Editor,

I wish to respond to Pan Butamire’s article, "Twenty years after 1994, Rwanda is in a good place”, published in The New Times on February 7.

What some of our haters don’t seem to realise is that Rwandans have truly passed through the shadow of the valley of death and come out the other way. When you have had a near-death experience, the likes of which few societies have ever encountered, you tend to be inoculated against fear.

We fight to ensure we have peace and security, because we know more than most what it means not to have them. We crave for unity and social cohesion amongst the children of this land because we have experienced the consequences of their absence. We do not hate those who have been misled into wanting to return us to the hell we have sworn never to revisit.

For our brethren who continue to roam aimlessly in the jungles of the DR Congo, with bloodlust in their hearts, we say: We shall receive you home like the proverbial prodigal son if you can put down your hatred and lay down your arms.

What we shall never allow anyone to do is to return us to the situation in which you left this country, or the one before that, in which a large number of us Rwandans had no right in the land of our ancestors.

Apart from that, there is enough for all of us, and a role for each of us to build our nation and society so that we all have a stake in our common future.

Mwene Kalinda, Rwanda