Government’s perspectives on forgiveness through gacaca

Before 2008, all government discussions of forgiveness emanated from public pronouncements by state officials, and even these were dispar­ate, undoubtedly reflecting the government’s fear of being perceived as forcing forgiveness on traumatised survivors.

Given the scarcity of official comment on forgiveness at gacaca, it is difficult to interpret how the government understands it. The form of for­giveness represented in the Gacaca Law appears to be official forgiveness or forgiveness between the individual suspect and the state. Potentially different interpretations emerge from pronouncements by state officials. At the National Summit on Unity and Reconciliation in 2000, then-Ex­ecutive Secretary of the NURC, Aloysea Inyumba, outlined a long list of steps which �Rwandans should go through in order to achieve unity and reconciliation'.^[630]Although she did not claim that this pertained specific­ally to gacaca, she argued that a vital step towards unity and reconcili­ation was to �sensitise and encourage those who have committed crimes to tell the truth and openly ask for forgiveness [from] those they com­mitted them against', adding, �those who were offended should also be courageous enough to forgive their offenders'.^[631] Rutinburana argues that encouraging genocide suspects to �tell the truth and to ask for forgiveness' is a key component of the NURC's gacaca sensitisation programme.^[632] The Rwandan government website records two occasions, immediately before and after the inauguration of the gacaca jurisdictions in 2002, in which President Kagame connects gacaca with the pursuit of forgiveness.

From such views, there is little sense of exactly how the govern­ment defines forgiveness, either generally speaking or in the context of gacaca, nor the factors that should motivate forgiveness after the geno­cide. Regarding the form that forgiveness should take through gacaca, the government argues that forgiveness is essentially an interpersonal process between individual perpetrators and survivors whom Kagame and Inyumba argue will have to show courage in pursuing forgiveness. Kagame's close linkage of reconciliation, rebuilding society and forgive­ness, however, suggests an element of individual-group forgiveness in which individual suspects seek forgiveness from their communities. It is not clear exactly what the government believes forgiveness would entail, for example whether survivors or the community should forgo direct, personal retribution or feelings of resentment towards perpetrators, or something greater such as forgetting the crimes committed.

Regarding the modalities of forgiveness, Inyumba and Rutinburana interpret it as a two-way process in which, they argue, perpetrators must be willing to confess their crimes and to ask for forgiveness, and in response survivors must be ready to grant forgiveness to perpetrators. These comments suggest that perpetrators should initiate any moves towards forgiveness by first apologising, and asking for forgiveness, for their crimes. Liberata, a detainee in the ingando in Butare, recorded in her notes from the government's lessons in the camp that �the com­munity will forgive us if we tell them the truth.'^[635] The government rec­ognises, though, that many survivors will need to receive more than perpetrators' confessions and apologies before they are ready to forgive.

In terms of motivations, the state does not appear to view forgiveness as survivors' duty. Inyumba and Kagame both argue instead that those who grant forgiveness will need to be �courageous'. As Kagame argues, gacaca should simply �encourage' forgiveness, suggesting that it is an arduous process that may begin at gacaca but is likely to involve ongoing discussions between perpetrators and survivors long afterwards.

Finally, government sources do not indicate clearly the outcomes they expect from forgiveness through gacaca. Kagame's linkage of �rebuilding society', �reconciling people' and �encouraging forgiveness' implies that he interprets forgiveness in a profound sense as contributing to the sorts of restorative processes examined in relation to the themes of justice and reconciliation in other chapters. In this sense, forgiveness of individuals will contribute to rebuilding relationships in the wider community. As increasing numbers of survivors grant forgiveness to perpetrators, they may feel increasingly ready to engage in wider reconciliatory processes, in the same way that personal healing contributes to reconciliation from the level of the individual upward.