I changed my last paper on Rwanda that I published some time ago. I explained that I was not very happy with the result .... and a few good reads and some Extra work hours are longer than the end result for me at last.
The work of Jean-Chestnut Landscapes after Genocide: A Justice est-elle possible au Rwanda?- m'a énormément servie à compléter mon texte.
Post-Genocidal Conflict in Rwanda: between justice and remaking society
How to build a sustainable peace after genocide like the one that occurred in Rwanda for 100 hundreds days during spring 1994? That is one of the major questions that Rwandese has to face. Building peace after a civil war and after genocide is very different. The definition of genocide itself makes it very different. Genocide is a policy of extermination, the aim of the perpetrators of genocide is to destroy a group because they believe that by doing so, it will bring peace to the whole society [1] . How is it possible to build peace when a large part of the society has believed, and acted consequently, that it was only by killing one group of the society that social peace would be possible for the entire society?
In order to understand genocide and the peace building process which needs to take place after it, in order to try to give an answer to those specific questions, it is very important to have a pluralistic analysis : political, anthropological but even more important an historical analysis. Articles and thesis that have a single approach often misunderstand the complexity of the problem.
The multiple approach of analysis should also be combined with a multiple approach of issues: justice, democracy, peace building, stakes of memory and defining common history. For those issues also, looking at one without taking into consideration the other will lead to over simplistic analysis.
This paper will show how justice is necessary and how the gacaca can be one of the answers even after taking into consideration the limits of such jurisdictions. In order to understand the complexity of doing justice, this paper will also develop a comparative approach of post-genocidal justice. At last, the reflection on justice needs to be combined to a global reflection on collective memory.
The specificity of post-genocidal justice.
Justice after genocide seems impossible. No sentences could ever be sufficient. At the heart of modern justice is the belief that someone can be reintegrated in the society after having accomplished his sentence, but no sanction can be sufficient after genocide. However absence of justice is not either a possibility, because “génocidaires” are guilty of their crime and should be prosecuted as such. The impossibility of sanction proportionate to the crime of genocide should not lead to the absence of justice. Antoine Garapon, in the foot steps of Hannah Arendt, untitled one of his book “the crimes that cannot be punished and forgiven [2] ”. How is it possible to judge the unthinkable? However, justice is necessary, victims and survivors deserve it. Perpetrators need to be found guilty, it is important in order to establish the truth but also because impunity will mean a certain victory of genocide that should not be accepted. The absence of justice, the absence of people recognized as guilty by a tribunal court is one of the best way to ensure “négationisme [3] ”. Justice is also a fundamental step for rebuilding one society after genocide. Nevertheless the act of justice is complicated after genocide: how is it possible to avoid victory justice? For how long justice should take place in a society that also needs to live once more as a whole?
An historical approach of post-genocidal justice
In order to understand the justice process in Rwanda it is compulsory to compare it with other genocides. It is also necessary to briefly analyze how the lack of justice in the Great Lakes region is one of the numerous explanations of genocide [4] .
Justice after genocide is a very difficult issue. After the Armenian genocide, justice was almost completely inexistent. For almost 60 years victims have been forgotten [5] . The trial of Nuremberg has often been presented as the symbol of justice after genocide. This assertion is false; the term of genocide has never been used [6] during the trial [7] and these trials have judged all crimes of the Nazi regime and not specifically the Shoah [8] . After the Shoah, trials like the one in Jerusalem for EICHMANN [9] or more recently the one for PAPON in France proved the difficulty of jugging people responsible for genocide. In most of the cases people refused their responsibility and denounced the victor justice. More recently post-genocidal justice in Cambodia, ex-Yugoslavia has not been an easy process, and once more, judges had to face the negation of the butchers and the accusation of not respecting due process.
The specific need of justice in the Great Lakes in order to ensuring peace
Justice is even more important in Rwanda because the denial of justice after each massacre since independence has always leaded to revenge and more massacres [10] . The pogrom of Tutsi in Rwanda in 1959, 1961, 1964 and during the 1980’s but also the genocide of Hutu in Burundi in 1972 [11] , the massacre of 1988 and the coup of 1993. Each time a massacre, a pogrom or a genocidal process took place in one of the country of the region it helped to implement the “banality of brutalization” [12] , the acculturation to violence but also the belief that violence and extermination were “banal” and maybe useful political tools. This absence of justice made it easier to implement the idea that peace will never be sure and definitive until the other group will be annihilated. The absence of justice made impossible to analyze what has be done, made impossible for the society as a whole to express its opposition with this wrong doing.
Justice in Rwanda: an impossible task?
It is in this historical context that post-genocidal justice in Rwanda has taken place. Justice is accomplishing at three different levels: the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda of Arusha, justice in Rwanda and justice in foreign countries. The ICTR had judge very few perpetrators but the more important one and it has helped a lot to understand how the genocide was planed. However, justice is very slow; and Rwandese deplore that the tribunal should have taken place in Rwanda [13] .
The specificity of Rwanda post-genocidal justice is inherent to the Gacaca. Gacaca was at first the name of a traditional court of justice that took place in the hills of Rwanda [14] . Paul KAGAMÉ with his government reorganized and institutionalized this traditional institution. The idea at the heart of the Gacaca process is that perpetrators, by saying the truth will have shorter sentences. Consequently the goal of Gacaca is not only to accomplish justice but also to establish the truth. For the government, when the truth will be accepted by all, it will be possible to live in a peaceful society. It is important to notice that the Gacaca is different of the process that had taken place in South Africa. In the Gacaca every one who is founded guilty is condemned, by telling the truth the person only gets to have a shorter sentence. The Gacaca process is not giving amnesty against the truth. For the government it was very important that the people who were guilty needed to be sentenced for putting an end of decades of impunity. As Jean CHATAIN put it in his book, justice should be “punitive but also reconciliation” [15] . However, many perpetrators have been jailed for years, between 1996 and 2006, before facing the Gacaca, consequently for most of them, after facing the Gacaca, they did not return to prison. This aspect is often denounced by the victims of the genocide.
Gacaca justice is unique. What is the goal of this justice is a difficult question. Rwandese, the Rwandan government, the international community and also scholars may ask too much to justice in Rwanda. One example is the call made by Paul RUTAYISIRE in 1998 to pass to a “punitive justice as a restorative justice [16] .” If such calls are understandable, it seems unrealistic: first of all because the justice had never been “punitive” in the past but also because the idea of “restorative” is the idea of returning to the “good old days”. However these “good old days” may have never existed in Rwanda. Consequently it is important to distinguish the judicial aspect of the Gacaca to the other meaning that it is possible to give to the Gacaca. The first goal of justice is to ensure the end of a culture of impunity and secondly to establish the truth. Gacaca can have other meaning like therapeutic one, and the process can help to remake, rebuilt society.
Many analyses criticized the way Gacaca are organized: they denounced manipulation by the government [17] , the lack of due process [18] , the justice of victors. One of the points developed by those analyses is to denounce the fact that the crime of the Rwanda Patriotic Front and the crime of genocide are not judged in the same time. This kind of critics prove that these authors do not understand the specificity of the crime of genocide and develop an over simplistic ethnicity analysis [19] . It is fundamental that all crimes should be prosecuted, including the crime of the RPF. However, crime of war that touch civilians, even massacres are not the same as genocide, and, seeing scholars putting them at the same level is more than strange [20] . Debates rose between 1996 and 2001 in order to define if the Gacaca should only pursue the killers of the Tutsis or if they also needed to pursue the killers of the moderate Hutus. The parliament decided that the genocide what defined in this double dimension and refused to separate crime based on race hatred and crime based on political issue [21] . By doing so the parliament wanted to claim that these two different kinds of crime were linked because killing the Hutu who opposed the regime or refused to kill Tutsi was a way of ensuring the success of the genocide. By refusing this dichotomy the Parliament ensure that every perpetrator who killed in order to accomplish the genocide should be punished without making difference of the identity of the victim.
The question rose by scholars and NGOs of the lack of due process is a difficult one. Having a total due process is an impossible task, if it is necessary to put pressure in order to respect as more as possible due process it is also important to respect [22] and understand the way Gacaca work. It is important to underline that the way gacaca were formed evolutes over time between 2001 and 2006 in order to respect the right of the accused one. Most of the difficulties occurred in the first part of the Gacaca process when they collected information. Since then, the fact that the Gacaca gave sanction and prison sentences proved to the victims and their family that it was the end of impunity and the fact that some people were acquit proved that it was not a victor justice either.
Also Gacaca is conceived as a “justice of transition”. This aspect of Gacaca as a justice of transition needs to be understood in a larger reflection: a reflection on how are interlaced the issues of justice, memory and definition of history.
The Gacaca courts between justice and “imperative of memory”
Reflection on Gacaca that focused only on the judicial approach often missed the difficulty raised by the trauma of victims, the impossibility of victims to accomplish their mourning and, at last, how victims and perpetrators can live together.
To understand the difficulty of post-genocidal justice it is important to focus on the individual. Jean HATZFELD in his book untitled « La stratégie des antilopes » focused on how “génocidaires” and “survivors” participated in Gacaca.
For the victims and for their families it is especially difficult because they want to know the truth and in the same time they are afraid of it. How is it possible to react peacefully, as the state asked them to do, when people acknowledge in front of them their responsibility in the killings of their families? It is even harder because by telling the truth the perpetrators will have less important sentences [23] .
For the perpetrators, telling the truth is not either an easy thing, they have to give details. These details can upset Tutsis and lead them to revenge but it can also upset Hutus perpetrators if a former ‘colleague’ during the genocide had said too much about who had killed whom. Jean Hatzfeld testified of Hutu who were killed for having said too much. As a result in the Gacaca people tried to preserve the living of the community by not telling all the truth, not asking all the questions they want to ask [24] . As a result less and less people went to Gacaca. However Jean CHATAIM in his book published in December 2007 gave testimony of other attitudes of victims toward the Gacaca. For him victims who were discontent during the first part of the Gacaca came back after the first trial. No global conclusion is possible to make on how the victims react to the Gacaca process. Each Gacaca court is influenced by the history of the area during the genocide, the way survivors and perpetrators gave the information. HATZFELD and CHATAIM gave reports of different reactions toward Gacaca work. Consequently it helps to keep in mind that if justice is organized and ensured by the community, it is also the relation between the individual and the justice process, which needs to be analyzed.
It is particularly true when it comes to the victims of the genocide. The place of victims in Rwanda society is a difficult issue. The impossibility of justice after genocide is more accurate for the victims than for the perpetrators, because for the guilty ones the judicial process is an end to the genocide, after its sentence the person can be reintegrated into the society. On the contrary, for the victims, the experience of genocide will never come to an end. As a result, it seems that the Hutu and the former Tutsi diasporas wanted to believed in the discourse of reconciliation and in the justice process of the Gacaca. However for most of the victims, a justice of reconciliation is impossible to accept or even conceived. It is important to notice in HATZFELD’s book that the victims who are indisposed to participate to the Gacaca are reluctant for most of them not because they do not believe in the impartiality of the Gacaca courts but because they understand that for them the genocide will never be finished and consequently no justice will ever be possible. It is only possible to judge the acts of the past and for the victims the genocide is their past, present and future. The government with the Gacaca process tries to make Rwandese as one nation by enabling Tutsi and Hutu to live together but for the survivors it is to ask them to cohabite with their butchers [25] . Rwanda faces an impossible dilemma between the imperative of justice, the need of building a peaceful and united society, the need of making a future possible and the reality of the victims who are still in the nightmare of 1994. Hatzfeld shows perfectly this situation and gives it all its meaning when one of the survivors in his book proclaimed that she had no future because they destroyed her past.
Gacaca needs also to be understood not only at a judicial level but also at a social one. The Gacaca searches the truth but this truth is redoubt. One of the merits of Gacaca is to “convoke memories” [26] . The Gacaca can be a good tool in order to build a “collective memory [27] ”.
Defining a new collective memory
To build “collective memory” will take more than the Gacaca. However, saying that, it is not condemning the Gacaca process. Limits to the Gacaca process do not make it unnecessary and wasteful. Defining new collective memory is necessary if Rwanda wants to live in a state of peace.
By denying the importance of the “ethnicity” [28] as a central identity after the genocide, the government has made it harder to build this collective memory. The Rwanda government by using at some point the genocide in order to legitimate his power has a responsibility in the division that shapes the country. This responsibility of the government has made the Gacaca lose some of their legitimacy; commemorations of genocide have also lost their legitimacy because it has become a political tribune for KAGAMÉ speech.
However, more than ever, Rwanda should built collective memory. In order to do so French, Belgian but also Rwandese scholars proposed to commemorate for example the Righteous [29] . They also proposed to write history and to teach history at school [30] .
Justice, commemoration, memory, teaching of history, all these issues are linked. All of them are part of the numerous answers that should help Rwanda to recover from the genocide. Valérie ROSOUX asked if the idea of Nation itself had not been destroyed by the genocide [31] . A Nation Needs history, collective heroes, and justice. It Is Facing by Those elements all together That May ACCOMPLISH Rwanda peace and lives one more as One Society. At last, thinking about Rwanda as one nation, can help to "deracialized [32] " Rwanda Society, It May Be The ultimate condition for sustainable peace.
[1] Bruneteau, Bernard. 2004. The century of genocides violence, massacres and genocidal process of Armenia to Rwanda. Paris, A. Colin.
[2] Garapon, Antoine. 2002. Crimes that can neither punish nor forgive for international justice. Paris: Jacob.
[3] Negationism has not been translated in English, even in French it is a barbarism made by the French historian Henry Rousseau in order to define the specific aspects of denying the reality of genocide. The word revisionism in English is not specific to the act of genocide. A specific word, for the denying of genocide, is necessary because denying genocide is at the heart of all genocide; it is a part of the genocide itself, a way of accomplishing it even after the end of the genocide.
[4] In order to understand genocide a single explanation will never be sufficient, multiple explanations would be better but will not either be enough. The heart of genocide is not understandable; there will always be something missing. Questions about genocide will always face aporia.
[5] BECKER, Annette. 2007. "Les victimes entre oubli et memoire". Schweizerische Zeitschrift F̐ưur Geschichte. Revue Suisse D'histoire. Rivista Storica Svizzera. 57 (1): 12.
[6] POWER, Samantha. 2002. A problem from hell America and the age of genocide. New York: Basic Books.
[7] Ibid. Raphael LEMKIN who made the word “genocide” tried to convince the judges to use it.
[8] I will prefer used the French term « Shoah » as the American term « holocaust ».
[9] ARENDT, Hannah. 1964. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a report on the banality of evil. New York: Viking Press
[10] Mamdani, Mahmood. 2001. When Victims Become Killers Colonialism, nativism, & the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Understanding the genocides of the twentieth century teach-Compare. 2007. Rosny-sous-Bois: Breal. p. 134-137
[11] Chretien, Jean-Pierre, and Jean-Francois Dupaquier. 2007. Burundi 1972, at the edge of genocides. Men and societies. [Paris]: Karthala.
[12] Becker, Annette. 2007. "The victims between oblivion and memory." Schweizerische Zeitschrift F̐ưur Geschichte. Swiss Review of History. Rivista Storica Svizzera. 57 (1): 12.
"The banality of increasing the brutalization induite par la Grande Guerre, cette intériorisation de la violence qui permet d’accepter durablement même ses aspects paroxysmiques ne compta pas pour rien dans ce refoulement. » The thesis developed by Annette Becker of an acculturation to violence by European society during World War I can help us to dismiss theories witch said that it is natural for Rwandese to perpetuate genocide, that they are culturally violent (such thesis has been developed both by politician like French President François Mitterrand but also political analysis like Kaplan). To analyze a process of acculturation to violence helped by a denial of justice is very different from saying that their cultures are naturally violent.
[13] As a result, the regime of Paul Kagame Dismissed The Importance Of The International Short, and very few "Know What Rwandese are very happening and Often There When They Heard Something about this short commentary it is bad from Rwandese Government official.
[14] REYNTJENS, F., The gacaca justice or turf in Rwanda, Politique Africaine, no. 40, December 1990, 31-41.
[15] BROWN, John. Landscape after the genocide. Justice is it possible in Rwanda? Le Temps des Cerises. December 2007. p 116.
[16] RUTAYISIRE Paul, "From Justice punitice to restorative justice," Cahiers Lumière and Company, No. 10, Kigali, May 1990.
[17] Oomen, Barbara. 2005. "Donor-Driven Justice and its Discontents: The Case of Rwanda". Development and Change. 36 (5): 887-910.
[18] Corey Allison, and Sandra F. Joireman Retributive justice: The Gacaca courts in Rwanda Afr Aff (Lond) 103: 73-89.
[19] These remarks apply especially for Allison Corey and Sandra F. Joireman’s article.
[20] Very few scholars put at the same level the crime committed by the Allies (Dresden for example) during WWII and the genocide of the Jews. If crimes when there are victims are always unacceptable, it is necessary to refuse a “competition of victims”. However, it is important to keep in mind Thats the AIM of genocide (the death of all have year end) Is Not The Same As The AIM of a massacre (That Can Be a Tool for Spreading fear in a time of war for example).
[21] CHATAIM, John. Landscape after the genocide. Justice is it possible in Rwanda? Le Temps des Cerises. December 2007. p 126.
[22] Here a reflection on "cultural relativism" developed by Claude Levi Strauss Can Be helpful.
[23] Because many "genocide" had beens jail in 1994 or 1996 sincere Even When They Are sentence to prison They Do not go to jail.
[24] Guillou Benedict, "Crimes of mass and individual responsibility "Field Criminal Responsibility / Criminal Irresponsibility posted July 25, 2005.
[25] CHATAIM, John. Landscape after the genocide. Justice is it possible in Rwanda? Le Temps des Cerises. December 2007. p 99 and 135-136. Numerous
CHATAIM could quote of the Book, The flower of Stephanie, wrote by Esther and Mujawayo Souâd Belhaddad publiseh by Flammarion in 2006.
"... response to a stress atrocious, and despite having to live together after a genocide. To a question that keeps coming up: to punish, yes, necessarily, but how to enable the country to 'survive' after? In other words, how recohabiter, not between Tutsi and Hutu, but between victims and killers. In Rwanda there is no other choice. "
[26] Guillou Benedict," Crimes of mass and individual responsibility, "Field Criminal Responsibility / Criminal Irresponsibility posted July 25, 2005.
[27] The work of Maurice Halbwachs is collective memory Should Be helpful to Understand how new Collective Memory is build in Rwanda.
[28] and Hutu ethnic groups Tust Are Not In The Sense of differences of culture, language or Even physique differences. Hutu and Tutsi are However Constructed cultural identity. Even if history Proved That There Are No Separation Between ethnic Hutu and Tutsi, It Is false to Consider That Hutu and Tutsi genocide after are not central identity in Rwanda. CHRETIEN Jean-Pierre. 2000. The African Great Lakes two thousand years of history. Historical collection. Paris: Aubier.
[29] ROSOUX, Valerie. 2007. "Plural memory, STATEMENTS OF CONFLICT - Introduction - SCIENTIFIC OFFICER - Rwanda, the impossible" national memory "? - Ethnology Fran̐ưcaise. 37 (3): 409.
[30] Schools in Rwanda do not Have historic class.
[31] ROSOUX, Valerie. 2007. "PLURAL MEMORIES, MEMORIES IN CONFLICT - Introduction - SCIENTIFIC OFFICER - Rwanda, the impossible" national memory ? - French Ethnology. 37 (3): 409.
[32] Understanding the genocides of the twentieth century teach-Compare. 2007. Rosny-sous-Bois: Breal. p. 150 "a culture of peace must be racist. "
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