African Rights has published a powerful twenty-eight-page tribute to the courage of Carl Wilkens, the American Adventist Disaster and Relief Agency country director who stayed in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.

Although foreign diplomats, missionaries, aid workers, and peacekeepers all fled the horrific killing, Carl Wilkens decided to remain at his post and help wherever he could.

The African Rights tribute is a moving testimony of the lives Wilkens saved. The tribute is even more impressive considering that African Rights, a human rights organization based in London, was one of the primary documenters of the atrocities committed among Adventists in Rwanda.

Right after the genocide, African Rights began gathering testimonies from people all across Rwanda. It published twelve hundred pages of eyewitness testimony, titled Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, helping to bring many of the genocide’s perpetrators to court. African Right interviewed many survivors in Mugonero, where Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana was based, and presented damning evidence against him. African Rights strongly condemned the priests and pastors—including Adventists—who professed to be Christians, yet took part in the killings.

Now, as part of its Tribute to Courage series, African Rights is using the same techniques used to gather evidence against genocide perpetrators—but this time to honor those who stood up for the lives of others in the face of great personal danger.

The director of African Rights, Rakiya Omaar, wrote an introductory letter in the report addressed to the Adventist community. In it, she said Carl Wilkens was

the only American, and one of the few foreigners, known to have remained in Rwanda throughout the genocide of the Tutsi minority. During the one hundred days of killings, he repeatedly risked his life to seek out safe havens for those under threat, to transport them to safety, to ward off threats by standing up to the perpetrators and to obtain and deliver much-needed water, food and money to hundreds of people in hiding.

The introduction to the African Rights tribute reads:

In the face of genocide, it is easy to focus on why it occurred, how it unfolded, who was responsible for it and how it was allowed to take place. But it is also important and necessary to understand how and why certain individuals rejected the call to violence and indifference, and by doing so, upheld the values which define our common humanity. Their examples arm us with new insights in the fight against genocide and crimes against humanity in the future.

African Rights says that it had no trouble gathering information for the tribute—everyone who knew Wilkens in Rwanda wanted to talk about him. The people wanted to honor him, though they said they could never repay him for saving their lives.

Emmanuel Niyidorera said that if "everyone could have done as Carl did," many of his relatives, friends and colleagues would be alive today. "If he hadn’t taken us, we would have perished, as so many others did," Niyidorera says. "The day that I was evacuated, the other Tutsis in my area were killed and thrown into mass graves. I would probably have been among them if it weren’t for Carl. If all missionaries had been as firm, and had brought a strong message to stop the killings, I think they could have changed things."

This sentiment was echoed in the report by Amiel Gahima:

Carl Wilkens should be recognized nationally as a hero. I’ve been saying this for more than ten years now. He put his life on the line, committed his own family to God’s care, and left the comfort of his home to serve the people of Rwanda at the risk of his own life. He saved so many people, and in so many ways, that the exact number will never be known.

For the past two years, Wilkens has traveled around the United States, sharing his story at schools and universities, raising awareness about the genocide, and fundraising for projects in Rwanda. Now Wilkens works as chaplain at Milo Adventist Academy, in Days Creek, Oregon.

Although no one can ever thank him enough for his brave work in Rwanda, the African Rights tribute brings the story of Wilkens’s efforts to a wider audience and provides some acknowledgement for his acts of courage.

The African Rights report concludes: "Like the other men and women who took a stand against the genocide, Carl Wilkens’ contribution is a powerful testament to the fact that a single individual can, even under the most daunting circumstances, make a critical difference in the lives of others."

All information in this story is taken from the African Rights report, "A True Humanitarian: A Tribute to Carl Wilkens," published December 2006.

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