By Laura Ieraci
Catholic Times

MONTREAL -- As the international community marked the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide April 7, reports indicated the country's journey toward justice and reconciliation is far from over.

Eleven international human-rights experts were in Montreal March 2 - 3 to share their assessment of the justice and reconciliation process in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide that left about 800,000 people dead and countless maimed.

The Committee of the Great Lakes Region of Africa organized the French-language conference to assess the situation before the UN-established International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda comes to the end of its mandate. All final judgments are to be rendered this year.

The Montreal-based committee, founded in 1990, comprises 13 Canadian church groups and nongovernmental organizations, including the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, KAIROS, the Anglican Primate's Fund and L'Entraide Missionnaire.

During the March 2 press conference, experts said the justice and reconciliation process has advanced, but numerous justice issues have yet to be resolved.

At the heart is attaining equitable justice, said genocide survivor Esther Mujawayo, whose husband and extended family were killed. Mujawayo, who is remarried and lives in Germany, now works as a counselor for torture victims.

Mujawayo told reporters she is conflicted about the whole process. "I'm both cynical and hopeful . . . because what will this justice process do? My entire family is dead."

Where is the equitable justice, she asked, when the women who contracted AIDS from rapists during the genocide have died and their perpetrators are receiving medical care in their prison cells?

According to Mujawayo, the current process for justice is "highly symbolic," and the more urgent need is to assist the victims.

"On the other hand," she said, "at least there are efforts to try to put an end to impunity."

The goal of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania, is to bring the leaders of the genocide -- those who masterminded the genocide and incited hatred among the people -- to justice, she said. As of January 2008, 35 suspects were tried and 30 were convicted.

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About 125,000 Rwandans were also arrested for participating in the genocide and detained in Rwandan jails. In order to deal with the huge number of trials for lower-level perpetrators in an expeditious manner, a traditional cultural court system, called Gacaca (pronounced ga-cha-cha), was set up in 2001 in communities across Rwanda. Without them, it would have taken an estimated 100 years to prosecute all of the prisoners through the courts, said Zarir Merat, who works in Rwanda with Lawyers Without Borders. There are more than 8,000 gacacas throughout the country.

While gacacas have sped up the trial process, they are problematic for several reasons, including the lack of legal formation of those running the courts and the speed at which people are being tried, said Merat. It is questionable whether equitable justice is being served and due process respected if trials are rushed, he said. As many as 15 people are being tried in one afternoon; the acquittal rate is 20 per cent.

Despite efforts to speed things along, some people have spent an unreasonable number of years in jail, such as two women religious who were imprisoned for 12 years before being declared innocent.

The gacacas were slated to end in 2008, but thousands of trials are yet to be heard. They are expected to continue until 2010, said Merat.

Since the genocide, churchgoing in Rwanda has increased, Mujawayo told the Catholic Times. She interprets it as a sign of despair among the people.

"Church is a way of coping; [the people] don't have any other means. They are tired and they're turning to Jesus," she said.

Mujawayo charged that the Catholic Church in Rwanda is "complicit with the genocide." Ethnic conflict existed in the 30 years leading up to the genocide, "but the Church did not speak against it," she said.

Born in 1958, Mujawayo recalled how, as an adolescent, the homes and cattle of her family members and other Tutsis were burnt or destroyed. She and other Tutsi students were forced out of their boarding school.

"The Church has blame in this because they did not use their power and influence to stop the genocide," she said.

Some clerics have been convicted for their involvement in the genocide, while other priests and religious were heroic in coming to people's aid, she reported.

According to Mujawayo, the Church's stance on the evil committed is too soft. She would like to hear the Church preach more about repentance and sorrow regarding this issue.

"The Church always speaks of reconciliation and forgiveness," she said. "It makes me mad because it is too theoretical, too easy." She suggested churches do more to create opportunities for people to dialogue.

-- This article first appeared in the Catholic Times. Please do not reprint without permission.

April 9/2009