ICTR represents miscarriage of justice

Editor, REFER TO Felly Kimenyi’s article, “ICTR’s Open Days too little too late” (The New Times, May 8). The Rwandan culture and its Agaciro ethos refuse to be fobbed off with anything sub-standard. As Mr. Kimenyi notes in his opinion, the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi was committed against Rwandans by other Rwandans on Rwandan soil. Trials against all the Genocide perpetrators should have been where their crimes were committed in the first place. They would also have been more credible had the prosecution been led by representatives of the state whose people had been both the victims and the perpetrators –that’s Rwanda. Locating the trials outside the society whom the justice was supposedly for was a fundamental aggravation of the injury suffered from the Genocide, and represents a serious miscarriage of justice, and meant those trials would contribute very little if anything to the reconciliation process in the Rwandan society. Were I to rate this tribunal from 0 (totally useless) to 10 (perfectly met all the objectives for justice and providing a foundation for national/social reconciliation and at least some kind of remedy for the injuries, both material and moral suffered by victims and survivors), I would give it 2 for justice, and a fat 0 for the second metric. Since being handed into the control of the Belgians by the League of Nations, seeing the 1959 referendum supposedly run by the UN but in reality controlled by the Belgian colonial authorities and their Catholic Church co-conspirators and their roles or hasty flight in 1994 and their subsequent ‘management’ of the Genocide aftermath, especially of their behaviour in the giant genocidaire-controlled camps on our very borders, Rwandans have learnt to apply the law of very low expectations where the UN and the so-called international community are concerned. We are rarely disappointed. Mwene Kalinda, Rwanda

Opinions

ICTR represents miscarriage of justice