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Darkness was falling over the sprawling Rwandan capital of Kigali as Sabena Flight 465 descended through 10,000 feet. The flight from Brussels had been just over eight hours.
Added to connecting flights from Salt Lake City to Atlanta and Atlanta to Brussels, I'd been flying for nearly 20 hours, not including layovers of several hours at each stop. Aside from
its duration, the flight had been uneventful. Having spent time in the Balkans, I recognized some of the geography as we flew southeast of Europe and over Croatia's beautiful Dalmatian
coastline. Leaving the Balkans and Greece with its islands nestled in the dark blue Aegean Sea, the plane traversed the Mediterranean, then crossed over Egypt. I was awestruck by the
vastness of the African Continent and the stark contrast between the lush, fertile valley of the Nile and the lifeless expanse of northern Sudan's sun-baked desert extending far into the
distance.
When the pilot announced in his staccato Flemish accent - he must have had an Italian mother - that the tower in Kigali had cleared our flight for landing, I shook off
the grogginess, breathed a sigh of relief, and turned to look out the window as we made our approach. The airport in Kigali sits on a flat rise, slightly above the surrounding city
perched on a series of gently rolling hills. The flashing signal lights marking the landing area slowly became visible as we gradually lost altitude on the approach. Kigali's city lights
cast a quiet yellow glow over the darkening landscape. Because Rwanda ranks among the world's poorest countries, access to municipal power is available only in the largest towns and
cities. At night, the more impoverished African cities give witness to their status by the sporadic manner in which they are illuminated, random patches of flickering light here and there
with modest levels of traffic, even at rush hour, casting beams of light through the darkness. The encroaching night was calm and clear, and the plane held steady as we descended through
the last thousand feet, heading for what appeared would be a smooth landing.
Without warning, the aircraft's engines roared back to full throttle and the plane suddenly shot back
up, veering into a wide curve away from the airport as the lights of the terminal building swept by. A minute later the captain announced that our landing had been aborted because the
runway was not clear. I looked around at the other travelers, several of whom wore expressions of fear. After a broad sweep that took us beyond the perimeter of light, the pilot eased the
jet around and back toward the airport. Again, he announced we'd been cleared to land. Several minutes passed before the rows of lights outlining the runway appeared, first as a gentle
blur that slowly defined itself as the plane approached. Some three hundred yards from touchdown, the plane shuddered again as the captain accelerated upward and off to the left, causing
some passengers to gasp and others to cry out in anger. The captain, not without a trace of frustration, informed us that the runway still was not clear. He took the aircraft up several
thousand feet and away from the airport.
Finally, some 15 minutes later, the plane was cleared to land. We all breathed a collective sigh of relief when the plane came to a stop.
The poorly ventilated baggage retrieval area brimmed with passengers on the warm July evening, yielding a rich feast of scent and odor that stretched our capacity to smell, so guarded in
our own country between air fresheners, filtered air conditioning, and the daily ritual of deodorizing oneself. And we had opportunity to savor it all as the luggage from two Boeing 767s
disgorged from the stainless steel ramp, one solitary piece at a time, and traveled slowly down the belt. The impatience of some brooding western males, clad in levis and nondescript
shirts, with thinning hair and sallow complexions, stood in stark contrast to the ebullience of the bright-eyed, coal black Rwandan women, many dressed in beautiful and brightly colored
fabrics, rejoicing in each other's company. It occurred to me that we sympathetically refer to them as third world. There is more than one type of third world.
The State Department
had invited a team of three of us back to Rwanda, one of the smallest countries in Africa, following an international conference on law reform and legal reform five months earlier in
which we had participated. The conference culminated in recommendations for judicial and court system reforms which a small contingent of us had presented to President Paul Kagame, the
Rwandan Chief of State. His response was positive and encouraging. This time our mission was to build on those recommendations, to assess the training requirements of the Rwandan
judiciary and to review what systems and programs were in place to respond to those needs.
Rwanda's system of justice was dealt a nearly fatal blow in 1994 when, in the space of
100 days, burgeoning ethnic unrest between the Hutus and Tutsis culminated in the violent slaughter, in many instances by former friends and neighbors, of nearly one million largely Tutsi
citizens, the plundering of government offices, and the collapse of civil order. With a population of around seven million, approximately one out of every seven citizens was slain.
In 1996-97, after the fledgling Rwandan government debated and passed the law for the trial and punishment of those responsible for the genocide, tens of thousands of suspects were
apprehended. By May of 1997, 65,976 were incarcerated, and by July of the same year, the number imprisoned had swelled to 112,000. The vast majority of those apprehended remain in custody
in 2002. The inmate capacity of Rwanda's national detention centers in 1994 was 18,000. It has since been increased by over 30,000, but remains dramatically incapable of adequately
housing the existing population. Of particular concern is the detention of adolescents and children accused of having taken part in the slaughter.
Conditions in these severely
overcrowded prisons are substandard at best. With 70% of Rwandans surviving at an economic level defined as absolute poverty, government revenues are insufficient to adequately feed and
care for this prison population. In spite of massive international aid targeting the rebuilding of the country, poor hygiene, diseases including AIDS, and malnutrition are widespread in
these detention facilities. The more fortunate among the incarcerated are brought food by their families; tens of thousands are dependent on the food and other aid provided by the
International Committee of the Red Cross.
The effort to bring these suspects to justice has been hampered by many factors, central among which was the virtual incapacitation of the
Rwandan justice system during the genocide. Unlike the Holocaust, which featured well-orchestrated mass murder within a highly organized institutional framework, the Rwandan genocide was
occasioned by mass social chaos, uncontrolled violence, and political upheaval that virtually shut down the infrastructure of government. Between April and July 1994, the Rwandan
judiciary shrank from over 750 to fewer than 244 judges. Some participated in the slaughter, then escaped to the Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo; others were victims; and
many others fled to neighboring Zaire, Uganda, Burundi, or Tanzania. The population of court administrators plunged from 214 to 59, leaving many courts without staff. The ranks of
prosecutors dropped even more precipitously, from 87 to 14, and investigators, from 193 to 39, leaving the prosecutorial system in shambles and largely incapacitated. The number of
lawyers remaining to service a population of seven million was 19. Of the detainees in custody, the Rwandan government estimates that one-third do not have case files, largely because no
adequately functioning police or prosecutorial system was in place to process them when they were apprehended.
The effort to restructure the justice system began with the
appointment of a new Minister of Justice who was assigned to an office in one of many government buildings that were in ruins, their interiors gutted, their windows smashed, their files
and archives vandalized. Paper was extremely scarce; office equipment, furniture, telephones, and supplies had disappeared. With a pretrial detention population exceeding 100,000, the
government was in the unenviable position of having to reconstruct a justice system to process it virtually from the ground up.
Because the Hutu-dominated government actively
sponsored, planned, initiated, and perpetuated the genocide; because Rwanda has a long and bloody history of ethnic conflict; and given the eviscerated condition of the justice system,
the international community was skeptical of the government's ability to bring to justice those primarily responsible for planning and perpetrating the slaughter. Its response was to
create an external mechanism. In November 1994, the United Nations Security Council authorized creation of the International Criminal Tribunal Rwanda (ICTR). By July of 1995, the ICTR
officially began to function in Arusha, Tanzania. Its budget for 1996 was $40 million. By 2000, funding had more than doubled to $86 million, and for 2002, the Security Council approved
circa $96 million. Since it began its work in 1995, the ICTR has expended over $400 million. In that time and using those funds, the ICTR has completed a handful of trials up to the
appellate level. Since 1995, 59 suspects have been detained. The total number of convictions through 1992 was eight, an average of one per year.
Against this backdrop and with very
modest resources, the Rwandan government is seeking to rebuild its justice system through a Commission on Law Reform chaired by one of the vice presidents of the Rwandan Supreme Court.
Shortly after our arrival, we renewed our acquaintance with Judge Tharcisse Karugarama and scheduled visits to Rwandan courts, interviews with Rwandan judges and court staff, a meeting
with the Minister of Justice, and visits to the National Judicial Education and Training Center and Kigali's central prison facility.
Formal legal training is a rare commodity
among Rwanda's judges. Of 700 judicial officers, only 10% have the equivalent of a legal education. Others have university degrees in majors that have little, if any, grounding in law,
and many have only a secondary or primary education. These levels of education in the judicial population reflect the government effort to quickly rebuild the judiciary after the genocide
to bring the guilty to justice and to re-establish political and civic order. Developing a training plan that would address these deficiencies was a challenge for our small group, but we
were invigorated repeatedly by the enthusiasm, the hope, and the vision of a better future relayed by officials of the new Rwandan Government.
Courthouses in Rwanda are relatively
simple structures. The courthouses in the smaller outlying cities and towns are nicer and in better condition than those in the large urban center. The main city court in Kigali has two
courtrooms, both of which are publicly accessible through entry doors with glass partitions on the front porch. The glass in the doors to one courtroom was broken. Public notices are
pasted to the outside walls of the courthouse, creating a ragged look. Paint on the interior walls and ceilings of both courtrooms was peeling, and the bench areas were in disrepair. No
security devices or officers were present. I was led to a room crowded with desks and mistakenly assumed it was a clerical area until I was introduced to a young female judge sitting at
one of them. In Rwanda, the typical personal chamber of a U.S. district judge would be used to house as many as ten judges, none of whom would have either a secretary or law clerks.
The courthouse in Gitarama, a mid-size city west of Kigali, was better maintained. As we drove into the dirt parking lot, a small goat walking around on the porch of the courthouse
decided to go inside. We found it wandering in the lobby, then making its way into a courtroom. A criminal trial was in process with the prisoner, dressed in the pink pajamas issued to
inmates in Rwanda's prisons, addressing a panel of three robed judges from one podium while the prosecutor, also robed, stood at the other podium and listened. The courtroom brimmed with
Rwandans, mostly women, many of whom were dressed in festive and brightly colored fabrics in stark contrast to the black robes of the officials. The judges, during our subsequent
interviews, lamented having little in the way of legal research materials or decisions from the higher courts to further their understanding of the law.
Over the weekend, Judge
Miles-LaGrange and I hired a driver to take us north to the Volcanic National Park where we met park rangers and guides who, accompanied by armed Rwandan soldiers, led us into the
mountainous park. After hiking for not quite an hour, we came upon a family of Rwanda's mountain gorillas brought to the world's attention by Diane Fosse. While the adult males slept, the
females kept a wary eye on us as their youngsters approached and playfully extended their small hands. These magnificent creatures are now protected both by park officials and by the
military ever on the lookout for Congolese rebels and poachers.
The last day of our visit, we met with and interviewed the warden of Kigali's central prison. Following the
interview, we were led onto the stage of a large covered hall in which several hundred prisoners, male and female with shorn heads and dressed in the characteristic pink pajamas, were
quietly seated. The warden explained that all had been charged with various crimes relating to the genocide. He first asked us to address them, explaining our purpose, then permitted
three of them to explain to us why they were there. The accounts were touching. One male prisoner, expressing great frustration, reported that he had been in the prison for eight years
but had never appeared before a judge. He had confessed his role in the genocide to prosecutors but had not been sentenced or had access to defense counsel. All he wanted was some sense
of what he needed to do to make good his debt to society so he could return to his family and to his former life as a simple farmer. There are tens of thousands languishing in the Rwandan
prisons with similar stories.
The Rwandan Government did announce recently that it would conditionally release those prisoners who had exhibited good behavior and confessed to
prosecutors their role in the genocide. Their cases will be heard in the newly created village-level Gacaca Courts where those who knew them will testify in open forums what they recall,
and local village leaders who have been appointed as judges will review the evidence and sentence them accordingly. It is a grand but risky experiment in social justice. We observed a
Gacaca Court in session on the ground and under the open sky, listened to local villagers recounting their memories of the horror. The orderly and respectful manner in which the
proceedings were conducted gave us hope that the good people of this small country will be able to reconcile themselves to this chapter in their history and to move on.
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