Gacaca: Hijacked Justice

April 1994 found Rwanda embroiled in nearly four years of civil war that had destroyed much of its infrastructure and economy. The country was tethering on the brink of ethnic violence and it was finally shoved over the edge by the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana. In a matter of 100 days, hundreds of thousands of Tutsis were annihilated in revenge for the assassination. In retaliation, the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front pursued Hutu refugees, some of whom had actively participated in the genocide, even into neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (then known as Zaire) and killed thousands of their numbers. Although the exact number is unknown, what is indisputable is that many perished at the hands of the RPF. Sixteen years down the road, the RPF-dominated government in Kigali is still on the prowl for genocidaires, although the fight is now being waged on a different battlefield. 

Gacaca is a Kinyarwanda name for well-manicured grass and, traditionally, people would sit on grass and listen to disputes between their neighbors and the elders would then pass binding judgement to the two parties involved in the conflict. After the genocide, the Rwandan government opted for this type of system to process the large amount of cases due to the number of those accused of crimes during the genocide.

This is all and well, but the system has been hijacked by those who seek to slander and eliminate the intellectual element of the Hutus in exile and other Rwandan opponents of the government. Why do I say the Hutu intelligentsia? Because I have recently had to deal with people who have been falsely accused and convicted by gacaca for having participated in the genocide.  

I had heard about such allegations before but I had never personally known those accused, so I couldn't speak with certainty whether they were guilty or innocent, but now I know without a doubt that this is a continuation of the RPF strategy of following the Hutu masses to discourage any opposition. These people, who are well-learned and held positions in the education system before the genocide, are being forced to cower and limit their participation, if any, in any form of opposition. The interesting thing is that the ones I know who have been falsely accused and convicted have absolutely no interest in politics. 

I first heard about the allegations in 2007 but I didn't take them seriously. One of their former colleague, a Tutsi, had spearheaded a campaign to convict them and he set about to find a student at their former school who could help him by saying he saw them participate in the genocide. Among those being accused at the time was my aunt, who had passed away. I heard one man had been taken and tortured but he had refused to implicate them. I figured that was the end of that, but I was clearly wrong.

This year, I heard the people, all former teachers or administrators, had been convicted to between 19 and 27 years in prison. Knowing the people accused, I can attest to their innocence 100% without a smidgen of doubt in my mind. It didn't make sense for a system to pursue innocent people- some of whom had actually been imprisoned by the then regime during the genocide- without an agenda. One of the first things that came to mind was Stalin's purges. 

Rwanda has always pursued its opponents through false accusations, the most infamous of which is Genocide Ideology, and this is another form of pursuit. The bad thing about it is that it will make the system of gacaca, in general, lose legitimacy in the eyes of many. It is without a doubt that the system is the best to deal with such large amount of cases, but hijacking it to achieve political aims is a sure way to discredit it and whatever benefits it might possess. As I wrote in my previous post about speaking out against injustice, this is a moment for us to speak out against those who are wrongly accused. Gacaca is our tradition and it works, but we have to put an end to its hijacking...we, at least, owe that much to our ancestors who worked hard to give us a just way to deal with our disputes.