THE FATEFUL ROAD: RETURN OF THE FIRST GENOCIDE SUSPECTS TO THEIR HOME COMMUNITIES
J ust as the international community largely ignored the genocide in 1994, it was also almost entirely absent on the most momentous day in Rwanda since the genocide. Only two foreign media agencies, BBC Radio and the Canadian television network CTV, were on hand on 5 May 2003, when more than 20,000 confessed genocide perpetrators were provisionally released into their home communities, after spendÂing nearly a decade in prison.[255] I expected to fight my way through hordes of journalists to talk to the detainees before they boarded buses, returning to the same communities where they committed their crimes.
Instead, I walked unimpeded into the Kinyinya ingando on the outskirts of Kigali. After some hasty negotiations, I persuaded camp officials to let me ride on a run-down, white Mercedes-Benz bus carrying seventy detainees to an undisclosed drop-off point someÂwhere south, near the Burundi border.First, though, I went looking for Laurent, a short, grey-moustached forty-two-year-old Hutu detainee, whom I met when I first visited the Kinyinya camp three weeks earlier. When I first interviewed Laurent, unlike most suspects he refused to describe the crimes to which he had confessed.[256] A camp official later told me that Laurent had confessed to murdering three men and a woman in 1994.[257] I wanted to know how he was feeling now as he prepared to return to his community.
I found Laurent sheltering from the blazing afternoon sun beneath a blue tarpaulin, a tattered bag of clothes by his side and his left knee heavÂily bandaged. â€?I'm sick and I have to walk home today', he said. â€?I'm sad because I have no family left. What am I going back to? I'm going back to nothing.' All of Laurent's family, themselves Hutu, were killed durÂing the genocide. All around, detainees were hugging one another and exchanging addresses.
â€?When I see these people outside of the camp', Laurent said, â€?they will be like my brothers and sisters.' Laurent picked up his bags and began limping towards the camp gates. I asked him why he was not riding on the bus with the rest of us. â€?My name isn't on the list of people to ride in the bus', he said. â€?I'm sick and my leg is bad but [the camp officials] tell me I have to walk home.142I boarded the bus with the last of the detainees. The men onboard waved ecstatically to their friends as the bus pulled out of the camp. Once outside the gates, they began dancing and singing in celebraÂtion, stomping in unison and rocking the bus back and forth. The lone, fresh-faced security guard in a maroon uniform smiled and kept the beat by banging the butt of his rifle on the floor. Waving, cheering Hutu lined the streets to welcome the returning prisoners as if they were a liberation army. Shopkeepers and schoolchildren in khaki uniforms and bright blue dresses screamed and waved as the bus bounced along the rutted, dusty tracks out of Kigali.
One detainee, Karisa, sat silently near the front as the rest of the bus celebrated behind him. He told me that he had confessed to being an infil- tre, one of the thousands of interahamwe who fled into the jungles of Zaire after the RPF victory in 1994 and had continued to attack Tutsi civilians in North and South Kivu. Hutu-dominated rebel groups currently operatÂing in the eastern DRC such as the Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) comprise large numbers of suspected perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. Following the Sun City accords in December 2002 between the Congolese government and rebel groups fighting in the east, there have been several attempts to enact disarmament, demobilisation and reintegraÂtion (DDR) processes for ex-combatants in the DRC, often involving the return of Hutu militiamen to Rwanda. Since 2007, however, few repatriÂated combatants from the DRC have passed through gacaca or other justice processes often because they were too young in 1994 to be prosecuted for genocide crimes.
Instead, most returned fighters have undergone periods of civic education in ingando before returning to civilian life or being reinteÂgrated into the Rwandan army.[258] [259] Long before any DDR process, Karisa was captured in 1996 and jailed as a genocide suspect. â€?Today is an amazing day', he said. â€?All I want to do is walk the streets of Kigali for one or two hours. I want to remember what it's like to walk those streets.' Karisa was from Bicumbi in central Rwanda but he said that he wanted to find his older brother who he had heard was living somewhere near Butare in the south-west. â€?We have a new life now', he said. â€?Everything is new. But what will happen to us now? None of us can know.'[260]The detainees fell silent as the bus rolled further away from Kigali. For weeks, rumours had been circulating that Tutsi lynch mobs would be waiting when 300 trucks and buses of released prisoners like this one arrived in marketplaces all over Rwanda.[261] Some of these detainees would also be found guilty at gacaca and sentenced to further years in prison. The coming months would therefore be only a short, and in their eyes, cruel, taste of liberty.
Some of the detainees grew angry that the bus had not stopped in Kigali to drop off those who lived near the ingando. â€?Where are we going?' one of them demanded of the driver, who ignored him. The detainee's name was Diomede and he was nineteen years old, meanÂing that he was only ten years old during the genocide. He told me that he had confessed to being in a group of three boys who killed another boy with a machete and hacked the Achilles tendons of an old man whom they left for the interahamwe to finish off.[262]
The road wound south following the Nyabarongo river which snakes through a fertile valley of thick, green vegetation, surrounded by hills of cocoa plants, sunflowers and banana palms. The bus driver stopped in Nyamata, the largest town in Kigali Ngali province, to buy a bottle of water.
The detainees, furious that we still had not reached the dropÂoff point, swarmed forward, yelling violently at the driver as he climbed back into the cabin. Some of them tried to push past him and out of the door. The security guard leapt to his feet and brandished his rifle, herdÂing the men back down the bus. The driver calmed them by explainÂing that the drop-off point was not far away. Some of the detainees slid windows open and bought a handful of cigarettes from the market sellers below. Down the aisle, from detainee to detainee, the cigarettes were passed silently, one drag at a time, with almost ritualistic reverence. â€?We haven't had a cigarette the whole time we were in prison', Karisa said. â€?Can you imagine?'[263]It took forty-five minutes to travel the last 15 kilometres of corruÂgated road. No one spoke. We pulled into a small village and the bus stopped. Schoolchildren watched as the detainees picked up their bags and stepped slowly into the village courtyard. Except for several officials who greeted the detainees as they walked off the bus, no adults were visÂible. The officials took the men to an open-sided room where one official began lecturing them. The suspects would remain in this village for the night, another official told me, then they would be sent home on foot tomorrow. The intention behind this approach seemed to be to release the detainees slowly and in small numbers back to their home communiÂties to minimise the possibility of reprisals by survivors.
One by one, adult villagers emerged from the surrounding houses, to catch a glimpse of the prisoners. They stood at a distance and whisÂpered to one another. The return of these detainees attracted no fanÂfare; that would come when they arrived in their home villages. The official’s lecture ended and the gathering dispersed. I found Karisa, who told me, â€?There are only a few survivors in this village, so we can sleep here tonight in peace.’[264] An official approached me and said that I should leave, explaining that no outsiders were permitted to follow the detainÂees home the next day.
The driver and I climbed into the empty bus which bounced and jolted its way through the fading evening light back to Kigali. When I got off, I scanned the dark circle of hills surrounding the city: out there on the hills, all over the country, the confessed genocidaiτes were going home. The return of the detainees caused fear and confusion in many communities.[265] Generally, the release occurred peacefully, although several reports emerged of violent attacks against some returning sus- pects.[266] In a high-profile case, detainees who returned to Gitarama provÂince were found guilty of murdering survivors whom they believed would testify against them at gacaca.[267] These appeared, however, to be isolated incidents.
In May 2003, the government rearrested 787 provisionally released detainees and a further 5,770 detainees in June 2003. This caused much uncertainty, particularly among suspects’ families. The government was slow to explain exactly why released detainees were being rearrested. Between the two periods of rearrests, the government announced that an investigation by the national survivors group Ibuka unearthed eviÂdence showing that many released detainees had lied about the crimes they committed during the genocide. The government also claimed that some of the rearrested detainees had committed crimes in the ingando, such as selling drugs or committing rape while working on labour proÂgrammes in the community.[268] The rearrested detainees returned to prison, to begin the gacaca journey again, while the remaining detainees who had been released stayed in their home communities, awaiting sumÂmonses to testify at gacaca.