President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and his closer inner circle “Abiru” have not ceased to demand a “pound of flesh/justice” from both the international and the Hutu community since the end of the civil war (1994) in Rwanda. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was quickly established by the International Community, pressured but Kigali, in its guilty conscious effort to make amends for not coming to the rescue of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans in those dark 100 days. Hutus suspected of involvement in the preparation and execution of the Genocide were arrested and trialed for crimes against humanity and Genocide. Kagame and his Abiru were unsatisfied with the international justice trials of the big fish accused of masterminding the atrocities. Determined to get they pound of fresh/justice at all cost, they created the “Gacaca Courts” to make sure that every Hutu peasants who took part, by choice or forced, in the killings is brought to justice. No Hutu within or without Rwanda was shielded from Kagame’s version of mob justice where the plaintiff is the judge, jury and star prosecutor’s witness at the same time! The Gacaca courts in Rwanda have in no form or shape contributed to sewing the fabric of a society torn apart by deep and extended culture of hatred and division, au contraire, they reinforced the ethnic divisions and burned all existing bridges of a possible reconciliation.. The Gacaca courts become a tool Kagame used to satisfy the mass Tutsi community in their cry for vengeance.
In this article I will concern myself with the responsibility of Kagame’s government’s toward national unity and reconciliation after taking power at the end of the civil war and upon stopping the Genocide. Since 1994, Kagame and his Abiru have been obsessed on obtaining their revenge on, and judicial punishment for, the Hutu community –duly deserved mind you- but these to the detriment of the unity, peace and reconciliation of the Rwandan community!
President Kagame -unlike President Nelson Mandela in South Africa “SA” at the end of the Apartheid Regime and his own forced imprisonment for over two decades- failed to seize the moment to unite the Rwandan community. Like SA’s blacks the Tutsi community was at the dawn of a new era; the end of long years of persecution and years of being denied the fundamental right of every citizen –Citizenship! President Mandela chose the path of peace and reconciliation as means to a long lasting unity for his divided community. He dedicated his life to justice through reconciliation and practiced a self denial of revenge and judicial punishment of the oppressors by leading by example with forgiveness of all that was Apartheid.
Shouldn’t blacks in SA, with Mandela as their newly elected president, have demanded and obtained from the international community justice for crimes against humanity committed during the apartheid era by apartheid leaders? Shouldn’t the newly elected majority government in SA have the duly right to arbitrary arrest all blacks and whites who -indirectly or directly- supported and aided the apartheid system in all its atrocities? Wasn’t justice by revenge and judicial punishment overwarmingly the feeling and desire among the majority of the blacks and whites that lived and suffered under the apartheid evil regime? Didn’t all the families of black and white victims that never saw justice for their loved ones who disappeared, imprisoned, tortured, assassinated by the apartheid regime deserve to judge their apartheid neighbors who said or did nothing to condemn the crimes of the racist regime?
The sentiments that existed in SA in 1990 are identical to those present in Rwanda when Kagame and his Abiru took power. Kagame took a different direction unlike President Mandela and the SA community as a whole. He was consumed by the desire for revenge and judicial punishment as the source of justice. He pressured the international community in creating the ICTR to judge the master minders of the genocide. He created the Gacaca courts to judge everyone who closely or distantly had anything to do with the atrocities of 1994. He changed the Rwandan Constitution and legitimized himself as the oppressed turned oppressor, by curtailing any kind of political opposition. He buries his hand in the sand in the face of the core problem behind the Rwandan society’s division –the existence of ethnic hatred- by decreeing illegal to talk of Hutu and Tutsi. He introduced impartial laws e.g. genocide ideology, to severely punish and marginalize Hutus and those he doomed “Genocidaire” or in opposition in general. He ordered the attacks on Hutu refugee camps in Eastern Congo in the 1990’s and in the process skillful and intentionally massacred hundreds of thousands women and children civilian Hutus. He promoted his newly painted picture of the Rwandan society, Hutu as killers and Tutsi as victims, in the process polarized for good the already divided community. These served to maintain Kagame in power in Kigali, and his success was guaranteed by a force loyalty and complicity by association of the Tutsi community in crimes committed by Kagame and his Abiru.
Kagame and his Abiru set unjust precedents on how to treat individuals alleged or accused of committing crimes against humanity and genocide, in their reluctant impartial Gacaca courts and arbitrary imprisonment of the Hutu community; in their severity of punishment for individual found guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide; in their devoted and almost religious pursuit of the pound of flesh from all Hutus. To repair the national bond that exists between the Tutsi and the Hutu communities in Rwanda there is need to trial all crimes before, during and after the civil war in Rwanda.
The international community in a well calculated and executed “Barthazarian” manner is finally gearing towards its responsibility in rendering an equitable justice for Rwandan. Kagame and his Abiru are asked to answer for crimes committed by their Tutsi army against hundreds of thousands of civilians Hutus in Eastern Congo in the UN Human Rights report on Congo.
“Balthazar” can finally ask Kagame and his Abiru to take their pound of flesh that they so dearly require and is duly theirs! However, “Balthazar” must make sure that President Kagame and his Abiru can explain where the blood on their hands, body and clothes is from? The bond of justice in Rwanda demands that only with innocent, clear and clean hands, one should take the pound of flesh he duly deserve! For if there is so much blood on their hands, body and clothes how can Balthazar be sure in rendering justice that Kagame and his Abiru have not already taken the pound of flesh? And judging by the stains on their hands and clothes possible took more than their share the bond entitled them to!
By Rwamo U Rwema; Oct. 2013
