Rwanda

Rwanda
Rwanda Bahá’í Teaching Institute, 1968.
Location of Rwanda
National Assembly		Rwanda
Statistics:
Total Population
-	UN 2021	13,461,888
Bahá'í pop.
-	Bahá'í source
-	Non-Bahá'í source	23,885 15,000
Local Assemblies		28
History: Firsts
-	Local Bahá'í	Alphonse Semanyenzi
-	Pioneers	1966, Ataollah Taaid 1966, Zahereh Taaid
-	National Assembly	1969, with Burundi 1972
Official Website		http://www.bahairwanda.org/
Related media
Categories: Rwanda • People

The Republic of Rwanda is a country in Central Africa. Its official languages are Kinyarwanda, French, English, and Swahili and the predominant religion is Christianity.

The region was united under the Kingdom of Rwanda from the 15th to the 18th Century. In 1897 it was colonized by Germany and incorporated into German East Africa and in 1916 it became a colony of Belgium, as Ruanda-Urundi which also encompassed what is now Burundi, as a result of the First World War. In 1959 the Rwandan Revolution broke out and in 1962 the country achieved independence.

The Bahá’í community of Rwanda was established in the 1960's and developed rapidly in the 1970's. The Bahá’í community experienced significant hardship along with the rest of the countries population during the Rwandan genocide, but had recovered by the mid 2000's and continues to develop to the present day.

History

In 1947 Marthe Molitor, a Belgian Bahá’í, moved to Rwanda from neighboring Belgian Congo where she had been living although she was unable to establish a Bahá’í community and departed at some point prior to 1953. When the Ten Year Crusade was launched in 1953 Ruanda-Urundi as a whole was a goal for Bahá’ís to pioneer to and Rex and Mary Collison and Dunduzu Chisiza pioneered to Usumbura in what is now Burundi that year achieving the goal, however Rwanda itself remained unopened.

In 1966 the first pioneers settled in Rwanda itself with Dr. Ataollah Taaid and his wife Zahereh arriving from Iran, with Ataollah establishing a medical clinic in Kigali, and Jackton Kayemba pioneering from Kenya.. The first Rwandan Bahá’í was Alphonse Semanyenzi who worked at Dr. Taaid's medical clinic. In 1968 a Bahá’í Teaching Institute was held in Rwanda, and by Ridvan that year two Local Spiritual Assemblies had been established in the country. In 1969 a joint National Spiritual Assembly for Burundi and Rwanda was established.

In 1970 Raḥmatu’lláh Muhájir briefly visited Rwanda to assist teaching efforts while traveling across Africa, and the Rwandan Bahá’í community experienced rapid growth at the opening of the 1970's with the Universal House of Justice announcing an independent National Spiritual Assembly was to be established in 1972. The National Assembly of Rwanda was elected by delegates from sixteen Local Spiritual Assemblies with Adelbert Mühlschlegel representing the Universal House of Justice at the inaugural National Convention of Rwanda.

In January 1973 Rúḥíyyih Khánum visited Rwanda during her extensive travel teaching tour of Africa and met with the President of the country, and in February Aziz Navidi assisted the Rwandan Bahá’í community in successfully securing government recognition of the Faith. By Ridvan 1973 there were forty-seven Local Spiritual Assemblies in the country, and from 1973 to 1974 the community held a series of eight deepening Institutes for Assembly members across the country instructed by Zahereh Taaid. In the late 1970's mass teaching began to be undertaken in Rwanda. By 1979 there were more Bahá’í youth in Rwanda than Bahá’í adults.

By the early 1980's the Bahá’í community of Rwanda had established six tutorial schools across the country. In 1986 the secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of Rwanda was invited by the government's Department of Youth to travel across Karambo to deliver talks to youth on The Promise of World Peace message of the Universal House of Justice, with the message having been presented indirectly to the Rwandan President through their Head of Protocol. In August 1988 the Bahá’í community of Rwanda was granted permission to begin broadcasting a Bahá’í news program on Radio Rwanda. In 1990 civil unrest made travelling across the country difficult and the Bahá’í community taught through its radio programme with efforts resulting in an average of ten declarations per day.

In April 1994 the Rwandan genocide broke out, a period of intense violence within the country during which 800,000 people were killed, and many Bahá’ís were also killed with many also fleeing the country due to the violence. The Bahá’í International Community sent representatives to the session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights held in Geneva on the situation in Rwanda in May, 1994. On October 20, 1994, ten Bahá’ís were able to gather at the National Bahá’í Center of Rwanda in Kigali where they commemorated the Birth of the Báb. In 1996 the National Spiritual Assembly of Rwanda disbanded due to the unrest in the country, but it was re-established in 1998.

In 2000 the National Spiritual Assembly of Rwanda submitted a statement to the National Commission for Unity and Reconciliation of Rwanda urging that the oneness of humanity should be made the basis of reconciliation in the country following the genocide. In 2004 the Bahá’í community of Rwanda held a special jubilee event in Kigali to celebrate the history of the Bahá’í Faith in the country. As of that year there were twenty-eight Local Spiritual Assemblies across the country.

References

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