shredded it. I even felt vengeful at that time because it's the mother of the suspect, basically of the person conferencing who brought the letter. So the mother of Manasseh. So I felt like maybe the best solution would be probably to kill him as well. Then, at least, I will get my vengeance. I felt like they had lost their humanness. And in that sense, probably then, it was a good thing maybe to get rid of the person because they were no longer humans. But at the same time, my consciousness taught me otherwise. I felt like then I was about to tie my hands into blood. On one hand, of course, I felt like I remembered all of my relatives, children, and parents who I did. And I felt like there were persons as well, just like him. So maybe if you do that, it's the right thing to do. But at the same time, I felt like it wasn't. So I needed and prayed. And I said, however horrible that may sound, I'm about to kill Mukansang, who is the mother of Manasseh, the person who killed my children. And I, in Fatah, had told me, that if you were to kill a person, who was the only one, you would have to go to heaven in order to kill the person. If you were to die, Tristan Manavisi will have to kill you. So he must go to heaven in order to kill that person. suddenly opened the book, the Bible, on the very first page I opened. There was a passage about the killing of Abel by Cain. How do they say Cain? I have no clue how they pronounce it in English. Cain. But the voice said don't kill Cain, but let him go away. He will be a cursed person. That's the passage suddenly that I opened. I said I even felt revolted somehow and felt like probably I should set the Bible aside. I will read about it later on, but I need first of all to do this. But I took it again and opened again. Because my feeling was that we had forgiven enough as it says and I felt like that shouldn't be the case now. I will read about it later on. In Bipo Samoia, in Matthew, it's written that someone asked Jesus about how many times one should forgive and it's written that should forgive 70 times 70 times 70 times 70 times 70 times 7 70 times 7 By the way, I'm not here preaching you to be to be a believer that as I am but I'm just telling you what happened in my case. So I ended up counting all of those years from 59, from 63, from 73 again, and I felt like in fact, I would end up forgiving for the fifth time. That was one side. But then also one of the reasons why I ended up forgiving. I felt like a sad and angry person. In all my life since surviving, I felt like I lived with the killers. I lived in fact with Manasseh the entire life. Remember Manasseh is the killer. When I was at my table, my dining table, Manasseh was there because then I felt how I was lonely without my family. When I went to the market or anywhere on the road, any person I saw, somehow I saw in the image of that person, I saw Manasseh. Manasseh was all over the place in my life, around me, in my thoughts. Even in praying in the church, I asked God whether He would be able to forgive Manasseh. All of me was in fact, Manasseh was all over the place. And the climax was that in 2000, he wrote a second letter which led to me forgiving him. And once I forgave him, I felt at peace in my heart. And once I forgave him, that's when I started really feeling that I should start leaving that stage of my life behind. That's when I started actually thinking on how to plan my life ahead and how to make my children who survived live. Forgiving doesn't cost much. You are not bought into forgiving. In fact, forgiving is ensuring that your thoughts and feelings are not controlled by the wrong door. Forgiving is in fact a way of crossing the boundary of anger and bad feelings and beef and ideas about doing a wrong yourself. One maybe imagery I can give you is that when a bee basically bites you, it leaves a sting. But the best way to heal is not to run after the bee which did bite you, but rather to remove the sting that was left in your body. Forgiving also is all about you removing all of the bad feelings, all of the anger that you have that was left in you and learn how to move forward. I used to run after Manasseh having my mind populated by Manasseh, but once I did for all the mother of Manasseh for that matter, but once I forgave, I started moving away from that and I took steps towards a better, brighter life. There are of course different pillars of forgiveness that one goes through, including also having some kind of counseling in the process. I work for Solace Ministries, which is a counseling organization as well, which does counseling as well as an organization. And before it even tells you something about forgiveness, first of all, it tries to console you in your sorrow. And it does advocacy also in seeking justice. We talked about justice earlier. And of course it does also help in socioeconomic empowerment of survivors. Once people have been of course consoled in their sorrow, there are also involvement of other partners, like in this country particularly we have, for example, a very good partnership of Mokome's organization, which operates here, of course, you have seen Anne-Marie de Brouwer's and many others who are here. It does help then in the socioeconomic sphere in helping people who are in that process of moving forward to make steps towards a brighter future. I think we are getting signs from Rian. What Mokome's and similar organization, what they do basically also is somehow to provide alternative families to those who have been consoled, who are in the process of moving forward. Even being here is having a family in a sense because then people really move forward because they have other support structures around them. And thanks to Mokome's that you tend to have quite a lot of people who make those steps. Forgiving means that basically you don't seek vengeance but instead it leads towards some kind of reconciliation path. Forgiving also implies that the person who did the wrong somehow is brought to think further and probably become a person again. We visited some of those who committed the crime in jails together with some of the persons who are present here today. Persons, for example, who have received forgiveness seem to be a little bit or to act or react differently from those who didn't because once they see you they no longer run away but instead they look pretty much at peace. But also think of the fact that they also end up being remorseful in the sense because just thinking about this picture, if I took this picture and showed it to you, I think it's not just a picture of the person who committed the crime, it's a picture of the person who committed the crime. Basically he will get the idea that he will understand that I'm no longer alone, I have a different family now, even a bigger family. Even this also would make me forgive, in a sense. In a sense, of course he did not achieve what the goal was, which was to exterminate us and for that also the fact that I survived means also that I should forgive in order to move forward and have a bright future including for both of us and the wider society. Forgiving is absolutely necessary in order for a country again to get alive. It also revives life in your own being. Thank you so much Mama Lambert for your very impressive and inspiring story and we learn a lot from your story, not only how difficult it is to follow a process of forgiveness but also how rewarding it can be. In the discussion that we will have now we want to focus in particular on the role of religion, in your case Christianity, in that process. So I will ask first our experts and maybe come back to you in a minute. Now I need this one. So according to your expert opinion, what role does religion play both in individual processes of forgiveness but also collective? As Mama Lambert mentions, it's also important for society at large. So both individual and collective, can you enlighten us? Yeah, first I would like to say that Madame Lambert has said a lot of white things about forgiveness. First of all, the definition of forgiveness is that there is a pro-social action reaction in fact on an injustice. On something that is done to you, the harm you have done. It's a pro-social. It means that you first of all has in mind the harmony between you and the wrongdoer. That's not easy in fact because then you have to, that's what Madame Lambert has said. In the first place, she had feelings of revenge and that's a normal reaction. A normal reaction to how I'm doing is retaliation. You fight back. But then later on, there is a, let us say, that you reduce, that you inhibit those feelings of revenge. That means that you have control over your feelings that initiate that revenge. And that is very important in all research that has been done on the basis of forgiveness. Executive control, control over your impulses is essential for forgiveness. And that's what we heard from Madame Lambert, that not in the beginning maybe, because that's it. Okay, that's a very important thing. I can tell more about it, but how is religion now involved in all those things? We in our Western individualistic society, the definition of what we think is just, our fair is derived from the Protestant ethic. The idea that if you do good, you will get back good. If you do wrong, you will get back wrong. The Catholic thing, the Catholic thoughts are less prominent on this. That means that for a Protestant, forgiveness is possible only if there is something, that the person, the offender, gives something back. Forgiving only for the forgiving is not a Protestant, comes not forth from the Protestant ethic, from the Protestant religion, far less than from the Catholic religion. That means that forgiveness is only effective in this view if the perpetrator makes amends, makes excuses, gives satisfaction to the victim. In the Catholic religion, that tendency is far less. It's not nothing, but it is less than in the Protestant ethic. Does your research also show that people who are able to forgive also are able, or will find justice sooner? Is there a relation between how you sense justice if you are more forgiving or have been able to forgive? No, you can forgive, but once again, if the other person does not respond, then forgiveness is less likely. That means that there is a balance between what you give and what the other gives to you. That must be something that is equal. On a societal level, because now you are referring more to the individual level as well, what is the potential or the consequence for society if forgiveness is not part of a reconciliation process or rebuilding society? An interesting example about this is how a community can proceed if wrongdoing is punished or is in another way reconciled. In the 1870s, in the United States, the Seahawks Indians, a band of it, there was a chief, and the chief was Spotted Tail. Spotted Tail took the wife of a disabled member of the clan and took her as a second wife. Crow Dog was against it, and he was presenting the disabled husband to get something done with Spotted Tail. Accidentally, they met each other on the street, and Crow Dog killed Spotted Tail. The thing was that this was an Indian conflict, so the jurisdiction of the United States was not applicable in this case. So the Indians settled this on their own way, and that is, there came a peacemakers, and the peacemakers punished, or what you call it, Spotted Dog, he had to give $600 to the husband, plus eight horses, plus a blanket, and that was it. And in this way, the harmony in the group in the clan was restored. If, in this case, the United States was punishing juridically in a penal court, this band, the whole community would collapse. So this is a way that the community, with reconciliation, with, let's say, forgiveness, keeps the harmony in the group. The first question that I also posed to your colleague, can you answer that as well, the role of religion, both individual and collective? Yes, both. In particular, obviously, my main interest, he was talking about the perspectives of the victims, so I have looked in depth at the issues of unity and reconciliation, of course, unity and reconciliation being huge parts of the strategy of Rwanda to overcome the issues stemming from the genocide 21 years ago. And I've got just three very short quotes, which will all tell you probably a very similar story here when it comes to the notion of forgiveness to begin with, and I will move on to religion, but talk about forgiveness first of all. So these are quotes from some of the survivors. The first one here from a survivor, Pierre Gawubi, there's no way unity and reconciliation will come out of politics. So the first question then, if not out of politics, where can unity and reconciliation come from? The second one, which I've got here somewhere. Final page. And this is quite important because we talked earlier on briefly about the fact that not all victims, for example, have the same notion of justice. But very importantly, the same person goes through various transformations, of course. And not even necessarily in a linear form, people can have different perceptions of justice depending on the environment they're in at any given time. So one of the survivors here said, you know, I feel that unity and reconciliation are things we ought to achieve, but sometimes I feel like forgiving and sometimes not. Now that's the same person saying that sometimes they feel like forgiving and sometimes they don't. So you've got these issues of, you know, and a thread runs through a number of survivor stories in terms of not believing, believing rather in unity and reconciliation, but not believing it's something that can be achieved if it's something that's told to an individual that unity and reconciliation forgiveness have to be something that comes from the heart, that the individual genuinely believes they want to forgive. Now with that being said, then, if it doesn't come from the state, where does it come from? And one of the people that we talked to in Rwanda was Bishop John Rukihana, who is the chairman of the Faith and Reconciliation Commission in Rwanda. And he said something which, actually more than one person I've heard say, but he said something very, very meaningful. He said that, you know, these effects that are left on survivors, they're not scars. You know, quite often you have people being battle scarred and scars. He said they're not scars, the problem is they're still wounds and wounds need to be healed. So the question is, how do you heal those wounds? Now I'm paraphrasing here, but what the Bishop said was that, you know, you can't tell a child who was 8, 9, 10 years old during the genocide that you can't tell them, well, you know, come on, it's been 20 years, you've got to forgive. That person is still a young adult. You can't tell somebody who has lost their mother, who has lost their father, who might have lost their brothers, sisters, that they must forgive. Now that's not to say they can't forgive in the future, but they've got to go through some sort of transformation on the way to get there. And does the research that you have done also indicate that if a person is able to forgive, that it will diminish feelings of revenge or anger or all these feelings that keep you maybe in your victimhood? Is that something that you can... Yes, because well, the underlying issue here is that when it comes to religion, or really any faith to be honest, the whole notion of religion, whether it's Christianity, whether it's Islam, whether it's Judaism, whatever the religion is, the whole notion is that it's a transformation that you can see beyond where you are now to some sort of betterment, whether it's in your lived future, whether it's in any afterlife that any religion perceives. And the only way that you can achieve that is through constant betterment, bettering yourself as an individual. And notions of forgiveness are strong in all religions. Now, depending on whether an individual will be able to heal themselves, will quite often depend on the strength of that faith that they have in that religion. But the stronger the faith in the religion, the more likelihood is that the forgiveness will be genuine. But for you, if a person is not religious and what makes a person able to forgive or not, leaving aside the religious part, what is it in your own characteristics or in your own network that will enable you to be forgiving? As a social psychologist, you've done lots of research there. The forgiveness is higher when the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator is valued by the victim. Then forgiveness is far higher than when the victim does not that value the relationship. Secondly, as I explained earlier, is that you have to inhibit your impulses. If you are able to do that, only then you can forgive. Otherwise, revenge, retaliation comes up. Third, it's accountability. If you think that the other is less accountable for the atrocities, then you're more inclined to forgive than you think that the other person does it really purposefully, etc. These are the three important things that people use, no, not people use, but when forgiveness is more likely than in other situations. Let's say in that sense, it's not so much religion in this research, but religion might come in to change this intricate relationship between forgiveness and the other factors. May I ask you, Mama Lambert, you mentioned that there should be something in it for both parties, and it should be sincere. How did you determine when you first encountered the perpetrators of the killings of your loved ones, that you could be able to start this forgiving process? As I said, first, forgiveness has at first a benefit for the person who is a victim, but it's not so much for the person who is a victim, it's not so much for the person who is a victim, it's not so much for the person who is a victim. Forgiveness has at first a benefit for the person who was wronged, like in my case, when I forgive, I was at peace. So I had somehow a peace of mind once I forgave. So from this side of looking at it, is that the idea that by forgiving, I'm no longer basically haunted by that person, so he no longer preoccupies all of my mind. I'm sorry, I asked for the other side then of the equation, and she says that what shows that somehow it was sincere, in fact it was sincere was that, it was spontaneous in showing where the bodies were buried, and he denounced other people she wasn't aware of who participated in the killings, and that gave indication that the other side was somehow sincere. Thank you. Yeah, there are some important things. First of all, in the literature and the research we did on forgiveness, it was never mentioned, we did not investigate the fact that forgiveness might mean that you are not haunted by the perpetrator. We did not. That's a new element in our thought. Maybe it's something to do further. In the second place, you are at peace at heart if you forgive. That's fine. But in our research, we showed that if the perpetrator does not make amends, does not make excuses, does not do any sort of handwriting, hand giving to the victim, forgiven has negative effects for the victim because it lowers self-respect, because the offender does not react. On the other hand, it gives negative effects for the offender because because he does not react, he thinks what he is doing is fine, no problem. He goes on. So there must be, well, forgiveness be effective and for the victim as well of the offender, must make a move. Final word for you before I close this part of the session. Yeah. I think one of the areas that maybe has been touched on, but not so much specifically, is that in some cases some victims will be happy with not necessarily forgiving those perpetrators for whatever crime. In some cases, it simply is a recognition that the crime actually happened, the recognition they were actually a victim at all. And in some cases, that is enough for the victim, just that recognition of what happened. And again, it's one of the things that you see through a number of areas of victimology and victimization, but in particular in Rwanda, that often the whole notion of things like, for example, genocide in Ireland, the idea that somebody was not a victim actually quite often hurts just as much as a secondary form of victimization than whatever act actually took place in the first place. And sometimes to actually gain that peace and sometimes justice can simply be that recognition that somebody truly was an innocent victim and that somebody indeed was in fact a perpetrator. We could still also have very interesting discussions but I see you're sitting there still about the role of the international community. As you asked, they were not there in the period to enter genocide, later on this same international community set up the Rwanda Tribunal. So how does that do people indeed see that in Rwanda as a legitimate reaction to provide justice? But that unfortunately will take us another hour, so I will have to leave that discussion which I think is very interesting to the drinks later on. Is that okay for you as well? And you will be the expert to discuss that with you because I want to close this part of the session and I want to give Mama Lambert the final minute to give a take-home message as we call it before we go to the really final part of the evening. Mama Lambert, if you want you can already sit there. It's a lot of dominance. Yeah. The first thing I would probably tell you would be that I see a lot of young people here probably it would be a good thing probably to take care of your lives in fighting wrongs, especially atrocious wrongs like a genocide. A genocide is a very horrible thing as you probably may know and probably those older people here can teach younger ones or vice versa how to fight that. The last time I was here we had a commemoration in a synagogue here in Tilburg. Someone in the audience asked why do you always keep repeating never again and never again but it happens again. What do you mean by that? Does it mean anything at all? But in order to translate that in reality it's me, it's you who should ensure that actually it means something. The other thing I would say would be that I believe that justice is a pillar of lasting peace. But also justice is a pillar of self empowerment or empowerment generally speaking, call it empowerment or development. A country without justice is probably a dead country or a moribund country. The third thing I would say would be that there is a difference between forgiving and forgetting. Forgiving is not forgetting. So to me forgiving is basically getting rid of all of those negative feelings, ideas and thoughts that you get by being hunted always by the wrong doer. So for me that is forgiving, not forgetting. Thank you very much.