POST-GENOCIDE LEGAL, MILITARY AND POLITICAL CONTEXT
In the sixteen years since the genocide, the Rwandan legal, military and political landscape has witnessed severe upheaval that greatly influÂences gacaca’s operation and justice and reconciliation processes more generally.
In particular, the political transformation involving the RPF’s gaining control of the Rwandan government after its victory over the genocidal forces in 1994, before embarking on a period of transition leading to presidential and parliamentary elections in 2003, and beyond, has created a volatile environment that has affected all phases of gacaca. It is necessary here to briefly explore the wider social, legal and political context in which gacaca operates, focusing on three main themes: legal developments involving the government’s attempts to capture, detain and prosecute genocide suspects and the evolution of the national courts and the ICTR; national political developments, especially moves by the RPF to shore up power across the country; and violence and social and political instability in the Great Lakes region, in which Rwanda has been a key participant, particularly resulting from military involvement in ex-Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As argued in later chapters, feelings of fear and uncertainty which this social, legal and political environment instils in the population greatly affect popuÂlar involvement in gacaca and justice and reconciliation processes more broadly.After coming to power following the genocide, the RPF faced immense challenges in dealing with genocide suspects. The national judiciary had been almost entirely destroyed: most of Rwanda's judges and lawyers had been killed and the judicial infrastructure was decimated. In the dirÂect aftermath of the genocide, the RPF rounded up tens of thousands of genocide suspects and transported them to prisons around Rwanda.
In late 1994 and early 1995, the RPF executed large numbers of suspects and carried out revenge massacres of Hutu civilians, most notably in the Kibeho camp for internally displaced Hutu, where some observers allege that on 22 April 1995 between 2,000 and 8,000 civilians were killed.[51] An investigative team from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) concluded in late 1994 that in the months dirÂectly following the genocide, the RPF killed â€?thousands of civilians per month'.[52] The atmosphere of violent retribution created by the massacres lingers in the current context, causing many genocide suspects to fear the prospect of a return to their home communities where they will face gacaca and creating unease among the general Hutu population.Between mid-1994 and 1996, two key developments shaped the post-genocide legal landscape. On 8 November 1994, the UN Security Council authorised the establishment of the ICTR to prosecute the primary orchestrators and most serious perpetrators of the genocide. Modelled partly on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the ICTR was intended to help end impunity in Rwanda by prosecuting the leaders of the genocide, while leaving lower- level perpetrators to the Rwandan national courts.[53] The ICTR raised the ire of the RPF when, in December 2000, Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte announced that she had opened investigations into crimes comÂmitted by the RPF during and after the genocide.[54] In 2002, del Ponte complained that since the announcement of investigations into RPF crimes, the Rwandan government had deliberately impeded the progress of the ICTR, for example by banning the travel of tribunal witnesses from Rwanda to hearings in Arusha.[55] Bad blood between the governÂment and the ICTR continued to hamper the Tribunal’s progress, until the appointment of a new Chief Prosecutor, Hassan Bubacar Jallow, in 2003, a move that appears to have improved relations between the two bodies and increased the efficacy of the ICTR.
The inevitably political nature of post-genocide justice in Rwanda continues to shape the runÂning of all the institutions designed to prosecute genocide suspects.In 1996, with the assistance of the UN, foreign governments and NGOs, the Rwandan government began a massive overhaul of the national judiciary, training new judges and lawyers and establishing new courts across the country to begin dealing with the immense backlog of genocide cases. The national courts were initially slow in hearing the cases of genocide suspects. However, over time, the courts became more efficient and were praised, albeit reservedly, by some international moniÂtors for their speed and improved legal standards.[56]
Second, the post-genocide period in Rwanda has been characterised by immense political upheaval. After gaining control of the country in July 1994, the RPF quickly set about centralising and monopolising power in Rwanda. As Filip Reyntjens observes, the RPF â€?introduced a strong executive presidency, imposed the dominance of the RPF in the government, and redrew the composition of parliament’.[57] The rapid growth in RPF power and suppression of dissent led in August 1995 to the resignation of Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu, a Hutu, and four Hutu cabinet ministers, who upon finding refuge overseas detailed abuses of power and violations of human rights committed by the RPF.[58] For the next decade, human rights groups reported the arbitrary arrests and â€?disappearances’ of dissident politicians, journalists and community leaders, including prominent members of the RPF and well-known genoÂcide survivors, such as Bosco Rutagengwa, who founded the survivors’ group Ibuka (the Kinyarwanda word for â€?remember’).[59]
In the midst of acute RPF suppression of dissident parliamentarians in 2000, President Pasteur Bizimungu resigned �for personal reasons’ but, unlike most government leaders who openly opposed the RPF, he remained in the country.
Bizimungu was arrested in 2001 for attempting to create a new political party and was imprisoned until he received a presidential pardon in April 2007.60 The year 2001 marked the beginÂning of a nationwide â€?democratisation process', involving local elections in all communities across Rwanda. Many observers questioned the valÂidity of these elections, citing intimidation by RPF officials and a lack of secrecy in voting procedures.[60] [61]At the end of the post-genocide transitional period in 2003, the govÂernment held a constitutional referendum and prepared the country for the first presidential and parliamentary elections since the genocide. In the lead-up to the elections, the government banned the Mouvement Democratique Republicain (MDR), the largest Hutu opposition party and effectively the only significant Hutu voice in the Rwandan parliaÂment, on the grounds of â€?divisionism' or what the government claimed were attempts to spread â€?genocidal ideology'.[62] The same allegations were levelled against the Ligue Rwandaise pour la Promotion de la Defense des Droits de l'Homme (LIPRODHOR), Rwanda's largest human rights organisation, which the government dissolved in January 2005.[63]
The post-genocide period has thus witnessed the rapid emergence and consolidation of an RPF monopoly over the entire Rwandan political system. An issue of great importance later in this book will be the role of the state in the creation and daily operation of gacaca, an institution founded on principles of popular ownership and open dialogue. The susÂtained rhetoric of openness and public participation that much of the government employs when discussing gacaca may seem incongruous, even disingenuous, alongside the RPF's attempts to shore up political control over the country and to stymie public debate. Certainly there is good reason to be sceptical of much of the state's discourse regarding popular ownership over gacaca.
Nevertheless, one important explanation for these seemingly contradictory messages, later chapters will contend, is the existence of different ideological factions within the government, with some leaders, particularly those who have only recently returned to Rwanda from the Tutsi diaspora, and not having lived through the genocide, expressing greater enthusiasm than others for gacaca’s ethos of dialogue and communal ownership. As argued later in this book, a lack of coordination - even conflict - between different government departÂments characterises much of the running of gacaca; this partly explains the apparent disjunct between the RPF’s attempts to quash dissent and the government’s emphasis on gacaca's encouraging public dialogue and participation.Finally, violence throughout the Great Lakes region, particularly in the DRC, has had significant repercussions for the political and social landscape in Rwanda. For our purposes here, violence in the region can be divided roughly into three periods: the first Congo war of 1996-7; the second war of 1998-9 and ongoing violence in the Kivu provinces; and ethnic violence in Ituri province of the DRC since 2002. First, war broke out in the former Zaire in 1996 when Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi supported rebels led by Laurent Desiree Kabila to topple the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, then President of Zaire. In response, Mobutu called on military allies in Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe. All of the counÂtries involved in this pan-African conflict, whether fighting for Kabila’s Alliance or defending Mobutu's crumbling dictatorship, fought to attain their own short- and long-term strategic objectives, turning Zaire into a battleground for a host of competing foreign interests.[64]
The key external players in the conflict were Rwanda and Uganda. Rwanda’s involvement stemmed directly from the 1994 genocide: in the aftermath of the killing spree, around 1.5 million Hutu refugees, including many of the orchestrators of the genocide, poured into Zaire at the border crossing at Goma, fleeing the advance of the RPF.
After the genocide, members of the interahamwe, fed and clothed unwittingly by Western aid organisations, continued to train in the refugee camps and made several incursions into Rwanda, threatening to â€?finish the job’ of killing all Rwandan Tutsi.[65] Kabila’s Alliance eventually prevailed in May 1997, forcing Mobutu into exile, ensconcing Kabila as President and scattering the interahamwe and Mobutu-backed militias throughout the eastern DRC.The region was plunged into a second Congo war in 1998 and 1999 as Kabila's Alliance quickly disintegrated. Kabila was angered by the refusal of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda to leave the eastern DRC. These countries stayed and pillaged the region's gold, diamonds and col- tan (a rare mineral used in the manufacture of mobile phones) through military proxies such as the Rwandan-backed Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD). Kabila turned against his former benefactors and began arming the interahamwe and local militias known as Mai Mai in an attempt to drive the foreign forces, their proxies and Congolese Tutsi out of the DRC. [66] The Rwandan government responded by attackÂing Goma, Bukavu and Uvira in North and South Kivu in August 1998. Kabila called on the governments of Angola and Zimbabwe to help repel Rwandan, Burundian and Ugandan forces in exchange for a small share of the DRC's mining riches. Between August 1998 and August 2000, as Hutu-Tutsi animosity and a desire for control over DRC's mineral wealth kept the conflict raging, nearly 2 million people died in the eastern DRC either as a direct result of violence or through related disease and deprivation.[67] Violence in the Kivus, which can be traced back to the conflicts of the 1990s, has continued to the present day, causing the deaths of around 4 million civilians and displacing the same number.[68]
The third and most recent period of violence in the DRC centres on the north-eastern province of Ituri and violence between local Hema and Lendu ethnic groups. Traditionally, the Hema, like the Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi, are pastoralists and the Lendu, like the Hutu, are cultivators. In 1999, a land dispute in the Djugu district of Ituri sparked a violent confrontation between Hema and Lendu which, stoked by Ugandan support for the Hema, flared into widespread conflict. Uganda has long employed the Hema as business partners in the plunder of natÂural resources from Ituri. In August 2002, Hema combatants and their Ugandan allies attacked Lendu militias and civilians in Bunia, the bigÂgest town in Ituri, massacring hundreds and inciting revenge killings by Lendu militias. During an escalation in the Ituri conflict in May 2003, human rights groups accused both sides of committing genocide.[69]
The regional dimension of the Great Lakes conflict is apparent in Ituri, as Uganda helped create the rebel group, the Union de Patriotes Congolais (UPC), only to see the UPC switch allegiances to Rwanda. Rwanda's primary objective was to defeat Uganda for a greater share of Ituri's wealth of gold, diamonds and oil. The conflict in Ituri thereÂfore follows the pattern of other recent conflicts in the DRC, involving rapidly changing alliances between rebel groups supported by regional governments, with ethnicity, greed and power the protagonists' primary motivations. Rwanda's ongoing involvement in conflict in the DRC underlines the extent to which, sixteen years after the genocide, it is still a heavily militarised state. Much of Rwanda's continued military activity in the region stems directly from the genocide, particularly the perceived need to contain interahamwe and other Hutu rebels in the DRC. For many Rwandans, particularly those affected by violence in, or the threat of rebel incursions from, the eastern DRC, the reality of the genocide persists in daily life. The Rwandan government invokes the threat of a second genocide to justify its military presence in the DRC and many of the heavy-handed policies discussed above.[70]
As argued later in this book, these policies run counter to gacaca's ethos of popular participation and open dialogue and have the potential to seriously damage the entire gacaca process. The cacophony of legal, political and military events, within Rwanda and in the wider region, has had a marked effect on a Rwandan population already coming to terms with the legacies of the genocide. Gacaca as an institution designed to deal with many of these legacies is inevitably embedded in the wider context of these national and regional developments. Because gacaca relies so heavily on the population's active participation, predicated on its sense of security and well-being, much of gacaca's success depends on the population's reactions to the prevailing legal, political and military landscape.