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Hunting my husband's killers

March 28 saw the launch of the DVD documentary Hunting My Husband’s Killers and the book With What Remains at the Soho Hotel, London.

The film follows the quest of health worker, Lesley Bilinda, as she returns to her former home, Rwanda, ten years after the genocide in which her Tutsi husband was killed. The purpose of the trip is to try and find the killers of her husband and to offer them forgiveness. The book, written by Lesley herself, gives her reflections on the making of the film and her emotions and thoughts as she works through the possibility to forgive and the reasons for doing so.

Immensely moving

After an introduction from Ray Tostevin, the co-director of the film, there was input from Jean Whitnall, the sales and marketing director of Hodder and Stoughton, who published the book, and from Paul Brigham, the marketing director of Tearfund. Jay Knox, director of Purple Flame media who co-directed the film with Ray Tostevin, said: ‘It is a film about facing pain. It is a personal story, not a political film…that gives huge insight into human nature.’

The immensely moving clips which followed certainly revealed just how hard it was for Lesley to make this journey. In one, Lesley meets a man involved in the killing of her best friend, Anatolie. After hearing the graphic account of her friend’s death, Lesley turns to him and said: ‘As one of her friends, if I were to say to you that I forgive you for what you have done, how would you respond?’

Spotlight on forgiveness

The film and the book put the whole question of forgiveness under the spotlight. Not only did Lesley return to Rwanda to seek the killers of those she loved and offer forgiveness, she is also confronted with the brutal fact that, throughout her marriage, her husband was unfaithful to her. Interviewed by Ray Tostevin during the evening, Lesley revealed how this had increased both her understanding of the extent of human weakness and her grasp of grace. She stated: ‘We are all human beings and we all face the same pressures and temptations.’

At the end of her book she makes a similar point:‘How easy it is to get into a blame mentality, seeing myself as completely innocent and the enemy as completely evil. I would like to think…I would have stood up against the tide of atrocities and championed the cause of peace. But would I?’ This leads Lesley to forgive. Not that this is easy and does not mean she can forget. But it is a real, grace-based forgiveness.‘To me,’ Lesley said, ‘forgiveness is… a decision of the will that stems from an awareness of my own having been forgiven by God.’

Listening to her, it struck me that she had learned at a very deep level what it means to pray ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.’

Elisa Beynon