Rwanda's genocide trials to end

[Saigon]

The end of an error...but an example of visionary and usual (albeit sometimes faulted) justice all the same.

Rwanda's community courts, known as gacaca, have finished their work, after 10 years of trying those accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide.

The courts were set up to speed up the prosecution of hundreds of thousands of genocide suspects awaiting trial.

Human rights group say the gacaca fell well short of international legal standards.

About 65% of the close to two million people tried have been found guilty, according to latest government figures.

BBC News - Rwanda 'gacaca' genocide courts finish work

Let's hope the healing process for this magical country can no take the next step, towards forgiveness and working together.

 

[Artevelde]

The end of an error...but an example of visionary and usual (albeit sometimes faulted) justice all the same.

Rwanda's community courts, known as gacaca, have finished their work, after 10 years of trying those accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide.

The courts were set up to speed up the prosecution of hundreds of thousands of genocide suspects awaiting trial.

Human rights group say the gacaca fell well short of international legal standards.

About 65% of the close to two million people tried have been found guilty, according to latest government figures.

BBC News - Rwanda 'gacaca' genocide courts finish work

Let's hope the healing process for this magical country can no take the next step, towards forgiveness and working together.

That is completely impossible under the current regime which is highly repressive and has been using the genocide from day one as an excuse to perpetuate its dictatorial rule.

 

[waltky]

20 years after the Rwandan genocide...

Rwanda 20 years on: the tragic testimony of the children of rape
7 Jun 2014: Two decades after the 1994 genocide, a television journalist returns to hear the extraordinary testimony of women who were raped during the violence – and of the children born as a result

When Josiane Nizomfura was 12, she wanted to get a glimpse of her father, so she sneaked out of school and went to the public trial where her mother was testifying against him for rape. Levine Mukasakufu had never told Josiane the circumstances of her birth. "I couldn't face it, so she found out from the neighbours," she said. Levine – a tiny, delicate woman like a brightly coloured bird in her traditional wrap skirt – is one of the half a million women raped during Rwanda's 1994 genocide, when the country's ethnic Hutus, under orders from their leaders, tried to wipe out the minority Tutsis.

A Hutu Interahamwe militiaman in central Rwanda in June 1994

Then aged 21, Levine and other young women in Kibilizi, 80 miles south of the capital, Kigali, were forced to assemble on the village playing field. The Interahamwe, the Hutu militia that spearheaded the massacres of Tutsis, picked those they wanted, forcing them into the surrounding banana and millet patches to be gang-raped. "Rape was a reward the leaders gave those who killed," said Levine. "This is why I didn't love my daughter – her father was the one who killed my family. I wanted to kill her, too." When Levine discovered that her daughter had watched her testify, she beat her all night long. It was one of many assaults. After failing to abort the baby, she frequently lashed out at Josiane when she was a child. "If she misbehaved at all I would say, 'she's like her father, she's an Interahamwe'. I would chase her away saying, 'this is a Tutsi house, and you don't belong here'," she said.

Olivier Utabazi, 19, and his mother, Epiphane Mukamakombe, 44, outside their home in Kibilizi. The son of rape, he is her only close surviving relative, after her family were killed in the genocide.

This week's Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, hosted by the British foreign secretary, William Hague, and actress Angelina Jolie, aims to put victims such as Levine and Josiane at the centre of war crimes investigations. Governments are expected to sign a new protocol for documenting wartime sexual assaults and adopt programmes to educate their soldiers that rape is a war crime rather than an inevitable consequence of conflict. Although rape occurs in all wars, it was especially widespread in Rwanda, and the consequences are felt to this day. The International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda concluded that rape was an integral part of genocide. "Sexual violence was a step in the process of destruction of the Tutsi group … destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life itself," said the verdict on the Hutu leaders who organised the genocide in the Butare region, which includes Kibilizi.

Adeline Uwasi was born after her mother was repeatedly raped. Withdrawn and nervous, she is now her mother’s sole carer.

The UN initially estimated that 5,000 children were born of rape in the 1994 genocide, but the Survivors' Fund – a British charity working in Rwanda – believes the number might be nearer 20,000. Unlike genocide orphans, children of rape do not qualify for government assistance and many live in poverty. Aid programmes have tended to concentrate on the plight of the raped women, paying little attention to the children, who have grown up feeling rejected by their mothers and stigmatised by the wider community. In Rwanda, ethnicity comes through the father's line, so Tutsi survivors call the children Interahamwe and "son of a snake", while the relatives of the Hutu rapists often tell the children that their mothers are wicked for testifying against their fathers and putting them in jail.

MORE

 

[waltky]

Two former Rwandan mayors sentenced to life in prison for 1994 genocide...

French court sentences Rwandan mayors to life in prison for 1994 genocide
July 7, 2016 -- Two former Rwandan mayors received life imprisonment sentences Thursday for their roles in a 1994 genocide in which they were found to be responsible for the deaths of 2,000 people.

Tito Barahira, 65, and Octavien Ngenzi, 58, each a former mayor of Kabarondo, Rwanda, heard their sentences announced in Paris' Cour D'Assises. The ruling followed an eight-week trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Each denied the charges. The men were accused of organizing a massacre, by Hutu tribe extremists, of members of the Tutsi tribe, who sought refuge in a Kabarondo church. Survivors of the assault testified at the trial, with stories of killings by machetes and guns. More than 800,000 people died in Rwanda during the genocide.

The French activist group Collectif des Parties Civiles, a non-governmental organization also identified as CPCR, pushed for the trial. Johnston Busingye, Rwandan Justice Minister, praised the decision but told the Rwandan newspaper New Times, "The context makes us choose a cautious welcome. "It's 22 years after the genocide, 39 indictments seated in France, 15 extradition applications systematically denied on a strange brand of legal reasoning, 28 cases are pending before French courts, all initiated by the CPCR, not French prosecution. The rate of three trials in 22 years seems to be a French-specific phenomenon. France shelters probably the highest concentration, per capita, of genocidaires than any other country in Europe and the French state is itself yet to come to terms with the sad reality of its role in the genocide."

France supported Rwanda's Hutu-led government against the primarily Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front during insurrections beginning in 1990. After the fighting, French troops were deployed to establish a buffer zone, which allowed many Hutus who participated in the 100-day genocide to escape to Zaire; some eventually settled in France.

French court sentences Rwandan mayors to life in prison for 1994 genocide