Rwanda genocide suspects urged to confess
Tuesday, February 22, 2005 Posted: 10:20 AM EST (1520 GMT)
MIYOVE, Rwanda (Reuters) -- Jean-Marie Vianney Ruzindana stared at the ground in the prison yard and whispered "I am a killer."
"I used a machete to cut a man and his wife into pieces. They were my neighbors in the village," he said.
Dressed
in his bright pink prison uniform, 35-year-old Ruzindana admitted his
role in Rwanda's 1994 genocide at a pretrial hearing of a traditional
"gacaca" village court.
"I confess and apologize for the crime I
have committed," said Ruzidana. He head was shaven and he was wearing
huge spectacles that covered almost his entire face.
More than a
decade after the massacres, the backlog of suspects awaiting trial in
conventional courts remains enormous, with more than 80,000 people on
remand in prison.
Rwanda's solution has been gacaca, a revamped
version of a traditional form of justice which it launched as an
experiment in 2002 to speed up trials.
Under gacaca law, a confession of guilt and a plea for forgiveness is sufficient for a lighter sentence.
In
January Rwanda launched the biggest phase of gacaca to try an estimated
1 million people -- an eighth of the population -- suspected of helping
to murder 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus with machetes and
spiked clubs.
The majority are still at liberty, often living alongside neighbors whose relatives they are suspected of killing.
Over
the past two years, thousands of suspects have been questioned by 751
village courts, sitting as investigative panels, to see if there was a
case to answer.
Those sessions are now complete and trials resulting from the investigations are slated to begin in early March.
On January 15, this judicial system was extended to include another 8,262 courts.
Time running out
"This
is the last chance we are giving you," Edda Mukabagwiza, Rwanda's
minister for justice, told prisoners packed in Miyove jail.
"No
one wants you to spend all your lives in prison," she said. "We want
you to confess and apologize and you can go back to your families."
Until
last year, when up to 60,000 prisoners broke ranks and admitted their
roles in the genocide, few people had accepted responsibility for their
part in it.
However, time is running out for the hundreds of
thousands of other suspects who have yet to make a plea, with
Mukabagwiza setting a March deadline for them to either confess or
explain why they have no case to answer.
Suspects who do not confess do not qualify for gacaca's comparatively rapid justice and lighter sentencing.
Once
apprehended and charged, such suspects would have to await trial in
conventional courts which take many years to process cases and which
can impose capital punishment.
Officials note that a lack of
confessions would impede the work of the 8,262 investigative panels
starting work in March, since the preparation of many cases would rely
on the cooperation of suspects willing to confess to killings.
"You
have to come up, be brave and speak the truth -- there are also
consequences for those who do not speak the truth," Mukabagwiza told
the inmates.
Human rights groups have expressed concern about the ability of gacaca or "grass" courts to try suspects.
"Gacaca
may become a vehicle for summary and arbitrary justice that fails
defendants and genocide survivors alike," said Amnesty International.
Rwandan
officials admit that gacaca is flawed but they say there is no
alternative and the international donor community, which is funding
gacaca, seems to agree.
Gacaca or grass courts were traditionally
used by village communities who would gather on a patch of land to
resolve conflicts between two families, employing elders as judges.
When
it comes to genocide, gacaca law sets out punitive measures for
citizens who have information about the killings but refuse to reveal
it.
Many inmates at Miyove prison say they were incited to murder Tutsis, who make up about 15 percent of the population.
"We were driven into the killings by bad leaders," said Jean Habimana, who has confessed to hacking to death three Tutsis.
Habimana
has spent 10 years in jail, and Ruzindana seven years. They are now
accustomed to the high-walled brick prison, fortified by an equally
high barbed wire fence.
More than 1,180 prisoners are crammed
inside the walls of Miyove prison; 522 are accused of genocide-related
crimes and about half of them have confessed.
What is striking
about some confessions like Habimana's is that the suspects express
neither shame nor contrition -- a fact that angers many survivors.
Asked
whether he felt any remorse, Habimana wrinkled his brow. "I know if it
happened again I would never take part," he said simply.
Copyright 2005
Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
