[opiniojuris] Kevin Jon Heller: Rwandan Human Rights Activist Accused of Genocide

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Posted by Kevin Jon Heller:
Rwandan Human Rights Activist Accused of Genocide
http://www.opiniojuris.org/posts/1179396974.shtml


   Extremely disturbing news out of Rwanda: a senior official with a
   Rwandan human-rights group [1]has been arrested after a local gacaca
   court accused him of complicity in the 1994 genocide:

     Francois-Xavier Byuma, vice-president of the board of the Rwandan
     League for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights ["Turengere
     Abana"], was detained last week in Kigali and taken Wednesday to
     the city's main prison, the sources said.
     Byuma, who is also a popular playwright, was arrested after being
     implicated by a village grassroot tribunal, known as gacaca, for
     complicity in the Rwandan genocide.
     Based on the concept of a traditional tribal council, the gacacas
     were set up with the aim of clearing a heavy backlog of
     genocide-related cases from Rwanda's criminal courts.

   According to Amnesty International, Byuma's arrest is [2]retaliation
   for his group's investigation into the rape of a young girl that may
   well have been committed by the gacaca judge who accused him of
   complicity:

     Turengere Abana recently started investigations into the rape of a
     17-year-old girl. Turengere Abana alleges that it has followed
     leads suggesting that the rapist was the presiding judge of a local
     gacaca court.
     After Turengere Abana commenced its investigations, the presiding
     judge from the local gacaca court issued a summons to
     François-Xavier Byuma. The gacaca court is part of a nationwide
     community-based justice system intended to try suspects of the 1994
     genocide.
     The gacaca court, in the Bilyogo secteur (district) of the capital,
     Kigali, did not specify the charges against François-Xavier Byuma
     in the summons, which he received on 3 May. He is thus unable to
     prepare a defence. The trial was originally scheduled for 6 May. It
     has been postponed to 13 May, as another trial was already in
     progress on 6 May.

   If Amnesty International is correct, Byuma's arrest illustrates one of
   the basic problems with the gacaca courts -- their inadequate
   protection of defendants' due process rights. Here are just [3]a few
   of the problems:

     A majority of cases will be judged on the basis of case-files
     prepared and passed on to the gacaca benches by the Public
     Prosecutorâs Offices. Lay judges, with virtually no legal training,
     may be unwilling to challenge the information contained in them.
     Likewise, it will be difficult for defendants, without counsel, to
     effectively counter cases prepared by state authorities with
     infinitely more resources at their disposal. The fact that these
     individuals were arrested and detained for years by the government
     may further dispose gacaca participants to consider the pre-trial
     detainees as guilty regardless of the merits of their cases or the
     fact that in most cases detainees were arbitrarily arrested and
     unlawfully detained.
     [snip]
     There is no clear, definitive statement in the gacaca legislation
     that states when defendants are informed of the charges and case
     against them. Defendants require adequate time and facilities to
     prepare their defence, particularly as they are responsible for it.
     There is also no provision enabling the gacaca benches to adjourn
     proceedings if defendants have not been given sufficient time or
     the materials to prepare their case. Defendants who have pleaded
     guilty to genocide offence(s) are present when the cell gacaca
     organs categorize their offence(s). Detainees will be informed of
     the charges against them and the category within which they fall
     following the seventh meeting of the gacaca organs when the courts
     categorize each of the accused according to Organic Law No 08/96 of
     30 August 1996.
     [snip]
     The competence of the gacaca judges is questionable. Most of them
     have no legal or human rights background. The highly abbreviated
     training they have received is grossly inadequate to the task at
     hand, given the range, character and complexity of crimes committed
     during the genocide. Their concomitant lack of legal objectivity,
     moreover, could make it more difficult for them to resist
     governmental and local interference in gacaca proceedings or their
     own subjective experience of what occurred.

   More as the story develops.

References

   1. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070516/wl_africa_afp/rwandaarrestgenociderights_070516145624
   2. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR470072007
   3. http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engafr470072002