| Rwanda to release 8,000 more genocide prisoners |
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| World Affairs Talk | |
| Tuesday, 08 May 2007 | |
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Rwanda’s chief prosecutor, Martin Ngoga, confirmed the new releases and said the process is expected to start in mid February. They include 8,000 people linked to the 1994 massacres and 1,000 others convicted of other crimes. “This group will exclude key masterminds of the genocide,” Ngoga added. Between April and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the space of 100 days. Most of the dead were Tutsis and most of those who perpetrated the violence were Hutus. In 2001, the government began implementing a participatory justice system, known as Gacaca, in order to address the enormous backlog of cases. Meanwhile, the UN set up the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, currently based in Arusha, Tanzania. The UN Tribunal has jurisdiction over high level members of the government and armed forces, while Rwanda is responsible for prosecuting lower level leaders and local people. Tensions have arisen between Rwanda and the UN over the use of the death penalty. But although the massacres are over, the legacy of the genocide continues, and the search for justice has been a long and arduous one. About 500 people have been sentenced to death, and another 100,000 are still in prison. Some 800,000 members of the minority Tutsi ethnic group and moderate Hutus were butchered in 100 days of killings blamed on Hutu hardliners beginning in April 1994. Human Rights Watch warned this week that Rwanda faces a new round of ethnic violence if it fails to prosecute the killers of witnesses and survivors of the genocide. It said dozens of survivors and others involved in the traditional gacaca court process, where many genocide cases are being heard, have been killed in recent years. The two ethnic groups are actually very similar, they speak the same language, inhabit the same areas and follow the same traditions. But when the Belgian colonists arrived in 1916, they saw the two groups as distinct entities, and even produced identity cards classifying people according to their ethnicity. The Rwandan Genocide stands out as significant, not only because of the sheer number of people massacred in such a short period of time, but also because of United Nations's (UN) inadequate response. Rwanda's genocide began hours after a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana was mysteriously shot down as it approached the capital, Kigali, on April 6, 1994. The slaughter of 500 000 people ended after rebels, led by Kagame, ousted the extremist Hutu government that orchestrated the killings. The genocide ended when a Tutsi-dominated expatriate rebel movement known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by Paul Kagame, overthrew the Hutu government and seized power. The genocide left both physical and emotional scars on its survivors. Since 2003, Rwanda has released between 50,000 and 60,000 prisoners, of whom about 80 percent were accused of involvement in the genocide. Hundreds have been re-arrested, however, after committing other crimes, including killing genocide survivors in a bid to destroy evidence. The inmates to be freed in February will undergo a month-long civic “sensitisation” programme before being allowed to go to their homes, Ngoga said. Theodore Simburudali, the president of Ibuka, an umbrella organisation that cluster together genocide survivors, feared the plan would lead to more deaths. “Many of these people that are to be released have lied about their role in the genocide for the sake of being pardoned. They end up coming and killing more survivors,” he fears. Simburudali accused President Paul Kagame’s government of neglecting the welfare of survivors, while spending huge resources on releases. “We have been requesting reparations all these past years but nothing has come forth,” he said. Share & Bookmark             |
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