[opiniojuris] Kevin Jon Heller: Rwandan Human Rights Activist Convicted by Gacaca Court

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Posted by Kevin Jon Heller:
Rwandan Human Rights Activist Convicted by Gacaca Court
http://www.opiniojuris.org/posts/1180357392.shtml


   Last week, [1]I discussed the disturbing case of Francois
   Xavier-Byuma, a senior official with a Rwandan human-rights group who
   had been arrested and accused of complicity in the 1994 genocide. As I
   noted in that post, the accusations were leveled by the gacaca judge
   that Byuma had been investigating in connection with the rape of a
   young girl.
   The situation became even worse today. That same judge has now
   [2]convicted Byuma and sentenced him to 19 years in prison:

     Francois-Xavier Byuma, a member of the Rwandan League for the
     Promotion and Defence of Human Rights, was sentenced Sunday by a
     grassroots genocide court for colluding with criminals and beating
     and injuring a woman during the 100-day killing spree.
     "Byuma has been sentenced to 19 years in prison," said Jean Paul
     Tulindwanamungu, a senior official of the rights group.
     Byuma, also head of a children's rights group, had previously
     accused the judge who handed him the sentence of raping a young
     girl.
     "This is not a trial, it is a settling of scores just like we see
     all over the country," one of his colleagues told AFP on condition
     of anonymity.
     Byuma, who is also a popular playwright, said he would appeal the
     sentence.

   We can only hope that Byuma's appeal will be successful. [3]The rules
   of the gacaca courts -- to say nothing of simple fairness -- should
   have prevented the judge Byuma was investigating from presiding over
   his trial:

     The gacaca legislation states that gacaca judges are excluded from
     cases wherein they are friends or an enemy of the defendant, the
     defendantâs guardian or are related to the defendant (Article 16).
     The legislation further stipulates a number of criteria that can
     lead to the replacement of any member of a gacaca organ upon the
     demand of other members of that organ (Article 12).

   Unfortunately, in terms of due process, [4]the gacaca appeals system
   is no less flawed than the gacaca trials themselves, even for Category
   II defendants who -- like Byuma -- are entitled to judicial review of
   their convictions:

     The Gacaca Courts do have an extremely limited judicial review in
     the form of the right to appeal by the defendants in a small number
     of cases. However, the court system in general suffers from a
     serious deficiency of any form of functional judicial review of
     outcomes and certainly no formal review of process. The Gacaca
     Court system plan does not include review by regular Rwandan courts
     at any level.
     [snip]
     No defendant is permitted to appeal a verdict to an ordinary
     criminal court. This is particularly problematic in the case of
     category-two defendants, some of whom are subject to severe
     sentences involving long prison terms.
     In reality, the Gacaca appeals court, which was supposed to
     function at the sector level, does not. There is a lack of trained
     judges and resources to make the courts functional. While there
     have been a few cases of appeals by category-two defendants, these
     are the exception, and the appeals process is by no means working
     at the level at which it was designed to function.

   More as Byuma's appeal moves forward.

References

   1. http://www.opiniojuris.org/posts/1179396974.shtml
   2. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070528/wl_africa_afp/rwandagenocidesentence_070528104336
   3. http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAFR470072002
   4. http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/kssgorg/apj/issues/spring_2007_issue/pdfs/Kusi.article.pdf