Context or historical background of Gacaca Courts

 

For more than 3 decades, the political regimes have, one after the other,erected sectarianism and ethnical segregation into a system of governance.

That is the reason why persecutions and massacres of innocent populations have been organised so many times by political leaders who always succeeded in implying large numbers of ordinary citizens

These heinous crimes have remained unpunished and the culture of impunity has become part and parcel of the Rwandan socio-political heritage to such an extent that it became easy for those who conceived of the 1994 machiavellian plan of mobilising almost all the population and perpetrating a genocide during which more than a million persons perished in less than 3 months only.

The Government of National Unity put in place on July 19th , 1994 has assigned itself the duty of eradicating the culture of impunity : the authors of the genocide and other crimes against humanity must be brought before courts and be tried, and the victimes must be paid compensation. But, it had to face a major challenge :

- The judiciary system was completely uprooted by the genocide ;

Judicial sfaff before and after Genocide

Reference period	Judges	Prosecutors	Other supporting staff (Registrars and secretaries)
Before 1994	758	70	631
November 1994	244	12	137
After training sessions of 1996	841	210	910

- The portion of the population suspected of participation in the genocide is very large ;

- The survivors of the genocide have been left grief-stricken and everyone, the victims as well the as the presumed authors of genocide expected that justice be made as soon as possible.

It is in that context that Organic Law n°08/96 of August 30th, 1996 on the organisation of legal proceedings in cases of infrigements that constitute a crime against humanity was elaborated and adopted. The trials begun in December 1996 just after the adoption of the text.

This Organic law established :

- the specialised chambers for genocide crimes in the civil and military courts
- confession procedure and guilt plea for genocide suspects.
- Categorization of genocide defendants :

1st category :

• Planners, organisers, instigators, supervisors of the genocide
• Leaders at the national, provincial or district level, within political parties, army, religious denominations or militia;
• The well-known murderer who distinguished himself because of the zeal which charactarised him in the killings or the excessive wickedness with which killings were carried out.
• People who committed rape or acts of sexual torture.

2nd category :

• Authors, co-authors, accomplices of deliberate homicides, or of serious attacks that caused someone’s death.
• The person who - with intention of killing - caused injuries or committed other serious violence, but without actually
causing death.

3rd category :

• The person who committed criminal acts or became accomplice of serious attacks, without the intention of causing death.

4th category :

• The person having committed offences against property.

Measures were adopted in order to speed up the trials. These were for example the setting up of a commission responsible for categorization, the mobile teams, the organisation of trials of groups of suspects and itinerant courts. Nevertheless given the large number of files related to genocide, the expected results will never be reached. The courts rapidly became overwhelmed with the large number of genocide related cases in addition to the usual common law cases.

Lessons from this approach :

• The classic justice didn’t meet expectations because after approximately a five years period only 6000 files out of 120000 detenees were tried.

• At this working speed, it would take more than a century (+ 100 years) to try these detenees.

• It is important to note that justice was also concerning the suspects who were still in the community and in exile ; but who could not be arrested due to lack of enough space in the existing prisons and prosecution facilities.

• The conclusion was to look for an other alternative solution

The slowness of procedures and the important delay in the trial of these cases represented a serious risk of hindering the efforts made for the reconciliation of the Rwandans.
It became clear that it was necessary to modify the strategy and to look for another solution to the problem. His Excellency,the President of the Republic, called a reflexion and consulation meeting that has resulted under the inspiration of the traditionnal context of conflicts resolution in the establishment of the Gacaca Courts.

It is a system of participative justice whereby the population is given the chance to speak out against the committed atrocities, to judge and to punish the authors with the exception of those classified by the law in the first category who will be judged and punished by the ordinary courts according to common law rules.

That kind of justice will be carried out in the context of the Gacaca courts that will sit in Cells, Sectors, Districts and Provinces and will be composed of men and women of integrity elected by their neighbours.