Achieving True Justice in Rwanda

The new government of Rwanda wants to bring thousands of killers to justice. That is appropriate, for ethnic massacres cannot go unpunished in Africa or anywhere else.

But the Rwandan Patriotic Front, victors in that country’s bloody civil war, should leave any war-crimes trials to impartial international authorities. Its new government, dominated by Tutsi tribe members, cannot risk even the appearance of revenge on members of the Hutu tribe. That would discourage relief efforts and possibly trigger another cycle of violence.

The world, though slow to give a hand during the Rwandan crisis, is not ignoring what the United Nations described as “the planned and concerted” killing of an estimated 500,000 Tutsi civilians and their moderate Hutu neighbors. On Monday, U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali named three African legal experts to investigate reports of genocide and other atrocities. A similar approach was recently used in Bosnia.

The U.N. Security Council set up the Balkans War Crimes Tribunal for “ethnic cleansing,” murder, rapes and other related offenses committed in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. That step was viewed last year as historic because it was the first international war-crimes tribunal set up since the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II.

Rwanda’s nascent government understandably does not want to wait on the United Nations. But the Patriotic Front is not exactly blameless in the Rwandan conflict. U.N. officials found evidence that it carried out arbitrary executions. In this atmosphere, patience is the best prescription for a country trying to recover from an unprecedented blood bath.

More than 1 million Rwandans fled the chaos. Among the refugees are defeated soldiers who are evading justice. Anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 Hutu soldiers fled to Zaire, for example. They have not relinquished their antagonisms or their promise to retake Rwanda. These former soldiers are not innocent refugees. Many are war criminals standing in line next to people who were their victims. These are the people the Rwandan government wants to put on trial. But it cannot act on its own. To do so would only make reconciliation more difficult between Hutus and Tutsis, and make peace all but impossible in the country they all call home.