Post by Anja Nieser on Sept 26, 2006 17:50:55 GMT -5
Lifting Capital Punishment, and Misread Gacaca Courts
The New Times (Kigali)
ANALYSIS
September 25, 2006
Posted to the web September 25, 2006
By Rwembeho Stephen
Kigali
Rwandans often speak of a million deaths, and they are right. The dead in Rwanda during the genocide can be put at nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust. As Philip Gourevitch says in his book, "we wish to inform you..., it was the most efficient mass killing since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.' According to the Genocide in Rwanda is unique.
It is this unspeakable crime against humanity that calls for justice and the possibility of uniting a moral, economic and politically shattered society of Rwanda. We therefore have to face reality as we discus issues of Gacaca and capital punishment.
The pros and cons of capital punishment
The origin or history of capital punishment can be traced to many years ago, to the famous system commonly known as lynching.
According to Wikipedia encyclopaedia, lynching is a term loosely applied to various forms of violence, usually murder, conceived by its perpetrators as extra-legal punishment of offenders by a summary procedure, ignoring, or even contrary to, the strict forms of law, notably execution, or used as a terrorist method of enforcing social domination.
Victims of lynching have generally been members of marginalised groups or vilified by society. The practice is age-old. For instance, stoning is believed to have started before lapidating was adopted as a judicial form of execution.
Lynching is frequently prevalent in sparsely settled or frontier districts, where government is weak and law enforcers are very few and powerless to enforce law and preserve order. The practice has been common in periods of anarchy. In early twentieth century, it was also significantly found in Russia and south-eastern Europe, but essentially in America.
The word "lynching" is recorded in English since 1835, as a verb derived from the earlier expression "Lynch law" (known since 1811), which seems to have named after the Lynch family, whose surname is derived either from Old English "hlinc" (hill), or from Irish "Loingseach" (sailor), it still remains in dispute.
The most likely eponym for the concept of Lynch law as summary justice is William Lynch, the author of "Lynch's Law", an agreement with the Virginia Legislature on September 22, 1782, which allowed Lynch to pursue and punish criminals in Pittsylvania County, without due process of law, because legal proceedings were, in practical terms, impossible in the area due to the lack of adequate provision of courts.
The term "Lynch mob" as for a group of private persons who collectively practice lynching is attested from 1838. Since the Reconstruction Period, after the Secession in the United States, it came to mean, generally, the summary infliction of capital punishment. The further narrowing of the meaning to extra-legal execution specifically by hanging is from the 20th Century.
After the horrific crimes against humanity, the idea of punishment came into limelight in the Rwandan society. The challenge, however, has been to understand what punishment is or entails so that it is handled with efficiency and effectiveness. What is punishment in the first instance? There are different ways of defining punishment that tend to vary, depending on the individual or individuals defining it.
Punishment involves the deliberate infliction of suffering on a supposed or actual offender for an offence such as a moral or legal transgression. Since punishment involves inflicting pain or deprivation similar to that which the perpetuator of a crime inflicts on his victim, it has generally been agreed that punishment requires moral as well as legal and political justification.
While almost all philosophers agree that punishment is at least sometimes justifiable, they offer various accounts of how it is to be justified and what the infliction of punishment is designed to protect - rights, personal autonomy and private property, a political constitution, or the democratic process, for instance. Utilitarians attempt to justify punishment in terms of the balance of good over evil produced, and thus focus our attention on extrinsic or consequentialist considerations.
Retributivists attempt a justification that links punishment to moral wrongdoing, generally justifying the practice on the grounds that it gives to wrongdoers what they deserve; their focus is thus on the intrinsic wrongness of crime that thereby merits punishment. "Compromise" theorists attempt to combine these two types of theories in a way that retains their perceived strengths while overcoming their perceived weaknesses.
After discussing the various attempts at justification, utilitarian and retributive approaches to determining the amount of punishment will be examined.
On concerns of capital punishment, the strongest argument in favour of capital punishment was made by Professor Immanuel Kant when he proclaimed that punishment inflicted on the guilty should be equal to the wrong done: for instance, capital punishment be mandatory for murder. His retributive theory of punishment leaves execution of the murderer the only option for the crime of killing another person. That is, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, for the pointer of the scales of Justice to stand in balance.
Kant's views are in defence of capital punishment and are based on punishing the guilty in equal proportion to the crime. To most people who hold similar views, capital punishment serves an additional purpose of being a future deterrent to similar crimes. However, it is debatable if this view is completely valid.
"Death penalty advocates punishment under the principle of lex talionis, or 'an eye for an eye' - the belief that punishment should fit the crime. In particular, people who favour capital punishment argue that murderers should be executed in retribution for their crimes and that such retribution serves justice for murder victims and their survivors".
Edward Koch once said: "How can murder be taken seriously if the penalty isn't equally as serious? A crime, after all, is only as severe as the punishment that follows it. It is by exacting the highest penalty for the taking of human life that we affirm the highest value of human life"
International standards of human rights call for either the abolition of the death penalty or, at a minimum, its use in extremely limited cases. In April 1999, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution calling on all States "to establish a moratorium on executions, with a view to completely abolishing the death penalty".
The Commission on Human Rights has also urged States "not to impose the death penalty for any but the most serious crimes" and "progressively to restrict the number of offences for which the death penalty may be imposed".
It was understandable thus that after the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, the immediate answer chosen by the obvious angry people was capital punishment. They were there partly guided by emotions, and since they are cooling down they can now be guided by a lot of wisdom. This wisdom should tell the futility of capital punishment. The summary execution of a terrible criminal, a monster, is actually a favour. He or she needs more than that. Capital punishment in Rwanda, therefore, is a euphemism for legally murdering a person. Criminals can be, and are, executed because capital punishment is a legal institution in Rwanda. But the debatable issue is whether it is serving the purpose it is supposed to be serving.
Controversial issue
Capital punishment remains to be a controversial issue worldwide. It is true that all forms of punishment are subject to human fallibility, but capital punishment really exacerbates the controversy. Many survivors of the Genocide and retributivists have continued to advocate for capital punishment - especially in answering strong crimes like mass massacres and genocide. This is under the belief that an equal response to the crime committed must be meted out. In other words, according to them there must be justice consonant with the atrocious acts.
During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, very many victims were tortured to death. Their killers were so cruel that in most cases they had to slowly batter the victim's heads and other parts of the body before finishing them off. "This kind of cruelty has thus to be answered with an equal punishment," remarked a survivor. But the question remains: can we be able to administer similar torture in capital punishment?
The answer is definitely no, and hence the capital punishment we advocate for does not serve the purpose. We are deterred by our moral restraints to commit similar atrocities in giving capital punishment. If, for example, we are punishing a "monster" who killed by chopping parts off human bodies, are we supposed to chop him or her up in capital punishment?
Take an example of where the first people charged with genocide were killed by firing squad. They may have fired a hundred bullets in their heads, but it takes only one bullet in the head to kill. In this case we do not see any equality in terms of offence and punishment as advocated by retributivists who are the best advocates of capital punishment. The Hamurabi's "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" does not come in, hence rendering capital punishment futile.
This is why we recommend in essence and logic that the Government of Rwanda should comfortably agree to lift the death penalty in Rwanda and retain life sentence which is far better. Supporters of capital punishment will argue though that imprisonment is simply not a sufficient safeguard against the future actions of criminals because it offers the possibility of escape and release on parole. They truly observe that some criminals must be made to pay for their crimes with their lives. Fear of death deters people from committing crimes, proponents say. They also believe that if attached to certain crimes, the penalty of death exerts a positive moral influence by placing a stigma on certain crimes like manslaughter, resulting in attitudes of disgust and horror to such acts.
Furthermore, retentionists insist that the deterrent influence of the death penalty reaches across state lines into jurisdictions that have abolished it, and so all benefit by its continued use. Let's imagine for a moment there was no death penalty for a moment. The only reasonable sentence would a life sentence. This would be costly to the taxpayers - not only in the cost of housing and feeding the prisoner but because of the numerous appeals which waste man-hours and money. By treating criminals in this manner, we are encouraging behaviour that will result in a prison sentence. If there is no threat of death to one who commits a murder, than that person is guaranteed to be provided with a decent living environment until their next parole hearing. They are definitely not getting the punishment they deserve.
Life imprisonment, however, serves the most important psychological torture of leaving the perpetrator to see the people he or she wanted to kill move around alive. It leaves him or her humiliated in a state of hopelessness and shame forever. And in economic terms, the prisoners will live to provide free labour, to directly or indirectly serve the people he or she wanted dead. This kind of torture may not equal the offence committed but will truly give the nearest alternative.
Rwanda government in general and the Ministry of Justice in particular should not find it hard lifting capital punishment as a pre-condition given by ICTR to have the prisoners in question tried in Rwanda. Life imprisonment is just alright for the purpose.
The issue of Gacaca
If you still doubted the Gacaca courts in Rwanda, then you better think otherwise. Gacaca cuts across the whole range of issues that we are looking at: punishment, teaching the public a lesson, reconciliation, etc. There are a lot of things which are addressed by traditional justice. It addresses issues of unity, issues of reconciliation, transition itself, getting out of the ugly past and walking to a better future in a society that was divided but is becoming reconciled.
Critics, however, have continued to have their arguments. Helena Cobbana, for example, argues: "The Gacaca courts have very strong 're-educative' role ... to attempt to almost coercively 're-educate' the Hutus. The approach is a sort of melding of Maoist views on this score with the heavy Christian emphasis on the virtues of confession and the need for confession before there is 'absolution'." This kind of negative attitude from international scholars only gives us their degree of naivety in the system of justice's efficiency.
And according to Craig Timberg: "Gacaca officials, who began tracking the suicides in March after an initial round of cases in January and February last year, have documented the horrors: An elderly man drowned himself in Lake Kivu, on Rwanda's western border, on the day he was accused of killing several of his grandchildren. A 28-year-old man, the last surviving member of his family, killed himself after being accused of raping his Tutsi mother, according to Gacaca officials. 'Sometimes we discover a situation we cannot understand ourselves,' said the court's Executive Secretary, Domitilla Mukantaganzwa. 'We are praying for our nation.'"
What does this indicate? They are trying to show us a resigned society. But we are not, and the fact that people hang themselves because of the atrocities they committed only strengthens the system. You would know how strong the system is if you woke up one day to find one who used to be your great friend charged with numerous offences by Gacaca courts. So when the head of Gacaca courts calls for God's help, it should not be mistaken as a resignation. This is only a sentimental utterance.
The UN office for the co-ordination of human rights, in 2006 said: "The Gacaca process is revolutionary in that it is a formally drafted, yet at the same time, traditional procedure. Reaction to it has been mixed. Certain observers believe that the Gacaca courts do not provide the defendants with any of the protections normally afforded them, and that as a result, rough justice is being handed out."
Benjamin Gumpert, who acts as counsel for the defence of Joseph Mugenzi, a man being tried before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), has said: "I think the idea of people's justice is in theory delightful. However, I think that the Rwandan people are no more likely than any other ordinary people (by that I mean non-lawyers) of being able to conduct complicated trials of genocide. There is little chance of justice in these circumstances. I think either you can hold a fair trial or you cannot. But I do not think that you can dilute the principles of justice. There seems to be an element of double standards at play here. You are effectively saying that the manner of trial that we consider appropriate in courts in North America, Europe or other international proceedings does not need to be observed in Africa."
The reason too, as to why such comments appear is not far from the ones just mentioned. The system is called a variety of names - ranging from gambling to diluting justice. This is, however, nonsense - because the courts have actually a superior long arm to touch all corners as it punishes and at the same time reconciles the society. Gacaca courts are based on the principles of restorative justice which is embedded in its structures, too complex to be understood by non-Rwandans.
The only thing that actually hinders that smooth progress of Gacaca trials is lack of witnesses. Most of the would-be witnesses are no more; some survivors are cowards or not committed, corrupt and in some cases do not have enough support from government's trusted organs.
We cannot leave out the incompetent Inyangamugayo in terms of having the will because of different reasons well known to us. It is however understood that one may find it difficult to prosecute a close relative faced with such crimes. This creates a big loophole, and so many suspects escape as a result. It actually demands a person with morals that cannot be easily traced in a society that has just slaughtered each other. This is where the Gacaca paradox lies!
We cannot have a poisoned mind de-poisoned overnight. The Rwandan psyche was seriously beleaguered by all kinds of ills inflicted from within and without. The Rwandan psyche actually captivated and integrated exotic values rather randomly and haphazardly, to forge a culture that will take long to uproot so that we foster a culture of human rights and, above all, effect justice. This is our undoing and that is why Gacaca courts are still facing an uphill task.
Nonetheless, the courts, as already mentioned, are doing a great job and they will do much better if we change our negative attitude towards them. And capital punishment should not be viewed as the only panacea to social justice in Rwanda.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2006 The New Times.
The New Times (Kigali)
ANALYSIS
September 25, 2006
Posted to the web September 25, 2006
By Rwembeho Stephen
Kigali
Rwandans often speak of a million deaths, and they are right. The dead in Rwanda during the genocide can be put at nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust. As Philip Gourevitch says in his book, "we wish to inform you..., it was the most efficient mass killing since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.' According to the Genocide in Rwanda is unique.
It is this unspeakable crime against humanity that calls for justice and the possibility of uniting a moral, economic and politically shattered society of Rwanda. We therefore have to face reality as we discus issues of Gacaca and capital punishment.
The pros and cons of capital punishment
The origin or history of capital punishment can be traced to many years ago, to the famous system commonly known as lynching.
According to Wikipedia encyclopaedia, lynching is a term loosely applied to various forms of violence, usually murder, conceived by its perpetrators as extra-legal punishment of offenders by a summary procedure, ignoring, or even contrary to, the strict forms of law, notably execution, or used as a terrorist method of enforcing social domination.
Victims of lynching have generally been members of marginalised groups or vilified by society. The practice is age-old. For instance, stoning is believed to have started before lapidating was adopted as a judicial form of execution.
Lynching is frequently prevalent in sparsely settled or frontier districts, where government is weak and law enforcers are very few and powerless to enforce law and preserve order. The practice has been common in periods of anarchy. In early twentieth century, it was also significantly found in Russia and south-eastern Europe, but essentially in America.
The word "lynching" is recorded in English since 1835, as a verb derived from the earlier expression "Lynch law" (known since 1811), which seems to have named after the Lynch family, whose surname is derived either from Old English "hlinc" (hill), or from Irish "Loingseach" (sailor), it still remains in dispute.
The most likely eponym for the concept of Lynch law as summary justice is William Lynch, the author of "Lynch's Law", an agreement with the Virginia Legislature on September 22, 1782, which allowed Lynch to pursue and punish criminals in Pittsylvania County, without due process of law, because legal proceedings were, in practical terms, impossible in the area due to the lack of adequate provision of courts.
The term "Lynch mob" as for a group of private persons who collectively practice lynching is attested from 1838. Since the Reconstruction Period, after the Secession in the United States, it came to mean, generally, the summary infliction of capital punishment. The further narrowing of the meaning to extra-legal execution specifically by hanging is from the 20th Century.
After the horrific crimes against humanity, the idea of punishment came into limelight in the Rwandan society. The challenge, however, has been to understand what punishment is or entails so that it is handled with efficiency and effectiveness. What is punishment in the first instance? There are different ways of defining punishment that tend to vary, depending on the individual or individuals defining it.
Punishment involves the deliberate infliction of suffering on a supposed or actual offender for an offence such as a moral or legal transgression. Since punishment involves inflicting pain or deprivation similar to that which the perpetuator of a crime inflicts on his victim, it has generally been agreed that punishment requires moral as well as legal and political justification.
While almost all philosophers agree that punishment is at least sometimes justifiable, they offer various accounts of how it is to be justified and what the infliction of punishment is designed to protect - rights, personal autonomy and private property, a political constitution, or the democratic process, for instance. Utilitarians attempt to justify punishment in terms of the balance of good over evil produced, and thus focus our attention on extrinsic or consequentialist considerations.
Retributivists attempt a justification that links punishment to moral wrongdoing, generally justifying the practice on the grounds that it gives to wrongdoers what they deserve; their focus is thus on the intrinsic wrongness of crime that thereby merits punishment. "Compromise" theorists attempt to combine these two types of theories in a way that retains their perceived strengths while overcoming their perceived weaknesses.
After discussing the various attempts at justification, utilitarian and retributive approaches to determining the amount of punishment will be examined.
On concerns of capital punishment, the strongest argument in favour of capital punishment was made by Professor Immanuel Kant when he proclaimed that punishment inflicted on the guilty should be equal to the wrong done: for instance, capital punishment be mandatory for murder. His retributive theory of punishment leaves execution of the murderer the only option for the crime of killing another person. That is, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, for the pointer of the scales of Justice to stand in balance.
Kant's views are in defence of capital punishment and are based on punishing the guilty in equal proportion to the crime. To most people who hold similar views, capital punishment serves an additional purpose of being a future deterrent to similar crimes. However, it is debatable if this view is completely valid.
"Death penalty advocates punishment under the principle of lex talionis, or 'an eye for an eye' - the belief that punishment should fit the crime. In particular, people who favour capital punishment argue that murderers should be executed in retribution for their crimes and that such retribution serves justice for murder victims and their survivors".
Edward Koch once said: "How can murder be taken seriously if the penalty isn't equally as serious? A crime, after all, is only as severe as the punishment that follows it. It is by exacting the highest penalty for the taking of human life that we affirm the highest value of human life"
International standards of human rights call for either the abolition of the death penalty or, at a minimum, its use in extremely limited cases. In April 1999, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution calling on all States "to establish a moratorium on executions, with a view to completely abolishing the death penalty".
The Commission on Human Rights has also urged States "not to impose the death penalty for any but the most serious crimes" and "progressively to restrict the number of offences for which the death penalty may be imposed".
It was understandable thus that after the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, the immediate answer chosen by the obvious angry people was capital punishment. They were there partly guided by emotions, and since they are cooling down they can now be guided by a lot of wisdom. This wisdom should tell the futility of capital punishment. The summary execution of a terrible criminal, a monster, is actually a favour. He or she needs more than that. Capital punishment in Rwanda, therefore, is a euphemism for legally murdering a person. Criminals can be, and are, executed because capital punishment is a legal institution in Rwanda. But the debatable issue is whether it is serving the purpose it is supposed to be serving.
Controversial issue
Capital punishment remains to be a controversial issue worldwide. It is true that all forms of punishment are subject to human fallibility, but capital punishment really exacerbates the controversy. Many survivors of the Genocide and retributivists have continued to advocate for capital punishment - especially in answering strong crimes like mass massacres and genocide. This is under the belief that an equal response to the crime committed must be meted out. In other words, according to them there must be justice consonant with the atrocious acts.
During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, very many victims were tortured to death. Their killers were so cruel that in most cases they had to slowly batter the victim's heads and other parts of the body before finishing them off. "This kind of cruelty has thus to be answered with an equal punishment," remarked a survivor. But the question remains: can we be able to administer similar torture in capital punishment?
The answer is definitely no, and hence the capital punishment we advocate for does not serve the purpose. We are deterred by our moral restraints to commit similar atrocities in giving capital punishment. If, for example, we are punishing a "monster" who killed by chopping parts off human bodies, are we supposed to chop him or her up in capital punishment?
Take an example of where the first people charged with genocide were killed by firing squad. They may have fired a hundred bullets in their heads, but it takes only one bullet in the head to kill. In this case we do not see any equality in terms of offence and punishment as advocated by retributivists who are the best advocates of capital punishment. The Hamurabi's "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" does not come in, hence rendering capital punishment futile.
This is why we recommend in essence and logic that the Government of Rwanda should comfortably agree to lift the death penalty in Rwanda and retain life sentence which is far better. Supporters of capital punishment will argue though that imprisonment is simply not a sufficient safeguard against the future actions of criminals because it offers the possibility of escape and release on parole. They truly observe that some criminals must be made to pay for their crimes with their lives. Fear of death deters people from committing crimes, proponents say. They also believe that if attached to certain crimes, the penalty of death exerts a positive moral influence by placing a stigma on certain crimes like manslaughter, resulting in attitudes of disgust and horror to such acts.
Furthermore, retentionists insist that the deterrent influence of the death penalty reaches across state lines into jurisdictions that have abolished it, and so all benefit by its continued use. Let's imagine for a moment there was no death penalty for a moment. The only reasonable sentence would a life sentence. This would be costly to the taxpayers - not only in the cost of housing and feeding the prisoner but because of the numerous appeals which waste man-hours and money. By treating criminals in this manner, we are encouraging behaviour that will result in a prison sentence. If there is no threat of death to one who commits a murder, than that person is guaranteed to be provided with a decent living environment until their next parole hearing. They are definitely not getting the punishment they deserve.
Life imprisonment, however, serves the most important psychological torture of leaving the perpetrator to see the people he or she wanted to kill move around alive. It leaves him or her humiliated in a state of hopelessness and shame forever. And in economic terms, the prisoners will live to provide free labour, to directly or indirectly serve the people he or she wanted dead. This kind of torture may not equal the offence committed but will truly give the nearest alternative.
Rwanda government in general and the Ministry of Justice in particular should not find it hard lifting capital punishment as a pre-condition given by ICTR to have the prisoners in question tried in Rwanda. Life imprisonment is just alright for the purpose.
The issue of Gacaca
If you still doubted the Gacaca courts in Rwanda, then you better think otherwise. Gacaca cuts across the whole range of issues that we are looking at: punishment, teaching the public a lesson, reconciliation, etc. There are a lot of things which are addressed by traditional justice. It addresses issues of unity, issues of reconciliation, transition itself, getting out of the ugly past and walking to a better future in a society that was divided but is becoming reconciled.
Critics, however, have continued to have their arguments. Helena Cobbana, for example, argues: "The Gacaca courts have very strong 're-educative' role ... to attempt to almost coercively 're-educate' the Hutus. The approach is a sort of melding of Maoist views on this score with the heavy Christian emphasis on the virtues of confession and the need for confession before there is 'absolution'." This kind of negative attitude from international scholars only gives us their degree of naivety in the system of justice's efficiency.
And according to Craig Timberg: "Gacaca officials, who began tracking the suicides in March after an initial round of cases in January and February last year, have documented the horrors: An elderly man drowned himself in Lake Kivu, on Rwanda's western border, on the day he was accused of killing several of his grandchildren. A 28-year-old man, the last surviving member of his family, killed himself after being accused of raping his Tutsi mother, according to Gacaca officials. 'Sometimes we discover a situation we cannot understand ourselves,' said the court's Executive Secretary, Domitilla Mukantaganzwa. 'We are praying for our nation.'"
What does this indicate? They are trying to show us a resigned society. But we are not, and the fact that people hang themselves because of the atrocities they committed only strengthens the system. You would know how strong the system is if you woke up one day to find one who used to be your great friend charged with numerous offences by Gacaca courts. So when the head of Gacaca courts calls for God's help, it should not be mistaken as a resignation. This is only a sentimental utterance.
The UN office for the co-ordination of human rights, in 2006 said: "The Gacaca process is revolutionary in that it is a formally drafted, yet at the same time, traditional procedure. Reaction to it has been mixed. Certain observers believe that the Gacaca courts do not provide the defendants with any of the protections normally afforded them, and that as a result, rough justice is being handed out."
Benjamin Gumpert, who acts as counsel for the defence of Joseph Mugenzi, a man being tried before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), has said: "I think the idea of people's justice is in theory delightful. However, I think that the Rwandan people are no more likely than any other ordinary people (by that I mean non-lawyers) of being able to conduct complicated trials of genocide. There is little chance of justice in these circumstances. I think either you can hold a fair trial or you cannot. But I do not think that you can dilute the principles of justice. There seems to be an element of double standards at play here. You are effectively saying that the manner of trial that we consider appropriate in courts in North America, Europe or other international proceedings does not need to be observed in Africa."
The reason too, as to why such comments appear is not far from the ones just mentioned. The system is called a variety of names - ranging from gambling to diluting justice. This is, however, nonsense - because the courts have actually a superior long arm to touch all corners as it punishes and at the same time reconciles the society. Gacaca courts are based on the principles of restorative justice which is embedded in its structures, too complex to be understood by non-Rwandans.
The only thing that actually hinders that smooth progress of Gacaca trials is lack of witnesses. Most of the would-be witnesses are no more; some survivors are cowards or not committed, corrupt and in some cases do not have enough support from government's trusted organs.
We cannot leave out the incompetent Inyangamugayo in terms of having the will because of different reasons well known to us. It is however understood that one may find it difficult to prosecute a close relative faced with such crimes. This creates a big loophole, and so many suspects escape as a result. It actually demands a person with morals that cannot be easily traced in a society that has just slaughtered each other. This is where the Gacaca paradox lies!
We cannot have a poisoned mind de-poisoned overnight. The Rwandan psyche was seriously beleaguered by all kinds of ills inflicted from within and without. The Rwandan psyche actually captivated and integrated exotic values rather randomly and haphazardly, to forge a culture that will take long to uproot so that we foster a culture of human rights and, above all, effect justice. This is our undoing and that is why Gacaca courts are still facing an uphill task.
Nonetheless, the courts, as already mentioned, are doing a great job and they will do much better if we change our negative attitude towards them. And capital punishment should not be viewed as the only panacea to social justice in Rwanda.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2006 The New Times.