An act of evil that recalled the atrocities of the SS

Seldom can a New Year have dawned so bleakly as 2008 and rarely can a news story have spoken of evil so starkly as the New Year’s Day report from Kenya of children being deliberately burnt alive inside a church. The calculated, heartless wickedness of the act recalls one of the most notorious atrocities of the second world war, when the SS herded the women and children of Oradour in France into the village church and then set the building alight. And there are more recent echoes from another genocide. The principle that the Church should provide a sanctuary from violence and hatred was breached by the actions of individuals during the Rwandan horrors of 1994. The revelation that certain nuns and priests had acted as handmaidens to the Hutu campaign of slaughter underlined just how deep into depravity Rwanda sank 13 years ago.

The images from Kenya we have seen this week, the charred remains of the Church in Eldoret, the raised machetes of enraged youths, the grief of the inconsolable, the thousands uprooted from their homes, recall not just Rwanda but other African tragedies — from the collapse of the once stable Ivory Coast into communal bloodletting and the descent of Kenya’s neighbours, such as Sudan and Somalia, into civil war.