37.4.4: Aftermath and Reconciliation in Rwanda

Domestic Situation

The infrastructure and economy of Rwanda suffered greatly during the genocide. Many buildings were uninhabitable, and the former regime had taken all currency and movable assets when they fled the country. Human resources were also severely depleted, with over 40% of the population having been killed or fled. Many of the remainder were traumatized: most had lost relatives, witnessed killings, or participated in the genocide. The long-term effects of war rape in Rwanda for the victims include social isolation, sexually transmitted diseases, and unwanted pregnancies and babies, with some women resorting to self-induced abortions. The army, led by Paul Kagame, maintained law and order while the government began the work of rebuilding the country’s structures.

Rwanda’s demography over time: Rowanda’s population (1961-2003). Y-axis : Number of inhabitants in thousands.

Non-governmental organizations began to move back into the country, but the international community did not provide significant assistance to the new regime, and most international aid was routed to the refugee camps formed in Zaire following the exodus of Hutu from Rwanda. Kagame strove to portray the government as inclusive and not Tutsi-dominated. He directed the removal of ethnicity from citizens’ national identity cards, and the government began a policy of downplaying the distinctions among Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa.

During the genocide and in the months following the RPF victory, RPF soldiers killed many people they accused of participating in or supporting the genocide. Many of these soldiers were recent Tutsi recruits from within Rwanda who had lost family or friends and sought revenge. The scale, scope, and source of ultimate responsibility of these reprisal killings is disputed, although some non-governmental organizations such as Human Rights Watch alleged that Kagame and the RPF elite either tolerated or organized the killings. In an interview with journalist Stephen Kinzer, Kagame acknowledged that killings had occurred, but stated that they were carried out by rogue soldiers and had been impossible to control.

July 4, 1994, is marked as Liberation Day in Rwanda and commemorated as a public holiday. The RPF has been the dominant political party in the country since 1994 and maintained control of the presidency and the Parliament in national elections, with the party’s vote share consistently exceeding 70%. The RPF is seen as a Tutsi-dominated party but receives support from across ethnic sub-groups. It is credited with ensuring continued peace, stability, and economic growth; however, some human rights organizations, such as Freedom House and Amnesty International, claim that the government suppresses the freedoms of opposition groups.

Justice System

The systematic destruction of the judicial system during the genocide and civil war was a major problem for the prospects of reconciliation in Rwanda. After the genocide, over one million people were potentially culpable for their roles in the genocide, amounting to nearly one-fifth of the population remaining after the summer of 1994. The RPF pursued a policy of mass arrests for the genocide, jailing over 100,000 in the two years after the genocide. The pace of arrests overwhelmed the physical capacity of the Rwandan prison system, leading to what Amnesty International deemed “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment”. The country’s 19 prisons were designed to hold about 18,000 inmates, but at their peak in 1998, there were 100,000 people in detention facilities across the country.

Government institutions, including judicial courts, were destroyed, and many judges, prosecutors, and employees were murdered. By 1997, Rwanda only had 50 lawyers in its judicial system. These barriers caused trials of those arrested for genocide-related crimes to proceed very slowly. Of the 130,000 suspects held in Rwandan prisons after the genocide, 3,343 cases were handled between 1996 and the end of 2000. Of those defendants, 20% received death sentences, 32% received sentencing of life in prison, and 20% were acquitted. It was calculated that it would take over 200 years to conduct the trials of the suspects in prison—not including individuals who remained at large.

It was not until 1996 that Rwandan courts finally began trials for genocide cases with the enactment of Organic Law N° 08/96 of 30 on August 30, 1996. This law established the regular domestic courts as the core mechanism for responding to genocide until it was amended in 2001 to include the Gacaca Courts. The Organic Law established four categories for those involved in the genocide, specifying the limits of punishment for members of each category. The first category was reserved for those who were “planners, organizers, instigators, supervisors and leaders” of the genocide or who used positions of state authority to promote the genocide. This category also applied to murderers who distinguished themselves on the basis of their zeal or cruelty or who engaged in sexual torture. Members of this first category were eligible for the death sentence.

While Rwanda had the death penalty prior to the 1996 Organic Law, no executions had taken place since 1982. However, following the enactment of the 1996 Organic Law, 22 individuals were executed by firing squad in public executions in April 1997. After this, Rwanda conducted no further executions, though it did continue to issue death sentences until 2003. On July 25, 2007, the Organic Law Relating to the Abolition of the Death Penalty came into law, abolishing the death penalty and converting all existing death penalty sentences to life in prison under solitary confinement.

Gacaca Courts

In response to the overwhelming number of potentially culpable individuals and the slow pace of the traditional judicial system, the government of Rwanda passed Organic Law N° 40/2000 in 2001. The new law established Gacaca Courts at all administrative levels of Rwanda and in Kigali. It was mainly created to lessen the burden on normal courts and escalate the administration of justice for those already in prison. The least severe cases, according to the terms of Organic Law N° 08/96 of 30, would be handled by the Gacaca Courts. With this law, the government began implementing a participatory justice system, known as Gacaca, to address the enormous backlog of cases.

The Gacaca court system traditionally dealt with conflicts within communities, but was adapted to deal with genocide crimes. The following are the objectives of the Gacaca Courts:

• Identifying the truth about what happened during the genocide
• Speeding up genocide trials,
• Fighting against a culture of impunity
• Contributing to the national unity and reconciliation process
• Demonstrating the capacity of the Rwandan people to resolve their own problems.

Throughout the years, the Gacaca court system went through a series of modifications. It is estimated that it has tried over one million cases to date. Meanwhile, the UN established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Arusha, Tanzania. The UN Tribunal had jurisdiction over high-level members of the government and armed forces, while the government of Rwanda was responsible for prosecuting lower-level leaders and local people.

Closing of the Courts

On June 18, 2012, the Gacaca court system was officially closed after facing criticism over favoring members and associated parties to the RPF-dominated government. Concern persisted that the judges who presided over the genocide trials were not trained adequately for serious legal questions or complex proceedings. Further, many judges resigned after facing accusations of personal participation in the genocide. There was a lack of defense counsel and protections for the accused, who were denied the right to appeal to ordinary courts. Most trials were open to the public, but there were issues relating to witness intimidation.

Since the ICTR was established as an ad hoc international jurisdiction, the tribunal was officially closed on December 31, 2015. Initially, the UN Security Council established the ICTR in 1994 with a mandate of four years without a fixed deadline. As the years passed, however, it became apparent that the ICTR would exist long past its original mandate.

Refugees, Insurgency, and the Congo Wars

Following the RPF victory, approximately two million Hutu fled to refugee camps in neighboring countries, particularly Zaire, fearing RPF reprisals for the Rwandan Genocide. Refugee camps were crowded and squalid, and thousands of refugees died in disease epidemics, including cholera and dysentery. The camps were set up by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but were effectively controlled by the army and government of the former Hutu regime, including many leaders of the genocide, who began rearming in a bid to return to power in Rwanda. By late 1996, Hutu militants from the camps were launching regular cross-border incursions, and the RPF-led Rwandan government launched a counteroffensive. Rwanda provided troops and military training to the Banyamulenge, a Tutsi group in the Zairian South Kivu province, helping them to defeat Zairian security forces. Rwandan forces, the Banyamulenge, and other Zairian Tutsi then attacked the refugee camps, targeting Hutu militia. These attacks caused hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee, many returning to Rwanda despite the presence of the RPF, while others ventured further west into Zaire.

Rwandan refugee camp in east Zaire: Refugee camp for Rwandans in Kimbumba, eastern Zaire (current Democratic Republic of the Congo), following the Rwandan genocide.

The defeated forces of the former regime continued a cross-border insurgency campaign, supported initially by the predominantly Hutu population of Rwanda’s northwestern provinces. By 1999, however, a program of propaganda and Hutu integration into the Rwandan national army succeeded in bringing the Hutu to the side of the government, and the insurgency was defeated.

In addition to dismantling the refugee camps, Kagame began planning a war to remove long-time dictator of Zaire, President Mobutu Sese Seko, from power. Mobutu supported the genocidaires based in the camps and was accused of allowing attacks on Tutsi people within Zaire. The rebels quickly took control of North and South Kivu provinces and then advanced west, gaining territory from the poorly organized and demotivated Zairian army with little fighting, and controlling the whole country by May 1997. Mobutu fled into exile and the country was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Rwanda fell out with the new Congolese regime in 1998 and Kagame supported a fresh rebellion, leading to the Second Congo War. This war lasted until 2003 and caused millions of deaths and massive damage. A 2010 UN report accused the Rwandan army of committing widespread human rights violations and crimes against humanity in the DRC during the two Congo wars, but the charges were denied by the Rwandan government.

Attributions

• Aftermath and Reconciliation in Rwanda
  • “Rwandan genocide: Aftermath.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide#Aftermath. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Rwanda.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Gacaca court.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacaca_court. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Tribunal_for_Rwanda. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Rwanda-demography.png.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rwanda-demography.png. Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0.
  • “Rwandan_refugee_camp_in_east_Zaire.jpg.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rwandan_refugee_camp_in_east_Zaire.jpg. Wikimedia Commons Public domain.