ICTR acquittals not unexpected

Editor, In response to the article, “Rwanda shocked by Internationa Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) acquittals”, (The New Times, February 5, 2013), I hope the scales have finally dropped from the eyes of even the most trusting Rwandan.

Tuesday, February 05, 2013
The ICTR liaison office in Remera, Kigali . The New TImes/File

Editor, In response to the article, "Rwanda shocked by Internationa Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) acquittals”, (The New Times, February 5, 2013), I hope the scales have finally dropped from the eyes of even the most trusting Rwandan. The ICTR was never primarily about rendering true justice for victims and their survivors. People should have understood when the powers that allowed the Genocide to happen then set it up far from Rwanda, staffed it with mostly careerist prosecutors, indifferent judges and Genocide denier defending counsels and then set about making the accused genocidaires live like maharajahs in the midst of abject poverty. With this "Court”, the series of acquittals of key planners and executioners of the Genocide - and the luxurious "jailing” of the few even they could not decently acquit as far away from Rwanda as possible - should not come as a surprise; it was preprogrammed. As for "Never Again”, please, give me a break; do we still believe in that empty slogan?  What the ICTR and various UN decisions should have taught us since the Genocide in 1994 is: You are on your own.Mwene Kalinda