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Attacks on Genocide Survivors and Gacaca Participants

In an atmosphere of growing public concern about harassment and attacks on survivors of the 1994 genocide, Human Rights Watch published a report in January 2007 documenting the killing in East Region of one survivor and a subsequent reprisal killing of eight persons who lived in the community where the murder was committed. In another case, the report documented the killing of a judge in a gacaca jurisdiction—a people’s court set up to try crimes of genocide—and the killing the next day by police officers of three suspects detained on suspicion of involvement in the judge’s killing. Citing these 13 killings, as well as the concerns being voiced by survivors and authorities, Human Rights Watch cautioned that ethnically based tensions continued to trouble some parts of Rwanda.¹

In mid-2006 the government established an office of witness protection that had registered 26 complaints by late in the year.²  There is no general law on witness protection, although the law on gacaca jurisdictions provides up to one year in prison for persons who harm witnesses and judges involved in the gacaca process.³

Passage of a law to protect witnesses, recently requested by a commission of the Rwandan Senate,⁴ would make it easier for police and judicial authorities to assure the security of witnesses, thus contributing to the legitimacy of judicial proceedings. 

In late December 2006 participants in the national dialogue—an annual meeting of leading Rwandans—discussed at length the issue of preventing and punishing threats, harassment, and attacks against survivors and participants in the gacaca jurisdictions. Since that time authorities including President Paul Kagame, military commanders, and local administrators, have told the public that strong new measures had been adopted to deter and punish such conduct.⁵ 

Arguing that people residing nearby would necessarily know of any plan to attack a survivor, officials insisted repeatedly that all Rwandans would be held responsible for the security of their neighbors. In most communities local officials created new night patrols or increased the number of existing patrols, particularly in the vicinity of homes of persons thought to be at risk.⁶ Local residents were responsible for doing the patrols, an unpaid community obligation. In some areas, officials also increased surveillance of persons thought likely to engage in attacks on survivors. In addition, officials warned that there would be sanctions against any who troubled survivors; the sanctions were left undefined, although in April Finance Minister James Musoni said there “would be no mercy” for those caught troubling survivors.⁷

Survivors, particularly representatives of the association Ibuka, continued to express concern about the security of survivors and authorities continued to issue warnings during the first six months of 2007. In a late May meeting, an Ibuka representative said that six survivors had been killed in April, often a month of violence because of its associations with the 1994 genocide, but he did not list other deaths for the year.  At the same meeting, the executive secretary of the human rights organization, Rwandan League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LIPRODHOR), reported three killings that appear to have been related to ethnic tensions.⁸ Press accounts spoke of two deaths of survivors, one probably related to land disputes rather than the genocide as such, and an attack on a child, reportedly wounded because his father was a witness in gacaca trials.⁹ In 2006 survivors’ organizations reported numbers ranging from 12 to 20 killings of survivors,¹⁰ so these accumulated reports suggest that the numbers for 2007 have not increased and may have decreased somewhat. Indeed, Tharcisse Karugarama, minister of justice, and Domitilla Mukantaganzwa, executive secretary of the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions, both expressed the opinion that attacks on survivors had diminished during the first quarter of 2007.¹¹