INITIAL OBSERVATIONS FROM DETAINEE NARRATIVES

These narratives of Laurent, Cypriet and Alphonse provide important insights into the personal issues that suspects face along the gacaca journey and some of the wider questions facing detainees and their communities generally.

In the ingando, Laurent, Cypriet and Alphonse expressed different expectations of the reception they would experience upon returning to their home communities. Cypriet and Alphonse expected a warm wel­come, while Laurent was uncertain of the future, due largely to the fact that so many of his friends and family were killed during the genocide. Their expectations of community reactions heavily influenced the level of involvement they had with their neighbours, and particularly with survivors, after their return. Alphonse claimed to have talked and drunk with many survivors, while Laurent said that he had spoken to very few survivors. All three detainees, however, did not return to live in their old homes, moving instead to houses on the outskirts of their communities, to avoid confronting survivors every day. In my observations of com­munities to which provisionally released suspects returned, the move­ment of suspects and their families out of the sight of the community was extremely common.^[303] Over time, Laurent and Cypriet in particular experienced difficult relations with genocide survivors, some of whom in turn expressed fear or disquiet at the return of genocide suspects to the community.

The three detainees’ expectations of their community’s reception shaped their initial views on the prospects for reconciliation. Cypriet and Alphonse expected warm welcomes and therefore believed that it would be easy for perpetrators and survivors to live together again. Alphonse argued that local leaders would encourage peaceful cohabitation. Laurent, however, appeared to have the initial views of detainees such as Cypriet and Alphonse in mind when he argued, �We need reconcili­ation without sentimentality. Reconciliation doesn’t come from the sky.’ Laurent was uncertain of the reception he would gain in his community and was therefore cautious about wider prospects of achieving reconcili­ation. There is a crucial contradiction in Cypriet’s and Alphonse’s claims that cohabitation can be easily facilitated after the genocide, given that, immediately after their release from the camps, they moved their house­holds away from survivors. One irony of these narratives is that Laurent, who of the three detainees expressed the most hard-headed, pragmatic view of what reconciliation requires, did not expect - and perhaps did not want - to experience reconciliation, preferring life in prison where he felt among friends and surrogate family. Over time, however, Cypriet and Alphonse came to similar conclusions as Laurent regarding the dif­ficulties of reconciliation, particularly after they had experienced fraught contact with genocide survivors.

Laurent, Cypriet and Alphonse all initially avoided attending gacaca and awaited summonses to hearings. They each said that gacaca was slow to begin in their communities. Each of them was anxious to have his case heard quickly but was resigned to a lengthy wait. The three detainees expressed generally positive views of gacaca, before and after their release from ingando. However, they expected very different out­comes from gacaca. Both Cypriet and Alphonse argued that gacaca would exonerate them: Alphonse because he claimed to have been forced to commit murder during the genocide and Cypriet because he claimed that he was only in a group of killers and that he himself was innocent.

Given how bleakly he viewed his personal circumstances in the wider society, Laurent suggested that it would be beneficial to return to jail, where he had left his friends and where he would receive food, cloth­ing and shelter from the government. For reasons of poverty, Cypriet also viewed the future with uncertainty and a degree of trepidation. Of the three detainees, only Alphonse expressed any sustained optimism about life outside of prison. Alphonse's optimism stemmed largely from his hope that his business background would bring him financial pros­perity, and from his belief that his community would exonerate him at gacaca and allow him to return to something resembling his life before the genocide. By 2009, Cypriet's perspective on the future had remained generally the same, while Alphonse remained optimistic, particularly given his impending marriage and his family's improved material cir­cumstances. I explore many aspects of these detainees' experiences - especially Alphonse's views on the lack of justice for RPF crimes - in later chapters.