Survivors of Rwandan Genocide Fear Guilty Will Get Away With Murder

The contagious sound of laughter and cheerful chatter greets teacher Julia Mukamutari on most mornings as she strolls past the local prison on her daily errands. On a typical morning, she waved at the throng of sweaty bodies crushed up against the bars of the jail. Some of the lean, adolescent figures smiled and waved back.

Mukamutari knows them personally. Many of them used to be her students. Now, they are inmates, accused of participating as little more than children in the slaughter of more than 2,000 ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda’s central Taba province. The rampage was just a small piece of the 1994 genocide that eventually claimed more than 800,000 lives, most of them Tutsis, across Rwanda.

Mukamutari is convinced that, given the chance, the primary school children she once taught would have followed the orders of adults and killed her too. About 2,400 minors, including 100 adolescent girls, were jailed after the slaughter on suspicion of genocide-related crimes.

Judging by the seeming nonchalance of many of the young prisoners, Mukamutari--who lost five of her six children, her parents and several siblings during the three-month killing frenzy--said she would not be surprised if they felt no remorse for their crimes or compassion for their victims.

Under the wrong circumstances, she fears, they could kill again.

Teacher’s Ties to Ex-Pupils Emblematic

The relationship between these cheerful, jailed youngsters and their former teacher goes to the heart of the difficulty in reconciling Rwandans after the genocide.

Efforts by the Tutsi-dominated government are a mix of punishment for those suspected of taking part in the genocide and of measures to build a society that overcomes mistrust between ethnic Tutsis and Hutus.

About 125,000 people have been detained for allegedly taking part in the genocide. More than 300 have gone on trial; 116 have been sentenced to death; 22 have been executed.

But the government’s recent decision to promote national healing by starting to release 10,000 prisoners, most of them elderly, sick or children whose files contain no concrete evidence against them, has angered survivors. They fear scores of people may simply get away with murder.

Furthermore, unless society comes to grips with how individuals got swept up in the killing, and the killers show some remorse, these survivors doubt that reconciliation can ever really take place.

For many, it is the failure to understand how such butchery could possibly have occurred among neighbors, friends and even family, that is hindering their ability to forgive and forget. Others believe that a simple apology would work wonders.

“If someone killed someone in your family and has not even come to ask for forgiveness, how can you reconcile with such people?” asked Mukamutari, 51, who testified before a U.N. tribunal against Jean Paul Akayesu, an ethnic Hutu and mayor of Taba during the massacres. “If someone came to me and said, ‘Julia, what I did was wrong,’ I would forgive him, because I know, no matter what, my family is not coming back. The problem is, no one is repenting.”

Jean Kambanda, Rwanda’s prime minister during the genocide, confessed to his role in the slaughter and was sentenced by a U.N. court in September to life in prison. The U.N. tribunal sentenced Akayesu, who still insists that he is innocent, to three life terms for genocide and crimes against humanity, plus 80 years for other crimes, including rape. The terms will be served concurrently, amounting to a single life sentence.

Some Skeptical of Reprisals’ Effect

Some Rwandans doubt the view of outside observers that the punishment of such leading figures will help kindle a spirit of unity among average people.

Mukamutari said she and her one remaining daughter, now 20, survived by hiding in banana fields and eventually fleeing to the schoolteacher’s neighboring home province. However, both have received written death threats ever since Mukamutari gave eyewitness testimony against Akayesu.

“People we live with think we are bad because we testified against the others,” said Mukamutari, her soft brown eyes welling with tears. “Some of them were hoping that we were killed, not [hoping] to meet us in the streets; it is not good for them. We are seen as troublemakers.”

Josue Kayijaho, president of the League of Assns. for the Defense of Human Rights, which is based in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, said most survivors still feel afraid. They want some kind of guarantee from the government that their former enemies won’t try to kill them again.

“People want 100% protection and security,” said Kayijaho, a physician and genocide survivor himself. “When they say they want justice . . . they mean, ‘Will we get protection from our killers?’ ”

Kayijaho said killings have continued since Hutu refugees returned from what is now Congo (then Zaire) in 1996, “and the killers are always targeting survivors.”

The Rwandan government has pledged to promote reconciliation and national unity by establishing the rule of law, building a political process that includes all ethnic groups, resettling repatriated refugees and, above all, bringing to justice those responsible for the genocide.

Citizens are no longer required to carry identity cards that state their ethnicity. Groups of citizens are being urged to attend monthlong solidarity camps, where they are bombarded with the message of brotherly love, taught about the origins of Hutu-Tutsi mistrust and educated about proper communal behavior.

Kayijaho said that 5% of the national budget has been set aside in a public fund to assist genocide survivors with housing, medical treatment and education.

Many foreign lawyers have condemned the 300 or so trials conducted so far by Rwandan courts as unfair. The vast majority of suspects still are crammed into jails, awaiting trial.

“There is really no punishment that is adequate for the crimes these people committed,” said Gerald Gahima, secretary-general of the Rwandan Ministry of Justice, of defendants in cases being handled by either the Rwandan or U.N. courts. “Personally, what really matters is not the sentence but the fact that the truth is established and the record is put straight. However you punish them, you can never undo the harm they did.”

Observers say the decision to release thousands of prisoners whose files lacked evidence was partly in response to intense international pressure on Rwanda to do something about severe jail overcrowding. Detainees are sandwiched into small cells with no indication of when or if their cases will ever come to trial.

After the mass killings, when Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu extremist government, many people were detained on a simple accusation rather than hard evidence. Lacking financial and material resources, the country’s legal system was in shambles after four years of civil conflict, and many court officials had fled the country or been killed. It is not clear how many prisoners so far have been released, but Kayijaho said some have been killed in revenge and others have run back to prison for protection.

Suspects Realize Trials’ Inevitability

A confession program, whereby defendants can plead guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence, has attracted more than 2,000 prisoners since April’s executions, according to news reports.

Gahima said many inmates are beginning to realize that they eventually will be prosecuted and punished. Some had been holding out hope that they would be released because the courts would never be able to try them, the justice official said. Others believed that extremist Hutu militias would win their campaign to overthrow the government and release fellow Hutus from prison.

Francine Mukakanimba, another witness in the Akayesu trial, who lives next door to the Taba jail, said she does not feel totally safe because some of her neighbors are related to those imprisoned on genocide charges.

Mukakanimba’s husband, a Hutu construction worker, hid his wife and others at a building site. Some were camouflaged on rooftops, others stuffed into pit latrines.

“Hutus and Tutsis talk, but relations are not good,” said Mukakanimba, 38, who lost her parents and nine siblings during the massacres. She saw many of her former Hutu acquaintances participating in rapes and killings.

It is this unfathomable aspect of the genocide that has hindered a speedy process of healing, many Rwandans say: Understanding why friends, relatives, neighbors suddenly decided to hack one another to death.

Akayesu, the former mayor, “was a good man,” Mukakanimba said. “He had never done anything to suggest he was anti-Tutsi. We didn’t expect such a thing [as genocide] from him.”

Convicted Mayor Said to Have ‘Changed’

Mukamutari used to work with Akayesu. Before becoming mayor, he was an inspector of schools, and her husband played soccer with him. Mukamutari said Akayesu simply “changed” when he became a member of an extremist Hutu political party.

“He started inciting killing--and he killed himself,” Mukamutari said. “He fulfilled all the requirements to be executed.”

Kayijaho, who worked in Taba’s hospital for five years, also knew Akayesu.

“He was my friend,” he said. “I used to help his wife, who was a nurse at the hospital. I knew his kids.”

But, as Kayijaho explained, during the genocide, the government preached: “If you don’t kill [Tutsis], they will kill you.”

Ephraim Karangwa, Taba’s current mayor, also testified in the Akayesu case and blames the former mayor for the death of his three brothers. He also lost two small children in the blood bath.

Still, he insisted that the government’s reconciliation policy is succeeding and that many Rwandans are consciously trying not to think in terms of ethnic differences.

But he acknowledged that many victims, including himself, find it hard to forgive the perpetrators of one of this century’s worst crimes against humanity. Unless they are properly punished, the hurt, bitterness and mistrust will never subside, said Karangwa.

“There were so many innocent people who died here. . . , he said. “The best [remedy] for reconciliation is justice.”

Gahima, the justice official, said reconciliation “is an ideal that you should aspire to, but it’s something that’s going to take a long time and a lot of effort. It is not something you can achieve overnight.”