How restorative is Rwanda's justice?
Jul 20, 2009
From Ben Buchwalter's entry on Mother Jones: With the help of $44 million from the US government, Rwanda decided last week to extend its multi-layered judicial system for another year. The system is comprised of an international criminal tribunal for the most heinous criminals associated with the 1994 genocide, and the semi-traditional gacaca courts, which practice restorative justice on the community level.
The extension has been praised because it gives the government a chance to determine the innocence or guilt of many of the alleged criminals that remain untried. But Hutus claim that the Rwandan government is partial to the country's Tutsi minority—largely the victims of the 1994 genocide—and that the process is fueled by revenge, not justice. Is the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government manipulating the courts for its own political and ethnic gain with US dollars?
Gacaca, literally “on the grass,” is a restorative system which allows perpetrators responsible for crimes including isolated murder and destruction of property during the genocide to decrease their prison sentences if they plead guilty, apologize, and agree to supplement their shortened jail time with community service. But the gacaca courts have been instructed by the RPF to focus only on crimes that occurred during a limited timeframe, most of which were committed by Hutus. During the protracted civil war that preceded the genocide, though, The Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Army was also responsible for murder, rape, and destruction of Hutu property. Also, gacaca judges are untrained and elected by the community, which raises concerns about international standards of due process and impartiality.
While it's important that the major perpetrators of the genocide be held accountable for their crimes, without fair trials that cut across ethnic groups, these supposedly restorative courts could perpetuate, not end, Rwanda's horrific cycle of violence that has plagued Hutu and Tutsi controlled governments for the past half-century.
This is the full entry. Read the thoughtful comment.
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This is a very interesting piece. First, I was very glad to see the subject of Rwanda's genocide and restorative justice processes being covered in Mother Jones magazine, a publication most would consider on the far left politically in the U.S. But my first thought after reading this entry was this: justice is messy. <br /> <br />How could it not be when we are talking about genocide and the slaying of 800,000 victims over a period of 100 days? Those victims were Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The author's comment about international standards of due process and impartiality and a concern that gacaca judges are perhaps not meeting this standard I would say again we are talking about the aftermath of genocide. Rwanda has attempted something that is new but also indigenous to its own culture. The people of Rwanda turned to gacaca, a restorative justice type process, because the traditional justice system was unable to respond to the great need of the victims (the victim's families) and the great number of offenders who would need to be processed through the system. The enormity of the problem required a new approach. <br /> <br />I think time will tell how well gacaca worked. But we need to ask the following question: how do the victims of this horrific violence view gacaca? Has there been healing? How do the offenders view the justice meted out to them through this process? Perfect? No, I would assume not. But it is a process and it goes forward. The concerns mentioned by the author, if validated, must be addressed. The politics of crime, and of societies, is always complex. <br /> <br />I think of aparteid in South Africa and the bold work of Bishop Desmond Tutu through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. From the writings I have read Tutu would be the first to say the process was not perfect. It had to be adapted as the commission processed the crimes and the effect those crimes had on the victims and the community. This will be true of Rwanda as well. And for that process, and the use of gacaca, we will learn worldwide.