Posted for Sociology: Genocide Studies.
Posted on Thu, Dec. 18, 2008
Former Rwandan colonel convicted in 1994 genocide
By SUKHDEV CHHATBAR and DONNA BRYSONThe Associated Press
ARUSHA, Tanzania A former Rwandan army colonel was convicted Thursday of genocide and crimes against humanity for masterminding the killings of more than half a million people in 1994.
Survivors welcomed the watershed moment in a long search for justice.
The U.N. courtroom in Tanzania was packed for the culmination of the trial of Theoneste Bagosora, the highest-ranking Rwandan official to be convicted in the genocide. Onlookers were silent as the 67-year-old was sentenced to life in prison.
“Let him think about what he did for the rest of his life,” said Jean Pierre Sagahutu, 46, in Rwanda. He lost his parents and seven siblings and said he escaped by hiding in a septic tank for 2 1/2 months.
Former military commanders Anatole Nsengiyumva and Aloys Ntabakuze also were found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison. The former chief of military operations, Brig. Gratien Kabiligi, was cleared of all charges and released.
The U.N. Security Council created a tribunal in 1994 to prosecute those responsible for “genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law.”
The 1994 genocide saw government troops, Hutu militia and ordinary villagers — spurred on by hate messages broadcast on the radio — going from village to village, butchering men, women and children. The consequences still shake the region.
Hutu fighters, chased by the Tutsi military leader who is now Rwanda’s president, fled into Congo at the end of the bloodletting. Rwanda has twice invaded Congo, fueling a conflict that drew in a half-dozen African nations.
Recent clashes in eastern Congo, which borders Rwanda, have driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi and former general who quit his country’s army in 2004 to launch a rebellion, contends he is fighting to protect the region’s ethnic Tutsis from Hutu militias.
Perpetrators and victims, meanwhile, struggle to reconcile in Rwanda, a desperately poor and densely packed east African country the size of Vermont.
On Thursday, the court said Bagosora used his position as the highest authority in Rwanda’s Ministry of Defense to direct Hutu soldiers to kill Tutsis and moderate Hutus. According to the indictment against him, Bagosora once said he was returning to Rwanda to “prepare the apocalypse.”
The U.S. called the convictions an important step in providing justice and accountability for the Rwandan people and the international community.
The U.S. urged countries to continue cooperating with the tribunal, which is still seeking the arrest and transfer of 13 fugitives in the case.
Some 63,000 people are suspected of taking part in the genocide. Many have been sentenced by community-based courts where suspects were encouraged to confess and seek forgiveness in exchange for lighter sentences. Eighteen trials remain under way.
Reed Brody, a specialist in international justice for Human Rights Watch, said Thursday’s sentence sent a clear message to other world leaders accused of crimes against humanity and genocide: “It says watch out. Justice can catch up with you.”
ABOUT THE LONG-RUNNING CONFLICT What is the history of Rwanda’s genocide?
Hutus in Rwanda overthrew a Tutsi monarchy three years before independence from Belgium in 1962 and took power. Ethnic tensions simmered, and rebels, most of them ethnic Tutsis, invaded from their base in neighboring Uganda in 1990.
President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, had been negotiating peace with the rebels when his plane was shot down on April 6, 1994. Rwanda recognizes the next day as the start of the genocide unleashed by Hutu extremists on Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.
The killings spread across the country and lasted 100 days, until a Tutsi, Paul Kagame, led his rebel army to victory and became president. Tutsis now dominate the nation’s government and army.
What have been some of the wider consequences?
The flight of Rwanda’s Hutu fighters over the border and into the Congolese forest has fed instability in Congo.
Resulting clashes in eastern Congo — which intensified in August — have driven more than 250,000 people from their homes.
A U.N. Security Council panel said earlier this month that Rwanda and Congo are fighting a proxy war, with Rwanda helping ethnic Tutsi rebels fight the Congolese government and Congo collaborating with ethnic Hutu rebels and other forces against Rwanda.
Rwanda’s legacy continues to shadow debates about what should be done to prevent such horrors. The United Nations and former President Bill Clinton have apologized for failing to intervene.
The Associated Press
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