In your own words, describe the appropriate justice for the accused genocide suspect in the Rwanda atrocity.
Rwanda’s genocide was unique in its brutality and punctilious planning, where Hutu extremists aimed at the Tutsi community. In April 1994, a plane crash killed the Rwandan and Burundian presidents in Kigali. Ethnic killings erupted in Rwanda due to the plane crash. Planned by Hutu politicians and extremist groups, the genocide killed around five hundred thousand people while destroying Tutsi in months. Hutu people and everyone who failed to cooperate and oppose the genocide were also killed (Banks & Baker, 2015). Rwandan security forces who worked with the ruling party and the Hutu civilians cooperated and hunted down people of Tutsi origin. The Rwandan genocide emerged as one of the serious ethnic violence globally.
The people who planned and organized the genocide are unknown, but the extremist group against the peace process uncovered opposition and government leaders trying to overturn their plans. Many commentators agree that the genocide did not just happen due to the president’s killing but was planned. The U.S Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) revealed that the army participated in the genocide, but it was not spontaneous (Banks & Baker, 2015). The organizers of the genocide assumed government control, and some officers under the killed president staged a military crisis and took control (Banks & Baker, 2015). Hutu were appointed to senior government positions at the village level so that they could facilitate the killing of Tutsi. The militia were highly relied on by police, army and local leaders to conduct massacres. Many strategies were put in place to ensure all the Tutsi were eliminated. The killing involved a lot of brutality, such as using machetes to chop off limbs and torture. Every society contributed to the Rwandan genocide, including the leaders, police and political parties. The media and civil society also participated in the genocide as the media incited violence. Laws were passed to establish Gacaca courts, and all cases were forwarded to Gacaca courts by 2008 (Banks & Baker, 2015). The main reason for legislation to initiate gacaca was it would be perceived as an appropriate means for handling the issue of public killing by the public.
I believe reaching justice is difficult when we consider the brutality of the genocide. The accused justice needed local courts to establish the main agenda behind such killing so that appropriate measures could be arrived at to restore the nation’s stability. The number of accused individuals was many, and imprisoning all of them was difficult. The gacaca courts needed to establish behaviour change measures while arranging reconciliation sessions between the two ethnic communities (Banks & Baker, 2015). Reconciliation would only be the appropriate solution since when the suspects were punished did not mean the end of the genocide.
Why did Rwanda eventually decide to use local “gacaca” courts instead of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to process the 135000 suspects?
In Rwanda, dispute settlement took place in public gatherings involving male elders delivering judgment on inheritance and land issues. Decisions in Gacaca used to be consensual, and people were compensated through payment. The Rwandan government understood that they could not handle the genocide cases as they involved a large number of people. Around mid-1998, the people in custody while awaiting trial were above one hundred and thirty-five thousand. The prison capacity was around 15000, and this made correlational facilities difficulty to hold such a large number. The Rwandan government had not yet established a justice system before the genocide occurred, and the judicial system had many problems such as under staffing lack of skills and resources (Banks & Baker, 2015). The justice system was incapacitated, and there was an urgent need for a solution to prosecute people who were already dying in prison due to poor hygiene and health. The government facilitated meetings to find solutions on how justice would be delivered, and it was decided that a formal justice system would not be appropriate, but they utilised the Gacaca (Banks & Baker, 2015). Gacaca was proposed and modelled in a modern manner to enable the handling of genocide crimes. Gacaca was viewed as a way of restoring stability, allowing the truth to be known, and allowing reconciliation to allow people back to their society who have been accused. Gacaca courts were viewed to allow judges of the genocide to address matters of their community members while allowing the end of the genocide.
How well did the local system work?
The local system tried to provide solutions between the warring ethnic groups by leading reconciliations to restore peace and stability. The establishment of categories of genocide perpetrators was one measure that the local system did well as it allowed easy preparation of the cases and trial process. Allowing different categories of cases to be handled differently allowed justice to be arrived at easily as perpetrators would receive balanced justice. The local system, despite their challenges, was able to deliver judgment to genocide perpetrators in a manner that aimed to restore stability within the country.
References
Banks, C., & Baker, J. (2015). Comparative, international, and global justice: Perspectives from criminology and criminal justice. Sage Publications.
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