In Rwanda, Archbishop Tutu Arrives After New Violence

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu arrived here in the Rwandan capital Saturday only hours after diplomats said government soldiers had hacked a senior Hutu government official and his two children to death.

Tutu came with a strong message for reconciliation in the tiny Central African state torn apart by last year’s genocidal ethnic killings.

“I speak from our own experience in South Africa,” the Nobel Peace Prize winner told reporters upon his arrival.

“Ultimately we must concentrate on forgiveness and reconciliation because, if we concentrate on retribution, I am fearful that the spiral of violence, resentment and pay-back will never end,” Tutu added.

The renowned South African clergyman flew in from neighboring Burundi, which has the same ethnic Tutsi and Hutu mix as Rwanda. Analysts fear it could go down the same path as Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered last year.

But Tutu’s message was overshadowed by reports of the killing, allegedly by Rwanda’s Tutsi-dominated army, of a senior Hutu opposition figure together with his two children and a houseboy.

The soldiers reportedly slaughtered the children with machetes and knives before they set the house ablaze in the central town of Ruhango on Thursday night.

Kigali-based diplomats said troops Thursday entered the house of Placide Kolonis, a local administration official who belonged to Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu’s Republican Democratic Movement, and killed him.

Twagiramungu, a member of the Hutu majority, is a leading coalition partner in Rwanda’s broad-based government formed a year ago after Tutsi-dominated rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front took power and ended civil war and genocidal killings.

U.N. spokesman Ismail Diallo said that before the killings, U.N. military observers based in Ruhango saw a government soldier outside Kolonis’ house.

“Our military advisers saw one government soldier in uniform outside the house. They later heard screams coming from inside before it was set on fire,” Diallo said.

“After that, four bodies were recovered from the house,” he added.

There was no immediate comment from the government or army, but state radio said Kolonis was killed by “unidentified gunmen.”

The Ruhango killings are expected to raise tension in Rwanda’s coalition government, controlled by the Tutsi-dominated army that is accused by exiled Hutus and aid workers of seeking revenge for last year’s genocide.

Tutu called for proper investigations into the genocidal killings that erupted after the assassination of Hutu military strongman Juvenal Habyarimana, but he added that justice must be tempered with mercy.