A Gacaca Court Session

des jugements traditionnels adaptés à une réalité extrême,

sûrement que vous avez déjà entendu parler de cette juridiction qui se pratique actuellement dans le pays des 1000 collines.

Mais qu' est-ce que c' est en réalité et comment se passe une telle juridiction.

Notre ami, Roelof Haveman, Prof de l' Université de Leiden, en témoigne.

Vous pouvez trouver cet article en original , ainsi que d' autres témoignages sur son excellent site http://weblog.leidenuniv.nl/users/havemanrh/

A gacaca court in Kigondo, a suburb of Kigali. We arrive at around 10 o’clock. The suspects, two women aged between 40 and 50, are already waiting in the hall where the gacaca session will take place, guarded by a gendarme with an impressive automatic weapon. Like all detained genocidaires the defendants are dressed in pink. They have tried to make their outfits more stylish with gold buttons, puffed sleeves and fitted waists.
Slowly the hall fills up with people from the neighborhood. After half an hour the nine judges enter the hall. Each wears a sash in the colors of the Rwandan flag. A wooden box is put on the table, with stamps, pencils, forms and other necessities for the proceedings. One after the other they are placed on the table. The session is opened, and begins with a minute of silence for the victims of the genocide. The two women are identified and the indictment is read out.
The defendants are accused of killing a neighbor and one of her children in April 1994, at the start of the genocide. It is assumed that no one witnessed the murders, but the bodies of the woman and her child were found in the house of one of the suspects. The defendants state that although they were present when the woman was killed, the real murderers were members of the Interahamwe, the youth movement that played a crucial role in the genocide. The women say they were unable to prevent the Interahamwe from committing the murders, for which they apologize during the gacaca. The younger woman looks emotional, her eyes are bleary, and when she speaks she looks up at the ceiling. The older woman seems less emotional.
The judges ask questions. The public also participates. A man asks the judges why they have not invited the children of the murdered woman to appear. The judges reply that they tried to do so but learned that most of the victim’s children had also been killed. A woman questions the suspects, trying to catch inconsistencies in their stories. A third person wants to know from the woman who initially accused the two suspects of the murder why she had withdrawn her earlier accusation.
Community participation is a key aspect of the gacaca system. The crimes were committed in this very neighborhood and the alleged perpetrators still live here, as do the surviving victims and their relatives. A boy who barely escaped the genocide tells me that during the gacaca process you can speak up, tell the truth, and denounce the involvement of your neighbors in the genocide. In daily life, he says, you wouldn’t call your neighbor to account for his or her role in the genocide; it requires a specific time, place and ritual environment.
When the judges retire, the hall empties. Only the suspects remain, encircled by some friends, including a woman who just a week before was acquitted by the same gacaca. She was released from prison after spending 11 years in pretrial detention, and has returned to live in her old neighborhood again.
The judges decide to put the case on hold in order to set up a judicial inquiry. They want to question a woman who is alleged to have witnessed the actual killings, and to collect further facts of the case. Their investigation has to be finalized within one month.
The suspects have been detained for over 10 years. If found guilty of genocidal murder, a crime of the second category, they face prison sentences ranging from 20 to 25 years, depending on such factors as whether they have confessed their guilt and shown remorse. They would serve half their sentence in prison and the other half in freedom, performing community service.
The minutes of the proceedings are read out, formally ending the gacaca session. Following some comments from the public, the record is amended and signed by the suspects and the witness with fingerprints, and by the judges with written signatures. The judges then take off their sashes, and many stay around for a while to talk about the case.
(this text has previously been published on this website in Dutch)

Témoignage par notre ami sur place Roelof Haveman et que vous pourriez retrouver sur son excellent blog http://weblog.leidenuniv.nl/users/havemanrh/