‘Genociders’ evading justice

Today, 15 tears ago we continue to remember the genocide that claimed over a million Rwandans. This is the time we share the suffering inflicted on the personality of the survivors, experience the hardest situations a human being can ever experience, exhuming and burying in honour the bodies that have been under ground for fifteen years. We above all, listen to the disheartening confessions of the witnesses, watch films and movies that can never be good for a human eye to see (but which we must always see for as long as we live), tears always flowing from our eyes, my mind always runs back to the committers of the atrocities that have troubled us and will continue to trouble even the generations to come. What troubles people most is that most of the trouble makers are still at large living and moving scot-free in the world and that there seems to be no international concern to make them face justice. It is very discouraging to hear that the likes of Felecien Kabuga, one of the major sponsors of the genocide, have up to now managed to evade justice. Yet they are suspected to be living in the nearby East African country of Kenya. Can we say that the government in Kenya has failed to arrest them? Or doesn’t it have the will to do it? Or do they have top government officials they conspire with in order to protect them from being arrested? Someone in Kenya should be in the best position to answer these questions that seem to be so rhetoric. Such fugitives threaten not only to the life of a survivor or Rwanda for that matter but also regional security. And that the survivor’ sense of living is derailed for as long as they are still there. I think it is proper that as we remember those that perished in the genocide we also remind the world that some of those that committed the atrocities are still living free and are in countries that claim to be the most democratic. It is a sad reality that judges in a British court released “four” suspects of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, on grounds that the British constitution doesn’t allow them to try cases of this nature in England. And that they can’t send them to be tried in Rwanda because according to them, Rwandan courts cannot provide a fair trial. What perturbs Rwandans over this case however is that the people released were not tried and declared innocent for them to move and live freely in England? Rwandans are also not amused by the judges that never provided an alternative court to try the suspects, since they couldn’t be sent to Rwanda. If it was in Africa we wouldn’t hesitate to conclude that such judges were bribed to rule the way they did. We are wondering how we should describe them. Are they also corrupt? If the British court can not try them, has the ICTR phased out its work? Or can’t the ICC handle such cases? Those men are not the first genocide suspects to be tried by Rwandan courts and they are not a special breed that the world’s justice system cannot apply to. The world must appreciate that these people are killers and that they must be made to face justice. Our simple message to the genocide perpetrators is that they will not always play hide and seek games with justice. Time will definitely have to come when justice will seek and find them. It is better for them to accept to face justice from anywhere including in Rwanda in order to prove their “innocence” (for those that claim to be). They can’t claim ignorance of their colleagues that are now living free in Rwanda having been tried in the local courts. phatari@yahoo.co.uk