RWANDA HEALING LAND
August 2002 25 mins
Its Saturday afternoon in KIGALI, the end of June, 2002. As its virtually on the equator, winter never really comes to the capital of Rwanda.
KICUKIRO SUBURB, KIGALI, SATURDAY 22 JUNE 2002
But a chill has set in around the southern suburbs while preparing the soil for a new vegetable patch this morning, this woman dug up some bones. Neighbours came to see it turned out to be the remains of almost an entire family dumped together down a pit toilet. A T-shirt stuck to the remains of a child, tells the story it belonged to the neighbours daughter he hasnt seen it in 8 years. 30 bodies have been found just today. A representative for families still searching for long-lost loved ones comes to see if anyone is recognisable.
UPS GUIDE: This is Hermans family this mans arms were bound at his back they were thrown down pit toilets
UPS JUSTIN: Thats too much unbearable
For eight years Rwandans have been counting the cost of their 1994 holocaust. In a hundred days a million people were killed by their government, their neighbours and friends But the Rwandans whove remained behind now want to live life differently.
THE HEALING LAND
PRISONERS MEETING, GIKONGORO, SOUTH-WESTERN RWANDA
UPS EMMANUEL: My name is Emmanuel NYIRIMBUGA. The day after President Habyarimanas jet was shot down, I woke up to go to work. On the way there, I met a policeman who asked me WHERE ARE YOU GOING? I told him I was going to work. He said: TO WORK?? WHEN HABYARIMANA HAS DIED?
Like most men in RWANDAs prisons, on the morning of 7 April 1994, Emmanuel was told to abandon his own plans, suspend his life and go and join a war. Tutsis had killed the president, or so the villagers were told by the Hutu government. It was time for every HUTU to go and kill TUTSIS, so that all Rwandas problems of poverty, land hunger and conflict would be solved.
MURAMBI GENOCIDE MEMORIAL, GIKONGORO, SOUTH WEST RWANDA
Emmanuels job for the first two weeks of the genocide would be to man a roadblock near the new technical college MURAMBI. He was instructed to direct fleeing Tutsis to the unfinished college buildings and tell them they could hide there.
UPS EMMANUEL: At around 3am, still at the roadblock, I saw policemen coming. Their trucks had been bringing people all night long. They came through and picked us up too they told us we were going to MURAMBI to kill all the people there. So we arrived and cordoned off the area we were so many we formed a human wall
UPS EMMANUEL: The police made it clear that anyone not taking part in the killing, if he was found out, would be killed too. Some people didnt go to kill but fearful guys like me rushed to the killing scene
Thousands of ordinary villagers were psyched up for the massacre. Some brought their own weapons, some were supplied by the government. Theonest was given a hand grenade
UPS THEONEST: At that point someone got a gun in the complex. Captain SEBUHURA ordered us to shoot. The villagers circled the place with spears, machetes, pangas, big sticks and I was there with my grenade. I threw it on somebody who died on the spot.
Theonest and Emmanuel are the only two whove ever confessed to the massacre of more 50 000 people at MURAMBI. One-thousand-five-hundred villagers are thought to have taken part. These two have pointed out many in prison who steadfastly refuse to admit their guilt. Co-operative and keen to get out or prison, Theonest and Emmanuel are held up as examples to the others. Since the genocide, the government has brought abound 6000 genocidaires to book. In RWANDA the punishment for murder can be death or life imprisonment. But another 100 000 prisoners have not had the courts even look at their files yet.
UPS MINISTER MUCYO: We realised that all our laws were of no use under conditions of GENOCIDE Those laws were made for normal, peaceful times. Thats when we realised the GENOCIDE trials will never end that they would take more than 200 years will the suspects even still be alive by then?
Rwanda started brainstorming and came up with GACACA. GACCA is the name people gave to peacemaking efforts in the old days. Respected elders would judge offences and try to re-unite parties. Bringing it back for GENOCIDE is radical. If it works, thousands of accused will have their day in court. Emmanuel and Theonest are among the first ones to see if GACACA can work Those prisoners who volunteer to take part in GACACA stay in a separate cell from the rest.
Its just as overcrowded but they say they have more freedom. Today Theonest and Emmanuel are packing up to go and show Special Assignment what GACACA means For one thing it means prisoners have a job to do: To talk. To tell their stories so the whole truth about the genocide can come out. And they must beg the forgiveness of the people they wronged Some say that thousands of suspects have been detained for almost a decade without being charged.
Many have already served the maximum sentence they would have been given if convicted. Some say that many innocent people are being held.
UPS MINISTER: We asked ourselves What kind of justice can build a country? We thought about how GACACA originally united people How could we reconcile our people? Thats when we started changing our laws so that we could create a judiciary that would bring about reconciliation among people.
The reasoning behind GACACA is that the GENOCIDE happened precisely because no-one had ever been held accountable for killing and stirring ethnic hatred. Massacres took place in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. No-one was ever prosecuted.
GACACA says: IMPUNITY stops here
Around 50-thousand people were hacked and clubbed to death here at MURAMBI. Imagine the size of a crowd in a packed stadium at a big sports event filling these grounds If one-thousand-five-hundred villagers participated, then each person had to slaughter 8 other people per day for 4 insane/bloody days. After a week of patriotic killing duty, there were mounds of bodies and countless unmarked graves. We found only one survivor willing to meet the confessors Emmanuel Murangira now works as caretaker at the memorial on the site. Its one of many memorials being built around the country to honour and remember the dead of 1994.
UPS MURANGIRA: Do you think what you did was right?
UPS EMMANUEL: At the time it seemed right, but I realised later on how wrong it was. The government in power at the time was misleading us
UPS MURANGIRA: Why are all the villagers around here still lying, saying that only soldiers came that day?
UPS EMMANUEL: There were some soldiers, but more villagers were taking part
UPS MURANGIRA: Id like to remind you of something some genocidaires stayed on after the massacre to bury all the dead. There were so many they used bulldozers provided by the Ministry of Public Works the rest of them carried on their killing plans even running after those who had managed to escape.
UPS EMMANUEL: At the time I had the heart of a wild beast, there was no human feeling at all
UPS MURANGIRA: A man is a man. You have to realise there is no other way than to slowly forget because you cant bring your family back or all your animals that they stole and ate. You have to just take this slow and easy.
BYUMBA, NORTHERN RWANDA, RUKONDO VILLAGE GACACA COURT
As victims and perpetrators search for common ground, GACACA is meant to lay the foundation. Last year RWANDESE elected judges from their midst ordinary people, with integrity and without bias or known involvement in the GENOCIDE. This month they convened at first glance an incredibly facile solution to a problem of epic proportions a hundred residents and nineteen judges on a hilltop, under a tree
UPS GERALDINE: The Rwandese are saying things can work this way, but people from outside have a lot of doubt, not just because they doubt the efforts of Rwandese people, but because they cant imagine it GACACA is beyond ones imagination how can a court so small, at that level, where people are not educated, they are not lawyers, theyve never been to school how can they deal with a crime of GENOCIDE? An International Crime?
UPS MEETING: The old man is saying someone should be punished if he pointed out victims, who would otherwise not have been killed who wants to say something else?
UPS ANSWER: I think the one who pointed out must be more severely punished than the one who killed, because the killer wouldnt have known by himself that there was a victim in hiding
UPS GERALDINE: Do you all agree with him?
UPS ANSWER: I think the one who killed should be punished more than the one who pointed out because he could have just been pointing out without the intention of having the victim killed
UPS GERALDINE: But the one who pointed out is surely guilty because he wanted the victim dead? Maybe he wanted that person killed but was scared to do the job Maybe he couldnt do it maybe didnt have the weapons
UPS GERALDINE: People have come to realise that they should go beyond just crying for history, their own dead, their own property they feel there should be life after death
MURAMBI GENOCIDE MEMORIAL, GIKONGORO, SOUTH-WESTERN RWANDA
UPS MURANGIRA: I started by exhuming all the bodies, since Id witnessed their brutal burial by the machine All the people around here were denying that thered been any killing After counting all the bodies and realising how fortunate I was to be alive, I just thanked God and kept quiet, because there is no other way
UPS EMMANUEL: I am asking forgiveness from this man in particular, and everyone he knows in case he runs into them
UPS MURANGIRA: You understand it was the educated people at the top who caused it. They organised meetings and convinced people for example even HUTUS who were married to TUTSIS were told that the TUTSIS were bad and must be killed. The whole idea came from the top it didnt come from people like him
Like Theonest & Emmanuel, suspects will now be summoned from the safe enclosure of prison to go and testify at GACACA trials, to face the communities they devastated. Many will also see their own families for the first time in 8 years and hear how theyve coped with the stigma of guilt.
UPS HAVUGIMANA: I was born here, so was my father and through all the wars I never committed any sin before God. I raised those kids to adulthood and we never had anything to do with the killing.
UPS THEONEST: Im very ashamed They ordered us to kill people. The authorities were there. You cut the first one, you cut the second one in front of the authorities and they say nothing. Thats the problem
UPS HAVUGIMANA: Let me tell you the old GACACA was about reconciling families if there is one group here and another there, conflicting, they will come together and make peace. They have to bring some homebrew to drink together so that families could be on good terms again.
No one denies that it will take more than a pot of homebrew to unite the accused in GIKONGORO PRISON and the communities they wrecked at MURAMBI. But the new GACACA seems everyones best chance yet, to find life after death.
NYAMATA GENOCIDE MEMORIAL, SOUTHERN RWANDA
Some believe the moments before death are ones loneliest. If thats true, then EUGENIE spent the three months of the GENOCIDE in utter desolation.
UPS EUGENIE: The whole church was bathed in blood now I cant imagine where all the blood went The walls were smeared with blood, because there were so many people pressed up against the walls. Today one would think its been repainted to cover the stains. Blood was streaming out of the bodies that lay piled up After the war I always thought I would die from all the blood I swallowed I was forced to swallow it.
UPS EUGENIE: I spent a week lying there. I even forgot that I had had a baby with me. I got hungry, but couldnt find anything to eat. I would reach out touch here touch there only to find that all the people around me were rotting. I tried to wriggle loose, but I only managed after some time, when the bodies started to disintegrate.
Bathed in death and barely intelligent, EUGENIE stumbled from the church, leaving about 5000 bodies behind. Miraculously, she found refuge in the home of a kind HUTU neighbour. He had also rescued her 7-year old son the oldest of her 3 children. But soon bands of killers sniffed them out at this house too...
UPS EUGENIE: Then the man said: Those ones who know they are HUTUTS, be quick and stand up My son, called Kayiranga, begged the man to forgive him, saying he would never be a Tutsi again He told my son to get up and say it while standing. As he stood up the man cut his head off. My sons body fell across my legs and his head fell on the ground.
BYUMBA, NORTHERN RWANDA, KAVUMU VILLAGE GACACA COURT
Its for millions of survivors with stories like EUGENIEs, that GACACA was revived. After 8 years of trying to forget, now the country will sit down to remember. In the old GACACA, judges were respected community elders. Now theyre elected by and from the community and trained by the Justice Department. Few outside observers believed RWANDA could manage this logistical nightmare much less set up more than 10,000 courts with about a quarter of a million judges.
UP GERALDINE: Personally I hoped for much from the judges, but I wasnt sure things would go as well as I saw I didnt know theyd be that organised. So when I went there and my fears were baseless, I was so excited. I congratulated the efforts of this department.
But being ready to start the job is a small challenge compared to the complex human rights questions around due legal process and fairness. How can deeply traumatised communities be trusted to judge themselves impartially? Only 12 GACACA courts have been selected to start a three-month test run. The government will address these concerns and sort out teething problems. Then the thousands of other courts will convene. Theres barely a single RWANDAN who wasnt displaced during the previous governments rule. Courts must now compile lists of who used to stay where and where everyone is now Then they will determine where the perpetrators are being held and arrange for them and the witnesses to come and testify. A session can only start when a hundred adults are present. Decisions are based on consensus and everyone is expected to contribute
UPS MEETING: It seems like the other place where we used to meet isnt the favourite anymore no-one will come all the way back here to fetch the chairs and take them there Those of you who really want to meet there will be condemning the president to sitting on the ground! Youll be in trouble! I think this is a fine place. Thank you.
Not all decisions will be easy prisoners will come to confess, victims will testify. The assembly will decide if the whole truth has been told. Then, there will be sentencing. The reward for co-operating and confessing is a lenient sentence
UPSOUND MINISTER MUCYO: Giving a criminal three years in stead of the maximum sentence which is death, will help us find out exactly what he did. If he lied previously, he will now be exposed and since theres the political will for nation-building, he only gets three years. But, at least he wont be hiding among the population, hiding behind amnesty while he was involved everyones role must be clear. If you killed, if you followed, if you mobilised everyones role will be known.
UPSOUND EUGENIE: Whenever I said anything, he cut me whenever I cried that he was hurting me, he cut me again my head was virtually severed/detached/cut off? from my neck. They killed everybody in the house and two days later they came back because they could hear babies trapped under the corpses When they came back I begged that HUTU to kill me, to finish me off, because my body refused to die. The HUTU told me he was not going to compete with God, because YOU WILL NOT LAST TWO DAYS!
UPS EUGENIE: I dont have any faith anymore this GACACA theyre talking about no-one has asked me for forgiveness Ill never forgive any HUTU.
GIKONGORO PRISON, SOUTH EASTERN RWANDA
Forgiving is as tough a job as asking for forgiveness There are still many who believe they were following orders Many still cling to the old ideologies of hatred...
UPS PATRICE: Im going to give you my honest testimony Im appealing to those who share the crimes who are in this prison to take a step forward and confess their crimes.
The wall of resistance is slowly crumbling as prisoners start to see the benefits of confessing As they see justice approaching As they gain confidence in a government thats kept them alive and whos surprisingly, not preaching revenge.
UPS PATRICE: We should put the same energy into confessing and asking for forgiveness that we put into killing. Thats the answer for this country.
PRES. PAUL KAGAME, PARLIAMENT, 18 JUNE 2002
After every holocaust in history, the world has sighed as one: WE WILL NEVER FORGET, WE WILL NEVER ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN AGAIN. But RWANDA has decided not to take a chance again on an international community that did nothing to prevent or stop the GENOCIDE and has done little to support its quest for justice. GACACA is a RWANDAN solution for a RWANDAN problem. It was officially launched in Parliament last month. The seat of government itself bears testimony to the battles for survival and the efforts to rebuild.
UPS KAGAME: I would like in particular to request victims of GENOCIDE to be patient when they listen to the testimonies of those who know what really happened To the perpetrators, I ask you to be COURAGEOUS admit your involvement, confess your guilt and ask for forgiveness. I would like to remind the judges who have been elected to serve on the GACACA courts to be people of integrity If we all raise up and support the GACACA COURT, we will have demonstrated our love of for our country and for our fellow Rwandans
NYAMATA GENOCIDE MEMORIAL, SOUTHERN RWANDA
GACACA can take up to six years to finish its work. Success is not a foregone conclusion. The best laid plans may not be enough to heal the past to reunite the guilty and their victims.
UPS EUGENIE: If hed admitted from the start that hed cut me, that hed killed my child after refusing to forgive him for being a Tutsi, I could have forgiven him. But he started by denying it. Hes still in prison, but I live next to his wife and children! We go to church together we dont insult one another theres no better reconciliation than that BUT I dont want anyone to pursue me to testify, it wont give me peace.
PRISONERS WORKS PROGRAMME, BUTARE, SOUTHERN RWANDA
GACACA will itself be judged by many things by every bone that remains to be exhumed from unmarked graves and given a dignified resting place by the testimony and dwindling tears of survivors who forgive and seek peace but perhaps most of all by the efforts of killers to bring truth and life back to their land.
August 2002 25 mins
Its Saturday afternoon in KIGALI, the end of June, 2002. As its virtually on the equator, winter never really comes to the capital of Rwanda.
KICUKIRO SUBURB, KIGALI, SATURDAY 22 JUNE 2002
But a chill has set in around the southern suburbs while preparing the soil for a new vegetable patch this morning, this woman dug up some bones. Neighbours came to see it turned out to be the remains of almost an entire family dumped together down a pit toilet. A T-shirt stuck to the remains of a child, tells the story it belonged to the neighbours daughter he hasnt seen it in 8 years. 30 bodies have been found just today. A representative for families still searching for long-lost loved ones comes to see if anyone is recognisable.
UPS GUIDE: This is Hermans family this mans arms were bound at his back they were thrown down pit toilets
UPS JUSTIN: Thats too much unbearable
For eight years Rwandans have been counting the cost of their 1994 holocaust. In a hundred days a million people were killed by their government, their neighbours and friends But the Rwandans whove remained behind now want to live life differently.
THE HEALING LAND
PRISONERS MEETING, GIKONGORO, SOUTH-WESTERN RWANDA
UPS EMMANUEL: My name is Emmanuel NYIRIMBUGA. The day after President Habyarimanas jet was shot down, I woke up to go to work. On the way there, I met a policeman who asked me WHERE ARE YOU GOING? I told him I was going to work. He said: TO WORK?? WHEN HABYARIMANA HAS DIED?
Like most men in RWANDAs prisons, on the morning of 7 April 1994, Emmanuel was told to abandon his own plans, suspend his life and go and join a war. Tutsis had killed the president, or so the villagers were told by the Hutu government. It was time for every HUTU to go and kill TUTSIS, so that all Rwandas problems of poverty, land hunger and conflict would be solved.
MURAMBI GENOCIDE MEMORIAL, GIKONGORO, SOUTH WEST RWANDA
Emmanuels job for the first two weeks of the genocide would be to man a roadblock near the new technical college MURAMBI. He was instructed to direct fleeing Tutsis to the unfinished college buildings and tell them they could hide there.
UPS EMMANUEL: At around 3am, still at the roadblock, I saw policemen coming. Their trucks had been bringing people all night long. They came through and picked us up too they told us we were going to MURAMBI to kill all the people there. So we arrived and cordoned off the area we were so many we formed a human wall
UPS EMMANUEL: The police made it clear that anyone not taking part in the killing, if he was found out, would be killed too. Some people didnt go to kill but fearful guys like me rushed to the killing scene
Thousands of ordinary villagers were psyched up for the massacre. Some brought their own weapons, some were supplied by the government. Theonest was given a hand grenade
UPS THEONEST: At that point someone got a gun in the complex. Captain SEBUHURA ordered us to shoot. The villagers circled the place with spears, machetes, pangas, big sticks and I was there with my grenade. I threw it on somebody who died on the spot.
Theonest and Emmanuel are the only two whove ever confessed to the massacre of more 50 000 people at MURAMBI. One-thousand-five-hundred villagers are thought to have taken part. These two have pointed out many in prison who steadfastly refuse to admit their guilt. Co-operative and keen to get out or prison, Theonest and Emmanuel are held up as examples to the others. Since the genocide, the government has brought abound 6000 genocidaires to book. In RWANDA the punishment for murder can be death or life imprisonment. But another 100 000 prisoners have not had the courts even look at their files yet.
UPS MINISTER MUCYO: We realised that all our laws were of no use under conditions of GENOCIDE Those laws were made for normal, peaceful times. Thats when we realised the GENOCIDE trials will never end that they would take more than 200 years will the suspects even still be alive by then?
Rwanda started brainstorming and came up with GACACA. GACCA is the name people gave to peacemaking efforts in the old days. Respected elders would judge offences and try to re-unite parties. Bringing it back for GENOCIDE is radical. If it works, thousands of accused will have their day in court. Emmanuel and Theonest are among the first ones to see if GACACA can work Those prisoners who volunteer to take part in GACACA stay in a separate cell from the rest.
Its just as overcrowded but they say they have more freedom. Today Theonest and Emmanuel are packing up to go and show Special Assignment what GACACA means For one thing it means prisoners have a job to do: To talk. To tell their stories so the whole truth about the genocide can come out. And they must beg the forgiveness of the people they wronged Some say that thousands of suspects have been detained for almost a decade without being charged.
Many have already served the maximum sentence they would have been given if convicted. Some say that many innocent people are being held.
UPS MINISTER: We asked ourselves What kind of justice can build a country? We thought about how GACACA originally united people How could we reconcile our people? Thats when we started changing our laws so that we could create a judiciary that would bring about reconciliation among people.
The reasoning behind GACACA is that the GENOCIDE happened precisely because no-one had ever been held accountable for killing and stirring ethnic hatred. Massacres took place in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. No-one was ever prosecuted.
GACACA says: IMPUNITY stops here
Around 50-thousand people were hacked and clubbed to death here at MURAMBI. Imagine the size of a crowd in a packed stadium at a big sports event filling these grounds If one-thousand-five-hundred villagers participated, then each person had to slaughter 8 other people per day for 4 insane/bloody days. After a week of patriotic killing duty, there were mounds of bodies and countless unmarked graves. We found only one survivor willing to meet the confessors Emmanuel Murangira now works as caretaker at the memorial on the site. Its one of many memorials being built around the country to honour and remember the dead of 1994.
UPS MURANGIRA: Do you think what you did was right?
UPS EMMANUEL: At the time it seemed right, but I realised later on how wrong it was. The government in power at the time was misleading us
UPS MURANGIRA: Why are all the villagers around here still lying, saying that only soldiers came that day?
UPS EMMANUEL: There were some soldiers, but more villagers were taking part
UPS MURANGIRA: Id like to remind you of something some genocidaires stayed on after the massacre to bury all the dead. There were so many they used bulldozers provided by the Ministry of Public Works the rest of them carried on their killing plans even running after those who had managed to escape.
UPS EMMANUEL: At the time I had the heart of a wild beast, there was no human feeling at all
UPS MURANGIRA: A man is a man. You have to realise there is no other way than to slowly forget because you cant bring your family back or all your animals that they stole and ate. You have to just take this slow and easy.
BYUMBA, NORTHERN RWANDA, RUKONDO VILLAGE GACACA COURT
As victims and perpetrators search for common ground, GACACA is meant to lay the foundation. Last year RWANDESE elected judges from their midst ordinary people, with integrity and without bias or known involvement in the GENOCIDE. This month they convened at first glance an incredibly facile solution to a problem of epic proportions a hundred residents and nineteen judges on a hilltop, under a tree
UPS GERALDINE: The Rwandese are saying things can work this way, but people from outside have a lot of doubt, not just because they doubt the efforts of Rwandese people, but because they cant imagine it GACACA is beyond ones imagination how can a court so small, at that level, where people are not educated, they are not lawyers, theyve never been to school how can they deal with a crime of GENOCIDE? An International Crime?
UPS MEETING: The old man is saying someone should be punished if he pointed out victims, who would otherwise not have been killed who wants to say something else?
UPS ANSWER: I think the one who pointed out must be more severely punished than the one who killed, because the killer wouldnt have known by himself that there was a victim in hiding
UPS GERALDINE: Do you all agree with him?
UPS ANSWER: I think the one who killed should be punished more than the one who pointed out because he could have just been pointing out without the intention of having the victim killed
UPS GERALDINE: But the one who pointed out is surely guilty because he wanted the victim dead? Maybe he wanted that person killed but was scared to do the job Maybe he couldnt do it maybe didnt have the weapons
UPS GERALDINE: People have come to realise that they should go beyond just crying for history, their own dead, their own property they feel there should be life after death
MURAMBI GENOCIDE MEMORIAL, GIKONGORO, SOUTH-WESTERN RWANDA
UPS MURANGIRA: I started by exhuming all the bodies, since Id witnessed their brutal burial by the machine All the people around here were denying that thered been any killing After counting all the bodies and realising how fortunate I was to be alive, I just thanked God and kept quiet, because there is no other way
UPS EMMANUEL: I am asking forgiveness from this man in particular, and everyone he knows in case he runs into them
UPS MURANGIRA: You understand it was the educated people at the top who caused it. They organised meetings and convinced people for example even HUTUS who were married to TUTSIS were told that the TUTSIS were bad and must be killed. The whole idea came from the top it didnt come from people like him
Like Theonest & Emmanuel, suspects will now be summoned from the safe enclosure of prison to go and testify at GACACA trials, to face the communities they devastated. Many will also see their own families for the first time in 8 years and hear how theyve coped with the stigma of guilt.
UPS HAVUGIMANA: I was born here, so was my father and through all the wars I never committed any sin before God. I raised those kids to adulthood and we never had anything to do with the killing.
UPS THEONEST: Im very ashamed They ordered us to kill people. The authorities were there. You cut the first one, you cut the second one in front of the authorities and they say nothing. Thats the problem
UPS HAVUGIMANA: Let me tell you the old GACACA was about reconciling families if there is one group here and another there, conflicting, they will come together and make peace. They have to bring some homebrew to drink together so that families could be on good terms again.
No one denies that it will take more than a pot of homebrew to unite the accused in GIKONGORO PRISON and the communities they wrecked at MURAMBI. But the new GACACA seems everyones best chance yet, to find life after death.
NYAMATA GENOCIDE MEMORIAL, SOUTHERN RWANDA
Some believe the moments before death are ones loneliest. If thats true, then EUGENIE spent the three months of the GENOCIDE in utter desolation.
UPS EUGENIE: The whole church was bathed in blood now I cant imagine where all the blood went The walls were smeared with blood, because there were so many people pressed up against the walls. Today one would think its been repainted to cover the stains. Blood was streaming out of the bodies that lay piled up After the war I always thought I would die from all the blood I swallowed I was forced to swallow it.
UPS EUGENIE: I spent a week lying there. I even forgot that I had had a baby with me. I got hungry, but couldnt find anything to eat. I would reach out touch here touch there only to find that all the people around me were rotting. I tried to wriggle loose, but I only managed after some time, when the bodies started to disintegrate.
Bathed in death and barely intelligent, EUGENIE stumbled from the church, leaving about 5000 bodies behind. Miraculously, she found refuge in the home of a kind HUTU neighbour. He had also rescued her 7-year old son the oldest of her 3 children. But soon bands of killers sniffed them out at this house too...
UPS EUGENIE: Then the man said: Those ones who know they are HUTUTS, be quick and stand up My son, called Kayiranga, begged the man to forgive him, saying he would never be a Tutsi again He told my son to get up and say it while standing. As he stood up the man cut his head off. My sons body fell across my legs and his head fell on the ground.
BYUMBA, NORTHERN RWANDA, KAVUMU VILLAGE GACACA COURT
Its for millions of survivors with stories like EUGENIEs, that GACACA was revived. After 8 years of trying to forget, now the country will sit down to remember. In the old GACACA, judges were respected community elders. Now theyre elected by and from the community and trained by the Justice Department. Few outside observers believed RWANDA could manage this logistical nightmare much less set up more than 10,000 courts with about a quarter of a million judges.
UP GERALDINE: Personally I hoped for much from the judges, but I wasnt sure things would go as well as I saw I didnt know theyd be that organised. So when I went there and my fears were baseless, I was so excited. I congratulated the efforts of this department.
But being ready to start the job is a small challenge compared to the complex human rights questions around due legal process and fairness. How can deeply traumatised communities be trusted to judge themselves impartially? Only 12 GACACA courts have been selected to start a three-month test run. The government will address these concerns and sort out teething problems. Then the thousands of other courts will convene. Theres barely a single RWANDAN who wasnt displaced during the previous governments rule. Courts must now compile lists of who used to stay where and where everyone is now Then they will determine where the perpetrators are being held and arrange for them and the witnesses to come and testify. A session can only start when a hundred adults are present. Decisions are based on consensus and everyone is expected to contribute
UPS MEETING: It seems like the other place where we used to meet isnt the favourite anymore no-one will come all the way back here to fetch the chairs and take them there Those of you who really want to meet there will be condemning the president to sitting on the ground! Youll be in trouble! I think this is a fine place. Thank you.
Not all decisions will be easy prisoners will come to confess, victims will testify. The assembly will decide if the whole truth has been told. Then, there will be sentencing. The reward for co-operating and confessing is a lenient sentence
UPSOUND MINISTER MUCYO: Giving a criminal three years in stead of the maximum sentence which is death, will help us find out exactly what he did. If he lied previously, he will now be exposed and since theres the political will for nation-building, he only gets three years. But, at least he wont be hiding among the population, hiding behind amnesty while he was involved everyones role must be clear. If you killed, if you followed, if you mobilised everyones role will be known.
UPSOUND EUGENIE: Whenever I said anything, he cut me whenever I cried that he was hurting me, he cut me again my head was virtually severed/detached/cut off? from my neck. They killed everybody in the house and two days later they came back because they could hear babies trapped under the corpses When they came back I begged that HUTU to kill me, to finish me off, because my body refused to die. The HUTU told me he was not going to compete with God, because YOU WILL NOT LAST TWO DAYS!
UPS EUGENIE: I dont have any faith anymore this GACACA theyre talking about no-one has asked me for forgiveness Ill never forgive any HUTU.
GIKONGORO PRISON, SOUTH EASTERN RWANDA
Forgiving is as tough a job as asking for forgiveness There are still many who believe they were following orders Many still cling to the old ideologies of hatred...
UPS PATRICE: Im going to give you my honest testimony Im appealing to those who share the crimes who are in this prison to take a step forward and confess their crimes.
The wall of resistance is slowly crumbling as prisoners start to see the benefits of confessing As they see justice approaching As they gain confidence in a government thats kept them alive and whos surprisingly, not preaching revenge.
UPS PATRICE: We should put the same energy into confessing and asking for forgiveness that we put into killing. Thats the answer for this country.
PRES. PAUL KAGAME, PARLIAMENT, 18 JUNE 2002
After every holocaust in history, the world has sighed as one: WE WILL NEVER FORGET, WE WILL NEVER ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN AGAIN. But RWANDA has decided not to take a chance again on an international community that did nothing to prevent or stop the GENOCIDE and has done little to support its quest for justice. GACACA is a RWANDAN solution for a RWANDAN problem. It was officially launched in Parliament last month. The seat of government itself bears testimony to the battles for survival and the efforts to rebuild.
UPS KAGAME: I would like in particular to request victims of GENOCIDE to be patient when they listen to the testimonies of those who know what really happened To the perpetrators, I ask you to be COURAGEOUS admit your involvement, confess your guilt and ask for forgiveness. I would like to remind the judges who have been elected to serve on the GACACA courts to be people of integrity If we all raise up and support the GACACA COURT, we will have demonstrated our love of for our country and for our fellow Rwandans
NYAMATA GENOCIDE MEMORIAL, SOUTHERN RWANDA
GACACA can take up to six years to finish its work. Success is not a foregone conclusion. The best laid plans may not be enough to heal the past to reunite the guilty and their victims.
UPS EUGENIE: If hed admitted from the start that hed cut me, that hed killed my child after refusing to forgive him for being a Tutsi, I could have forgiven him. But he started by denying it. Hes still in prison, but I live next to his wife and children! We go to church together we dont insult one another theres no better reconciliation than that BUT I dont want anyone to pursue me to testify, it wont give me peace.
PRISONERS WORKS PROGRAMME, BUTARE, SOUTHERN RWANDA
GACACA will itself be judged by many things by every bone that remains to be exhumed from unmarked graves and given a dignified resting place by the testimony and dwindling tears of survivors who forgive and seek peace but perhaps most of all by the efforts of killers to bring truth and life back to their land.