The Government’s Failure to Facilitate Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda
After the genocide of 1994, Rwanda had strict ethnic divides between the Hutus, Tutsis, and Twa. Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered, and the population was torn apart without much guidance to initiate the healing process. Despite implementing various legal and cultural efforts to help the country recover, the Rwandan government did not do enough to help said process; there are still societal divides and forced isolations left in the wake of the genocide.
The International Court Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR) was inefficient and wasted both time and money in trying perpetrators of the genocide; its incompetence prolonged the freedom the criminals enjoyed …show more content…
Gilbert Masengo Rutayisire, a Tutsi survivor of the Rwandan genocide said in a video interview from the Genocide Archive of Rwanda, “You find that [the government has] already forgotten our people. They say that the genocide came to an end but you find it is still there… Among our leaders there are some who committed crimes during genocide. I think we have enough intellectuals; they should remove those bad people and promote others who were not involved in the killings, the innocent ones.” According to Mathilde Uwanyirigira, another Tutsi survivor of the Rwandan genocide in an interview from the Genocide Archive of Rwanda, “Forgiving those people is not an easy matter and it does not even seem very worth it… I would like those people get punished, they deserve to be severely punished. It is difficult to see a killer saying his mea culpa that he killed five or ten people and he gets freed.” There is a general consensus among genocide survivors in Rwanda about how the government is riddled with people who have killed during the genocide; not all those involved have been investigated and punished accordingly, and those who are brought to court get off the hook easily by confessing and apologizing without doing much …show more content…
Greenfield continued to say that “Victor Anatolyevich Bout… one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers was… accused of supplying arms on a massive scale to genocide-torn countries… Bout’s deadly profiteering might render him culpable for the crime of complicity in genocide.” Without the crime of complicity in play, Bout and other prolific arms dealers who facilitated genocides via the sale of machetes and other weapons would not be able to be held accountable for the damage they caused by selling to murderers to get a profit. They fit under the crime of complicity, as they did not have genocide but rather personal economic gain as the purpose of their dealings; however, in doing so, they facilitated genocides. These people could not be persecuted under the definition of aiding and abetting genocide, but could be brought to justice with the charge of the crime of complicity, had it been implemented in Rwanda and in its justice
After the genocide of 1994, Rwanda had strict ethnic divides between the Hutus, Tutsis, and Twa. Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered, and the population was torn apart without much guidance to initiate the healing process. Despite implementing various legal and cultural efforts to help the country recover, the Rwandan government did not do enough to help said process; there are still societal divides and forced isolations left in the wake of the genocide.
The International Court Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR) was inefficient and wasted both time and money in trying perpetrators of the genocide; its incompetence prolonged the freedom the criminals enjoyed …show more content…
Gilbert Masengo Rutayisire, a Tutsi survivor of the Rwandan genocide said in a video interview from the Genocide Archive of Rwanda, “You find that [the government has] already forgotten our people. They say that the genocide came to an end but you find it is still there… Among our leaders there are some who committed crimes during genocide. I think we have enough intellectuals; they should remove those bad people and promote others who were not involved in the killings, the innocent ones.” According to Mathilde Uwanyirigira, another Tutsi survivor of the Rwandan genocide in an interview from the Genocide Archive of Rwanda, “Forgiving those people is not an easy matter and it does not even seem very worth it… I would like those people get punished, they deserve to be severely punished. It is difficult to see a killer saying his mea culpa that he killed five or ten people and he gets freed.” There is a general consensus among genocide survivors in Rwanda about how the government is riddled with people who have killed during the genocide; not all those involved have been investigated and punished accordingly, and those who are brought to court get off the hook easily by confessing and apologizing without doing much …show more content…
Greenfield continued to say that “Victor Anatolyevich Bout… one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers was… accused of supplying arms on a massive scale to genocide-torn countries… Bout’s deadly profiteering might render him culpable for the crime of complicity in genocide.” Without the crime of complicity in play, Bout and other prolific arms dealers who facilitated genocides via the sale of machetes and other weapons would not be able to be held accountable for the damage they caused by selling to murderers to get a profit. They fit under the crime of complicity, as they did not have genocide but rather personal economic gain as the purpose of their dealings; however, in doing so, they facilitated genocides. These people could not be persecuted under the definition of aiding and abetting genocide, but could be brought to justice with the charge of the crime of complicity, had it been implemented in Rwanda and in its justice