Justice in Africa: Rwanda's Genocide, Its Courts and the UN Criminal Tribunal by Paul J Magnarella

Author:Paul J Magnarella [Magnarella, Paul J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781351790581
Google: CvlKDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-02-06T04:41:38+00:00

Notes

1.

The ICTR currently has a website that can be accessed through the United Nations home page: www.UN.org.

2.

This section is based on the following sources: Ubutabera Independent Newsletters of the ICTR; Hirondelle, an independent news agency covering the ICTR (available at www.hirondelle.org), and numerous news accounts available in the Lexis News Library under the search word ‘Ntuyahaga.’

5 The Situation in Rwanda

As it was successfully routing the Hutu army and various Hutu militias, the RPF Army began rounding up Hutu suspected of participating in the genocide and committing other crimes. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) claimed that by August 1996, Rwanda had about 80,000 Hutu (mostly followers, rather than leaders) crammed into antiquated, putrid prisons, detained indefinitely while awaiting formal charges. Reportedly, over two thousand had died under these conditions (Reuters, 1995). As Van Lierop (1997, p. 887) notes, however, ‘prison conditions may not be so disproportionately harsh when compared with living conditions for the average Rwandan citizen.’ Rwanda emerged from the 1994 genocide as a devastated and poor country.

The new justice minister was housed in a building without telephones or windowpanes. He and his team of four did not even have paper or typewriters. Every piece of equipment had disappeared from official buildings, most of which were in ruins. The judicial staff had been reduced to around twenty investigators and a few secretaries and court clerks.

Capable of holding only 12,000 people, the penitentiaries were overloaded by the flood of detainees. The ICRC, UNICEF, and the UN Development Program (with funds from The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland) took on the difficult task of improving and expanding existing detention facilities and arranging new, semi-permanent holding centers. Authorities provided women and children with somewhat more privacy and better protection.

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