Agonizing Justice: Genocide, Gacaca, and the Rwandan Struggle Against Impunity
by Dr. Rowland Brucken, Assistant Professor of History, Norwich University
Conference on Global Ethics, Kennesaw State University, October 2004
In 1994, approximately 100,000 Hutu murdered over 800,000 predominately Tutsi in the poor and compact
nation of Rwanda.i The genocide, whose roots lie mythically in perceived ancient identities and modern ideas of
nationalism and domination, wiped out the infrastructure of the nation, created a massive refugee crisis whose bloody
legacy lives on today, and left millions of Rwandans suffering horrible physical injuries and emotional trauma.
Prosecuting those responsible for committing the genocide, assisting victims with a myriad of physiological,
psychological, and financial needs, and building a stable and peaceful nation are mammoth tasks for the government
of Rwanda. With foreign financial support, the government of President Paul Kagame has begun a creative, unique
way of rebuilding the shattered country by using a problem-solving ritual buried deep in Rwandan culture: gacaca.
This paper will critique the gacaca process by exploring its ability to illuminate the causes of the genocide, to hold
offenders accountable, and to reconcile genocidaires with their current neighbors. Only if gacaca promises to fulfill
these three ideals will peace and security become a possibility in Rwanda, thus ending fifty years of recurring
massacres and civil war between Hutu and Tutsi.
Any analysis of the Rwandan genocide must start with the history of complex relationships between Tutsi
and Hutu stretching over a half millennia and complicated by the brutal, exploitative indirect colonization policies of
Germany and Belgium. Metanarratives that explain the origins of the Hutu and Tutsi, that justify the political
domination of the former over the latter, and that sentenced the Tutsis to a gradual “social death” before 1994 became
mutually reinforcing and created a charged, polarized environment that made genocide possible. ii For reasons ranging
from a selfish need to hang onto power, to unify the Hutu people in the face of intra-elite factionalism and economic
deprivation, and to eliminate an alleged Tutsi “fifth column,” the Rwandan government under President Juvenal
Habyarimana employed the most extreme ideals of a movement dedicated to the idea of “Hutu Power” to mobilize
Hutu peasants for genocide.iii At its core, Hutu Power viewed the present as prologue to a repetition of the past in two
critical ways. First, the Tutsis of the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front had invaded the nation‟s northern provinces just as
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their cattle-herding ancestors had supposedly done five hundred years earlier. iv Secondly, in both cases, Hutu Power
advocates argued, the Tutsi foreigners‟ goal was to subjugate the indigenous Hutu by (re-) establishing a centralized
aristocracy of Tutsi lords and Hutu serfs. Part history, part apocalyptic prophecy, and blasted through the mediums of
radio and television, Hutu Power justified and inspired the mass murder, rape, and mutilation of Tutsis as a desperate
plan for self-preservation. In language designed to normalize the extraordinary, Hutu peasants were implored to do
traditional communal work (umuganda), specifically “bush clearing” or “pulling out the roots of the bad weeds.” By
appealing to the foreign origins of the Tutsi, Hutu Power advocates ironically borrowed from their former German and
Belgium colonizers who had also proclaimed the Tutsi to be a separate, physically exquisite, and mentally able race of
people destined to govern Rwanda under their colonial tutelage. This “Hamitic Myth” explained the pre-colonial
origins of this “civilized” people in the Great Lakes region as offshoots of Noah‟s cursed son Ham and depicted Tutsis
as carriers of civilization from northern Africa to Rwanda in the fifteenth century. As one Belgian administrator stated
in the 1920s, ““The Batutsi were meant to reign. Their fine presence is in itself enough to give them a great prestige
vis-a-vis the inferior races which surround...It is not surprising that those good Bahutu, less intelligent, more simple,
more spontaneous, more trusting, have let themselves be enslaved without ever daring to revolt.”v Upon their arrival,
Hutu Power proclaimed, the Tutsis used their cattle as economic leverage to subjugate the Hutu, create an
authoritarian monarchy, and rule as Belgium‟s exploitative puppets.vi The Hutu were forced to perform servile labor,
pay oppressive taxes, and surrender all political power until a Hutu Power elite successfully revolted and supposedly
freed all Rwandan Hutu from domination by two foreign powers in 1962. vii
This very generalized overview of Hutu Power‟s version of Rwandan history would have had little influence
outside of a small circle of extremists if economic and political conditions in 1994 did not already create a climate of
fear and anxiety in the Rwandan countryside. The late 1980s saw a collapse in coffee prices, growing unemployment
of educated youth, rising population density that the arable land could not sustain, and a demand by the World Bank
for economic “structural readjustment.” viii Adding to these economic pressures on the one-party state was growing
elite fragmentation and an expanding civil war. The first post-independence government of Gregoire Kayibanda drew
support and patronage from Gitarma in the south, but a military coup in 1973 by Habyarimana re-oriented the internal
axis of power to Ruhengeri and Gisenyi in the north and northwest. This new elite had three specific historical
grievances against the Tutsi: their homeland had been the last region in Rwanda to fall under Tutsi monarchial rule in
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the late 1800s, Tutsi landowners then imported as local rulers continued to prosper during the economic downturn in
the late 1980s, and the Tutsi-led RPF invasion in 1990 had crossed from Uganda into those provinces. By most
accounts, preparations for the genocide began just after the invasion, and they included the formation, training, and
indoctrination of disaffected Hutu youth into militias, the taking of a national Tutsi census by local officials, and the
holding of large rallies that paired local and visiting national political leaders who would launch into Hutu Power
diatribes. The effectiveness of these preparations would easy to see, as between 1990 and 1993, four massacres of
3000 Tutsis took place in Kibilira, Bugogwe, Bugesera, and Gisenyi. The April 1994 assassination of President
Habyarimana, who by signing a tentative peace deal with the RPF a year earlier had betrayed the Hutu Power cause,
allowed Hutu extremists within his government to mobilize shadowy death squads, launch a coup, and expand local
massacres into organized national genocide. For the next one hundred days, perhaps a hundred thousand Hutu
committed murder, rape, mutilation, and arson in an attempt to maintain a tenuous grip on power. Their attempt at a
“Final Solution” to the Tutsi problem ended only with military defeat at the hands of the RPF, but only after perhaps
800,000 Tutsi and 50,000 Hutu perished. ix
The foregoing sketch makes clear the historically-based, opportunistic, nihilistic, and populist nature of the
Rwandan genocide. On a local level, its impact is almost unfathomable as survivors, eyewitnesses to crimes
committed against them by family members, neighbors, and friends, find their houses, crops, and livestock destroyed.
If their attackers remained nearby after the genocide, safety became the paramount concern; if the offenders had fled to
neighboring countries, as thirty percent of the population did, unknown questions about their return would haunt them.
No avenues for obtaining justice or restitution remained, as the Rwandan judiciary, along with the entire state
apparatus, had crumbled and vanished. The Ministry of Justice itself lacked a telephone, a typewriter, and even
windowpanes. The few lawyers who belonged to the RPF were educated in Uganda and other former British colonies
and were unfamiliar therefore with the Rwandan judiciary based on French principles. x Into this legal vacuum stepped
the United Nations, whose Security Council members had acted during the genocide with willful neglect, appalling
ignorance, and institutional arrogance. In 1994, the council created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
(ICTR) to try the leaders of the genocide, and it soon ran into serious problems as well.
The difficulties encountered by the ICTR mainly emanated from logistical problems and inadequate
administrative oversight. After the Rwandan Patriotic Front successfully drove the Hutu genocidaires from Rwanda
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into neighboring states, there were few difficulties in finding and arresting suspects. The court‟s remote location in
Arusha, Tanzania, a lack of secure and reliable communications facilities, and administrative corruption, though,
hampered the panel‟s effectiveness from the very beginning. The U.N.‟s Office of Internal Oversight Services
examined the tribunal‟s books and found gross mismanagement and a lack of auditing controls; the findings led to
firings of administrators and the deputy prosecutor. The court‟s annual reports documented critical shortages of
equipment, such as photocopiers, vehicles, and computer equipment. Lacking funds and qualified staff, the ICTR‟s
secretariat spent a full year trying to find and lease a suitable headquarters in Arusha, and another seven months passed
before the judges were ready to schedule initial appearances by the first two indictees. xi The first trial did not begin
until January 1997, or twenty-six months after the Security Council had authorized the court‟s formation. By 30 June
2002, after spending $400 million over seven years, the tribunal could report eighty indictments and sixty arrests but
only eight persons sentenced and no new trials scheduled before May 2003 due to a lack of judges.xii Yet even after the
trials began, complaints abounded about inappropriate judicial conduct (especially toward rape victims), a lack of
resources and security for witnesses who traveled to Arusha to testify, the hiring of court personnel who themselves
were suspected of committing genocide, and the extortion of defendants by court-appointed counsel. After a ICTR
appellate chamber ordered the release of a suspect due to prosecutorial misconduct, the Rwandan government
temporarily suspended all cooperation with the tribunal. xiii Meanwhile, the formal judicial system of Rwanda
continued to operate ineffectively. Over 125,000 suspects were detained for nine years in deplorable conditions; even
with periodic mass releases and the 5500 cases decided thus far, it will take a century for Rwanda‟s courts, staffed by
only 36 qualified judges, three prosecutors, and sixty private attorneys, to try them at the present rate. After one adds
the understandable refusal of the Rwandan government to import foreign judges, attorneys, and other court personnel,
it is clear that the domestic courts cannot function to any useful degree. xiv
My point in sketching these problems is not to criticize the tribunal or Rwandan courts as incompetent,
ineffective, and impotent. Given the circumstances surrounding their creations, one could argue that they have
operated as best they could. And that would be my point: as interpreters of law, they have generated some helpful
precedents of international humanitarian law, xv as courts they have tried and sentenced some of the worst offenders;
and as an international entity, the ICTR has demonstrated that governmental officials and private citizens cannot hide
behind the doctrine of national sovereignty to commit horrific crimes with impunity. But two critical questions must
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be asked: have these courts assisted surviving victims of genocide by providing needed psychological, financial, and
judicial aid, so that feelings of anger, betrayal, and impatience do not boil over into civil war, or perhaps another
episode of genocide? And second, have their judgements facilitated the slow, painful process of healing and
reconciliation, so that a peaceful civil society, which is a prerequisite for political stability, economic growth, and the
reconstruction of national, as opposed to ethnic, racial, or tribal identity, will emerge? The answers to both questions,
I believe, are negative, but the reasons are more deeply rooted than the above criticisms would suggest. xvi
The growing body of literature on the subject of restorative justice has generated a profound critique of
Western-based judicial processes. At its core, the commentary embraces three premises: that crime is a violation of
inter-personal relationships (and only secondarily transgresses an abstraction called the law), that therefore willing
victims and offenders must co-participate in a process that emphasizes apology and restitution, and that these
mechanisms work best at the local level, where victims and offenders often know one another. The ICTR and
Rwandan courts, in contrast, operate within a legal culture developed over centuries in Europe that is premised on
several principles. First, an understandable emphasis on protecting the rights of the offender often translates into
elevating elaborate evidentiary and procedural rules over fair and just outcomes; it also relegates victims to secondary
participants. Lawyers and judges are the only major courtroom actors. Victims are further prevented from acting as
witnesses or observers by the isolated locations of the courts. Second, the deliberations focus upon the amount of
punishment the offender should receive; punishment that does not reward the taking of personal (as distinct from
legal) accountability by the offender and that does not require making any direct amends to those victimized. And
third, the goal of a trial is to find out the truth as it relates to only the formal legal charges filed; it is not to illuminate or
create a larger historical, cultural, or political record. As lawyer and scholar Julie Mertus explains, “The legal process
is inherently counter-narrative; it opens and closes, letting in only enough information to prove the issue at hand.” xvii
With international and national courts unable or unwilling to serve as advocates for the suffering or as efficient and fair
dispensers of justice, genocide survivors are faced with the terrible choice of exacting vengeance themselves or trying
to forget the past. Today, the people of Rwanda are charting a unique course between these two poles called gacaca. xviii
James Waller, in a seminal work entitled, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass
Killing, develops a four-part schema that can form a general template for critiquing gacaca‟s structure and process.
Genocides can occur generally, he claims, due to specific human tendencies, cultural belief systems, the existence of
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an authoritarian and hierarchical society, and the development of propaganda that elevates one group while
dehumanizing a specific group of “others.” The human “ancestral shadow,” which we all carry, includes a
predisposition to xenophobia and ethnocentrism that is an evolutionary, defensive carry-over from when early humans
searched the African savannah for scarce food and water. Rwanda‟s political and military leaders reinforced these
prehistoric tendencies by modern appeals to Hutu Power history and “traditional values” that forged persuasive
xenophobic narratives. Waller‟s third cause of genocide is the creation of an authoritarian “culture of cruelty” that
rewards the physical abuse of others through performing killing rituals, repressing dissenters, and diffusing
responsibility among many actors for the actual murders. Finally, the future victims of genocide are targeted for
“social death” by the group in power by blaming them for a society‟s problems, constructing an “us-them” ideology
that promotes prejudice and discrimination through the use of euphemistic language to dehumanize the “other.” The
Habyarimana government, faced with an RPF invasion of “inyenzi” (cockroaches), used colonial historiography to
identify the Tutsi as Hamitic “foreigners” who exploited the Hutu mercilessly. Ritual massacres, carried out in the
north between 1990 and 1994, prepared Hutu peasants psychologically and organizationally for the genocide to come.
The gacaca process, in order to destroy the old order, must destroy the cultural, ideological, and political underpinning
of the genocide through three processes: developing the part of the “ancestral shadow” that promotes caring and
inter-group cooperation, creating a set of interventions to promote a culture of tolerance, and using structured, intense
inter-group contacts to undermine the legacy of hateful propaganda and create a new history. xix
Any effective alternative to trials must take into account, then, the history, indigenous culture, and material
and psychological needs of those affected by genocide. In Rwanda, that means understanding the centuries-old
intimate interaction between Hutus and Tutsis, the popular nature of the genocide, and the rural, communitarian nature
of Rwandan society. It means describing and exposing stereotypes in open forums, so that the dehumanized,
historically-derived mythical descriptions of Tutsis and Hutus that justified the mass killing can be challenged. The
low-technology nature of the genocide, that of neighbor attacking neighbor with machetes, tools, and clubs, means
that survivors knew their attackers personally; so “ordinary” genocidaires must be held accountable and not receive a
blanket amnesty. Furthermore, the large numbers of survivors, who have experienced unspeakable loss, must have
access to therapy for their diverse reactions to trauma. Western psychiatrists sometimes collectively name these
responses Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). After surveying the literature on Western and indigenous treatment
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options for those suffering from PTSD, a seminal article concluded that “there is obviously a need for
culture-appropriate clinical approaches and carefully designed research.” If psychologists and psychiatrists are asking
questions about the appropriateness of Western-centric approaches in their discipline to assist Rwandans, it is time for
lawyers to inquire likewise. Are non-indigenous courtrooms the most effective method to establish truth, assign guilt,
advance the healing process for victims and the larger community? Or, is it true, as Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin
Ferencz has remarked, that “experience has shown that criminal sanctions, particularly if deemed inadequate, offer
little solace and no assistance to survivors?”xx
An experiment currently underway in Rwanda combines victim involvement, offender accountability, and
the discovery of truth in order to remember the past and develop a basis for co-existence in the present. Beginning with
Organic Law 40/2000 (passed by the Rwandan parliament in January 2001) and a pilot project created in June 2002,
the Rwandan government has approved the creation of local gacaca councils to judge most of the 110,000 individuals
currently imprisoned. The structures, to number about 9000 and presided over by 255,000 elected village elders, have
deep, aboriginal roots within Rwanda‟s history as mechanisms to resolve inter-personal and property disputes within
the local community.xxi Each council, consisting of nineteen noted persons of integrity, will receive cases that have
gone through two preliminary steps. First, local general assemblies consisting of all adults in a given area will compile
lists of victims and offenders. Second, each offender will be placed in one of four categories according to the relative
seriousness of his or her offense: genocide planners and leaders will be tried by Rwanda‟s formal judicial system, but
those who participated in killing, inflicting non-fatal bodily injury, and property damage will be called before gacaca
councils at the prefecture, commune, and cellule levels respectively. Those found guilty can appeal to higher-level
councils, including the highest gacaca of the appropriate prefecture. The maximum available punishment is life
imprisonment; half of all prison sentences will be spent performing community service. All who are convicted will
also pay into a national compensation fund for genocide survivors; property crime offenders will also pay restitution
directly to the victim. The Rwandan government expects the gacaca process to process all cases in about five years. xxii
The gacaca process, as the Norwegian Helsinki Committee has noted, is a cross between a truth commission
and a court. It is also a hybrid of a traditional, informal, and civil dispute resolution process and a modern, structured,
and legalistic agency of the national government. Each council will solicit the active participation of genocide
survivors, who will be able to ask questions of alleged offenders in order to discover what happened to themselves and
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loved ones and why. Gacaca meetings are open to the public, and since they are held in local and accessible locations
(often outside, gacaca means “grass”), Rwandan leaders hope that they will serve as catalysts for national truth-telling
and reconciliation. This optimism is predicated on the assumption that offenders, having to stand before friends,
relatives, and neighbors, will confess and ask for forgiveness. As an extra incentive to acknowledge past actions,
prison sentences will be halved for those who admit guilt. About 2800 imprisoned individuals have already confessed
to crimes, and gacaca will allow victims to influence the sentencing process. This flexible, informal process might also
be more appropriate for judging culpability in complex cases, such as the bystander forced to kill a neighbor or even
his own wife to prevent his children from being massacred by by Hutu militias. The public nature of the gacaca
process might also diminish the culture of impunity that dominated Rwanda before 1994 and the tragic stories
recounted might expose to bystanders the price of their remaining inactive during a horrific time. As Elie Wiesel
reminds us, “I have learned that in extreme situations when human lives and dignity are at stake, neutrality is a sin. It
helps the killers, not the victims...for the opposite of love, I have learned, is not hate, but indifference.xxiii
This informal, grass-roots system of justice is not without its critics or its problems. Victims‟ groups charge
that witnesses have been intimidated, bribed, beaten, and killed by relatives and friends of those accused. Some elected
judges have even been accused of participating in the genocide to varying degrees. Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch are concerned about the due process rights of those accused, especially since most village elders chosen
to lead gacaca councils lack a formal judicial education and experience. Suspects do not have a right to consult
lawyers. With thousands of geographically-scattered councils in existence, achieving consistency in judging and
sentencing will be difficult. Furthermore, the staggering number of perpetrators and victims may make it impossible at
times to determine individual responsibility for specific acts of violence. Finally, the Rwandan government estimates
that it will cost $3.6 million to start gacaca councils in the remaining 8000 jurisdictions that need them. These
criticisms and challenges notwithstanding, a simple lack of alternatives due to the gap between available financial and
legal resources and the complexity of the task at hand, if nothing else, drives Rwanda‟s political leaders to embrace the
gacaca process. As Rwandan President Paul Kagame remarked in April 2002, “Gacaca is maybe not the most perfect
process, but over time we may achieve good results. It is a choice we have made. xxiv
Conclusions about gacaca implementation come largely from quantitative surveys and qualitative analyses of
the pilot projects. Johns Hopkins University funded a survey of twenty urban focus groups and surveys of over 1500
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Rwandans in 2000. The main finding was that although 87% of those surveyed were either highly or fairly confident
that gacaca could “resolve problems caused by the genocide,” only slightly over half of the population had a medium
or high level of knowledge about the process itself. Ninety-six percent of those surveyed planned to vote for gacaca
judges and almost ninety percent were willing to provide evidence to them. A survey three years later of 6100
individuals by the Rwandan government found greatly diminished rates of planned participation. More than half of
those surveyed did not plan to participate actively and only a fifth planned to appear as witnesses. Reasons for the
latter include fears that witnesses will become targets for reprisals, that tensions will increase as a result of the gacaca
process (at least initially), and that defendants will lie in order to avoid accountability. Despite these results, over
ninety percent of those surveyed had confidence that gacaca would promote national reconciliation, allow survivors
access to truth and justice, and provide a fair forum to judge those imprisoned. It should be added, though, that
survivors were more skeptical of achieving these goals than the general population; most Rwandans also agreed that
gacaca would become less effective over time. Finally, a majority of survivors stated that they had already suffered too
much to be interested in participating.xxv
Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash has observed that there are three ways that societies can address past
atrocities: trials, summary purges, and history lessons.xxvi The people of Rwanda have found the first inadequate, have
rejected the second, and are now experimenting with the latter. The goal of gacaca is, in the words of Tanzanian
political scientist Mahmood Mamdani, “to incorporate a guilty majority alongside an aggrieved and fearful minority in
a single political community.”xxvii One way to do that, he states, is to “contextualize the truth” by creating a nuanced
history of Rwanda that recognizes but depersonalizes the significance of Tutsi and Hutu elite domination of political
power. Such a view, which disconnects Hutu and Tutsi domination in the past from a need to garner group revenge in
the present, also focuses on the exploitative roles of opportunistic elites rather than blaming all Hutu or all Tutsi.
Mamdani also calls for peace based on “survivor‟s justice,” defined as forging a new national citizenship identity and
power-sharing between groups in Rwanda. Gacaca‟s role is to facilitate the first construction in order to make the
second possible.xxviii Gacaca cannot automatically repair the broken social relationships, provide satisfaction to
victims through reparations and restitution, or create an accurate record of the dead, raped, and injured. It cannot, nor
is it meant to, restore economic prosperity or create democracy in a troubled nation. Given the extreme alternatives of
doing nothing or holding summary executions of alleged offenders, one might view gacaca as the best hope for doing
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something to benefit victims, promote reconciliation, and hold offenders accountable. Today, gacaca meetings are
scheduled in all twelve prefectures in Rwanda, and as an ongoing process, it may be too soon to draw substantive
conclusions. The late Rwandan human rights activist Father Andre Sibomana concluded in 1997 that “Our country is
living in a state of terror. Peasants distrust each other. They live in fear of authority in general, whether it is the
authority of the bourgemestre, the prefet, the gendarme, or the military. Rwanda lives in fear of its own shadow.” And
so maybe the best postscript comes from Alan Paton, who wrote in 1948 about his own tenuous hopes for
reconciliation in his native, polarized South Africa in words that today‟s Hutu and Tutsi can understand: “When that
dawn will come, of our emancipation from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret.” xxix
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i
The names “Hutu” and “Tutsi” have both non-existent and specific meanings. Objectively, although many in Rwanda
claim to be able to identify physical differences between them, cultural anthropologists, historians, and political
scientists remark that the terms do no denote ethnic groups, cultural groups, or tribes. They do not differ on the basis of
religion, ancestry, geography, culture, race, or language. Yet the genocide would not have occurred if largely taken for
granted mythical differences were absent. My reading of the evidence is that the terms have, most of all, a politically
descriptive meaning that includes both perceived physical, occupational, and clientage characteristics. Hutu, for
example, are perceived as short, stocky, and broad-nosed people who are hard-working, simple farmers and are clients
of Tutsi; Tutsi become tall, slender, thin-nosed people who are intelligent (or deceptive), regal, and proud
cattle-herders who have Hutu clients. Individuals could rise or fall in status (and become a Tutsi or Hutu respectively)
in the pre-colonial period. Gerard Prunier calls the terms “orders” in the German sense of the word stand or
“occupational groups with a certain level of prestige attached to them.” Gerard Prunier, “Genocide in Rwanda” in
Daniel Chirot and Martin E.P. Seligman, eds. Ethnopolitical Warfare: Causes, Consequences, and Possible Solutions.
Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2001, 109. See also Jean-Pierre Chretien, The Great Lakes
of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History. New York: Zone Books, 2003, 70-83; Josias Semujanga, Origins of the
Rwandan Genocide. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003, 101-138; Mahmoud Mamdani, When Victims Become
Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, 22-39;
Aimable Twagilimana, The Debris of Ham: Ethnicity, Regionalism, and the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 2003, 33-57; Andre Sibomana, Hope for Rwanda: Conversations with Laure Guilbert
and Herve Deguine. London: Pluto Press, 1997, 83-87; Nigel Eltringham, Accounting for Horror: Post-Genocide
Debates in Rwanda. London: Pluto Press, 2004, 13-14. Eltringham states that “Tutsi,” for example, has in different
times and places meant or implied owning cattle, belonging to certain “high” lineages, possessing authority given by
mwami, achieving “social recognition” as a Tutsi due to wealth, or status as a non-Hutu with the first 4 characteristics
who thereby becomes an elite Tutsi.
ii
James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002, 236-257.
iii
Semujanga, Origins of the Rwandan Genocide, 31-39, 193-202, 241-47. For a summary of these extremist ideals,
see the 1990 “Hutu Ten Commandments” as published in the magazine Kangura and translated in Semujanga, Origins
of the Rwandan Genocide, 196-197.
iv
The actual origins of the group termed “Tutsi” is in dispute among academics. Rene Lemarchand comments
favorably on Frederick Mecklenburg‟s 1910 assertion that “Unmistakable signs of a foreign strain are betrayed in [the
Tutsi‟s] high foreheads, the curve of their nostrils, and the fine, oval shape of their faces,” which they share with the
Galla in southern Ethiopia. See Rene Lamarchand, Rwanda and Burundi. New York, Praeger, 1970, 18-19. Colonial
officials variously placed the origins of the Tutsi in Ethiopia, Egypt, India, Asia Minor, and even Atlantis or the
Garden of Eden! However, other academics either assert more ancient origins of the Tutsi or argue that the migration
over time of peoples into Hutu-dominated areas was slow and haphazard rather than sudden and conflictual. See
Chretien, The Great Lakes of Africa, 44-70; and Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 43-58. In any case, all
agree that by 1994, inter-marriage between Hutu and Tutsi lineages, coupled with arbitrary identity assignments in the
Belgian census of 1933, made it tragically mythical to separate one group from the other objectively, let alone
generalize about all Tutsi or all Hutu. It is not surprising, then, that the genocide began in parts of northern Rwanda
that were conquered by the Tutsi monarchy only one hundred years ago.
v
Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide, London: Hurst and Company, 1997, 11.
vi
For descriptions of the exploitative policies of Belgium‟s indirect rule, including historiographical disagreements on
whether Belgium initiated or merely continued Tutsi elite oppression of the Hutu, see Lemarchand, Rwanda and
Burundi, 63-79, 119-44; Chretien, The Great Lakes of Africa, 260-288; Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression:
Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda, 1860-1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, 53-70, 128-198;
Semujanga, 78-149; Johan Pottier, Re-Imagining Rwanda: Conflict, Survival, and Disinformation in the Late
Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 109-29; Jack David Eller, From Culture to
Ethnicity to War: An Anthropological Perspective on International Ethnic Conflict. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1999, 206-225; Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 79-102; Twagilimana, The Debris of Ham,
41-57; Sibomana, Hope for Rwanda, 78-96. For Hutu Power advocates, the ubuhake cattle clientship tie was critical in
their subjugation by the Tutsi. Tutsi nobles would “lend” cows to a client who would in return perform personal labor
for the patron. This simplistic view ignores other forms of clientship and the dualistic, complex nature of clientage in
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Rwanda where a client of one person might be a patron of another. See Catharine Newberry, The Cohesion of
Oppression, 73-94; and Lemarchand, 36-41; Christian P. Scherrer, Genocide and Crisis in Central Africa Westport,
CT: Praeger, 2002, 18-36.
vii
Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 120-25; Eller, From Culture to Ethnicity to War, 217-26; Prunier, The
Rwanda Crisis, 42-57;
viii
, Pottier, Re-Imagining Rwanda, 20-38; Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 84-90, 159-60; Villia Jefremovas, Brickyards
to Graveyards: From Production to Genocide in Rwanda. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002, 109-121;
Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 144-60, 202-18;
ix
Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989, 13-23 and 35-50; Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 136-228, Mamdani, When Victims Become
Killers, 192-96; Twagilimana, The Debris of Ham, x-xx, 107-121; Eltringham, Accounting for Horror, 75-99;
Scherrer, Genocide and Crisis, 67-86.
x
Paul Magnarella, Justice in Africa: Rwanda‟s Genocide, Its Courts, and the UN Criminal Tribunal. Brookfield, VT:
Ashgate, 2000, 71-84.
xi
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Second Annual Report of the International Tribunal for the Prosecution
of Persons Responsible for Genocide and Other Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in
the Territory of Rwanda and Rwandan Citizens Responsible for Genocide and Other Such Violations Committed in
the Territory of Neighboring States Between 1 January and 31 December. 13 November 1997.
http://www.ictr.org/wwwroot/ENGLISH/annualreports/a52/9731665e.htm (11 February 2003); U.N. Office of
Internal Oversight Services, “Report of the Office of Internal Oversight Services on the investigation into possible
fee-splitting arrangements between defence counsel and indigent detainees at the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,” 1 February 2001.
http://www.un.org/Depts/oios/reports/a55_759.pdf (23 March 2003); and Lawyers Committee for Human Rights,
“Prosecuting Genocide in Rwanda: A Lawyers Committee Report on the ICTR and the National Trials,” July 1997.
http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/lch11/ (23 March 2003).
xii
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Fourth Annual Report of the International Tribunal for the Prosecution
of Persons Responsible for Genocide and Other Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in
the Territory of Rwanda and Rwandan Citizens Responsible for Genocide and Other Such Violations Committed in
the Territory of Neighboring States Between 1 January and 31 December. 2 July 2002.
http:www.ictr.org/wwwroot/ENGLISH/annualreports/a57/163e.pdf (11 February 2003). By September 1994, the
ICTR had still handed down only seventeen judgements involving twenty-three defendants, or less than two a year
since its creation.
xiii
See for example Julia Crawford, “Defence Under Fire at the U.N.‟s Rwanda Tribunal,” Africa News Service 25
June 2001; Radio Rwanda, “Rwanda: U.N. Tribunal Registrar Reacts to Allegations by Genocide Survivors‟ Body,”
BBC Monitoring International Reports, 4 March 2002; “Statement by Registrar of International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda on Non-Renewal of Employment Contracts of Certain Defence Investigators, 18 July 2001; “More Witnesses
Boycott U.N. Tribunal for Rwanda,” Africa News Service, 9 April 2002; Mary Kimani, “Expensive Justice: Cost of
Running the Rwanda Tribunal,” Africa News Service, 5 April 2002; and Margaret Owen, “Tribunal Revictimizes Rape
Victims,” Off Our Backs November/December 2002, p. 8; “Rwanda: Justice Blinded,” The Economist 353 (27
November 1999), 44; Mark Turner, “Giggling Judges Undermine Case of International Courts,” The Financial Times,
14 February 2002, 20; “Delegates Discuss Overexpenditures, High Vacancy Rates in Rwanda Tribunal” M2 Presswire
19 November 2002; and Stef Vandeginste, “Rwanda: Dealing with Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity in the
Context of Armed Conflict and Failed Political Transition,” in Nigel Biggar, ed. Burying the Past: Making Peace and
Doing Justice After Civil Conflict (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2001), 230-31.
xiv
Organization for African Unity, “Special Report of the International of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the
1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events,” (2000); Vandeginste, “Rwanda: Dealing with Genocide,”
231-238; and Binaifer Nowrojee and Regan Ralph, “Justice for Women Victims of Violence: Rwanda and the 1994
Genocide,” in Ifi Amadiume and Abdullah An-Na‟im, The Politics of Memory: Truth, Healing, and Social Justice
(London: Zed Books, 2000), 170-74; L. Danielle Tully, “Human Rights Compliance and the Gacaca Jurisdictions in
Rwanda.” Boston College International and Comparative Law Review 26 (2003), 408.
xv
See “Kambanda v. Prosecutor” American Journal of International Law 95 (July 2001), 656-61; and “Prosecutor v.
Akayesu” American Journal of International Law 93 (January 1999), 195-99.
xvi
For a good overview of international and national court systems in Africa following periods of civil unrest see
Jennifer Wilder, “Courts and Democracy in Postconflict Transitions: A Social Scientist‟s Perspective on the Africa
12
Case” American Journal of International Law 95 (January 2001), 64-75.
xvii
Julie Mertus, “Truth in a Box: The Limits of Justice Through Judicial Mechanisms,” in Amadiume and An-Na‟im,
The Politics of Memory, 144.
xviii
Howard Zehr, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1990); Burt
Galaway and Joe Hudson, eds. Restorative Justice: International Perspectives (Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press,
1996; and “Special Report on Hopes for Reconciliation Under Gacaca Court System,” Africa News Service, 4
December 2002. For an overview of non-trial mechanisms of obtaining justice see Daryl A. Mundis, “New
Mechanisms for the Enforcement of International Humanitarian Law” American Journal of International Law 95
(October 2001), 934-52.
xix
James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002). For another penetrating exposition on cultural preconditions for genocide see Staub, The
Roots of Evil, 13-88 and 261-283. For an excellent article on how the people of Nyakizu commune in Butare
prefecture were “prepared” for the genocide before 1994 see Michele D. Wagner, “All the Bourgemestre‟s Men:
Making Sense of Genocide in Rwanda.” Africa Today 45 (January-March 1998, 25-37.
xx
Quoted in Phenyo Keiseng Rakate, International Criminal Justice and Reconciliation: Lessons from the South
African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
(Braamfontein, South Africa: Institute for Global Dialogue, 1999), 26. See also B. Hudnall Stamm and Matthew J.
Friedman, “Cultural Diversity in the Appraisal and Expression of Trauma,” in Shalev, Arieh and others, eds.
International Handbook of Human Response to Trauma (New York: Kluwer Academic, 2000), 69-85. See also
Charles Villa-Vivencio, Transcending a Century of Injustice (Rondebosch, South Africa: Institute for Justice and
Reconciliation, 2000): 104-5.
xxi
For a brief history of gacaca, see Tully, “Human Rights Compliance,” 395-397.
xxii
For an overview of the gacaca process, please see Rwanda‟s Organic Law 16/2004 of 19/6/2004; Norwegian
Helsinki Committee, “Prosecuting Genocide in Rwanda: The Gacaca System and the International Tribunal for
Rwanda.” November 2002. http://www.nhc.no/rapporter/landrapporter/rwandarap.pdf (17 February 2003); Erin Daly,
“Between Punitive and Reconstructive Justice: The Gacaca Courts in Rwanda.”
http://www.nyu.edu/pubs/jilp/main/issues/34/pdf/34_2_i.pdf (17 February 2003); Paul E. Nantulya, “The Gacaca
System in Rwanda,” Conflict Trends (April 2001).
http://www.accord.org.za/web.nsf/Pub%5CConflictTrends2001-4!OpenPage (18 February 2003); Vandeginste,
“Rwanda: Dealing with Genocide,” 238-245; George Packer, “Justice on a Hill” in Nicolaus Mills and Kira Brunner,
eds. The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 133-135.
Rwanda is divided politically into twelve prefectures, 154 communes, 1500 sectors, and 8987 cellules; each level will
have its own gacaca council with original and/or appellate jurisdiction depending on the category of criminal offense.
For a brief and concise description of gacaca‟s organization, see Tully, “Human Rights Compliance,” 398-401.
xxiii
Quoted in Twagilimana, The Debris of Ham, 178-79. See also Mark A. Drumbl, “Restorative Justice and
Collective Responsibility: Lessons for and from the Rwandan Genocide” Contemporary Justice Reviews 5 (2002),
5-22; Mary Kimani, “Independence and Compensation the Key Legal Issues in Gacaca,” Africa News Service, 27
November 2002; “Special Report on Hopes for Reconciliation Under Gacaca Court System, Africa News Service, 4
December 2002; “High Turnout as Gacaca Courts Open Nationwide,” Africa News Service, 9 December 2002; Sheena
Kaliisa, “Rwandan President Inaugurates „Gacaca‟ Justice System, Africa News Service, 16 December 2002; “Nearly
2800 Rwandans Confess to Roles in 1994 Genocide,” Xinhua News Service, 17 May 2004; and Norwegian Helinski
Committee, “Prosecuting Genocide.”
xxiv
“Genocide Survivors Denounce Rwandan „Gacaca‟ Courts,” Asia Africa Intelligence Wire, 24 July 2002; Africa
Rights, “A Risk for the Gacaca System,” Africa News Service, 16 January 2003; Norwegian Helsinki Committee,
“Prosecuting Genocide”; Human Rights Watch, “Rwanda: Elections May Speed Genocide Trials,” 4 October 2002.
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/10/rwanda1004.htm (17 February 2003); Human Rights Watch, “Rwanda” in World
Report 2002 (2003) http://www.hrw.org/wr2k2/africa9.html; (18 February 2003); Amnesty International, “Rwanda
Gacaca: A Question of Justice,” (17 December 2002)
http://web.amnesty.org/802568F7005C4453/0/103917D8EFACCCBD80256C92004BA700?Open&Highlight=2,gac
aca; Amnesty International, “Rwanda: Gacaca Tribunals Must Conform with International Fair Trial Standards,” 17
December 2002.
http://web.amnesty.org/802568F7005C4453/0/80256AB9000584F680256C8C005E4CC6?Open&Highlight=2,gaca
ca; “Genocide Survivor Group Denounces Killings, Harassment of Witnesses,” Africa News Service, 16 December
2003; Allison Corey and Sandra F. Joireman, “Retributive Justice: The Gacaca Courts in Rwanda.” African Affairs
13
103 (2004), 73-89; “Rwanda Needs 3.6 Million dollars for Gacaca Third Phase,” Xinhua News Service, 31 October
2003; and Jeremy Sarkin, “The Tension Between Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Politics, Human Rights, Due
Process, and the Role of the Gacaca Courts in Dealing with the Genocide.” Journal of African Law 45 (2001),
159-166. For a rebuttal of these legal criticisms, see Tully, “Human Rights Compliance,” 401-413.
xxv
S. Gasibirege and S. Babalola, Perceptions About the Gacaca Law in Rwanda: Evidence from a Multi-Method
Study. Special Publication No. 19. Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, 2001; and National Unity and
Reconciliation Commission, Opinion Survey on Participation in Gacaca and National Reconciliation. Republic of
Rwanda, 2003.
xxvi
Quoted in Charles Villa-Vivencio, “On the Limitations of Academic History: The Quest for Truth Demands Both
More and Less” in Wilmot James and Linda van de Vijver, After the TRC: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in
South Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000), 30.
xxvii
Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 266.
xxviii
Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 266-279.
xxix
Sibomana, Hope for Rwanda, 140; Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country. New Yoek, Charles Scribner‟s Sons,
1948, 277.
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