Gacaca courts helped Rwandans live together againEditor,

Allow me to respond to a story that appeared in The New Times, April 10, about the legacy of Gacaca courts.Personally, I totally agree with the officials of the National Jurisdiction for Gacaca courts that these courts have indeed greatly contributed to peaceful co-existence in a once totally divided society.Of course, there is no justice system anywhere in the world that can be said to be 100 per cent perfect, thus even Gacaca was not without a few flaws. But it should be noted that Gacaca system helped Rwandans to reconcile with each other, and to start focusing on development. That a few problems may have occurred here and there is no strange. After all, that was a judicial system involving nearly two million Genocide suspects and more than a million victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi. Add the fact that the country had no enough judicial personnel to dispense justice through the conventional system, let alone the fact that it would have still taken hundreds of years to hear all the cases.The achievements of Gacaca courts speak volumes and, by far, outweigh the weaknesses.Eugene NyiridandiKigali

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Gacaca courts helped Rwandans live together againEditor,