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Destruction of property belonging to survivors and collective punishments

Over the last year survivors reported scores of cases of property damage, such as the uprooting of their crops or the killing of farm animals, by persons who wished to harm them. Since the end of 2006, officials have been imposing collective punishments, including fines, obligatory labor, and beatings on residents of communities where such abuses have occurred.

In Gikombe umudugudu, Bulimba cell, Shangi sector, Nyamasheke district, for example, each local household was required to pay 1,550 FRW (US $2.80) to reimburse a survivor whose cow died in suspicious circumstances. This represented a considerable sum of money in a country where most people live on less than 550FRW (US $1) a day. ⁶⁴ Those unable or unwilling to pay were detained in the cell lock-up until others paid the fine for them.⁶⁵ In Huye district, South region, the mayor forced residents to help rebuild the house of a survivor that had burned down. He said the obligatory labor, being done even before the police had finished their investigation of the crime, would help break impunity and indifference.⁶⁶

In an interview with Human Rights Watch researchers, Domitilla Mukantaganzwa, executive secretary of the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions mentioned several other examples from elsewhere in Rwanda, suggesting that implementation of collective punishment is relatively widespread. Madame Mukantaganzwa spoke approvingly of the “educational” aspects of the practice, its effectiveness as punishment, and its practical usefulness in restoring the value of lost property. She said that she believed attacks on survivors had decreased since the policy was implemented.⁶⁷

Beatings by Police officers in Huye Sector, Huye District, South Region

In at least one case, the collective punishment involved beatings of local residents as well the imposition of a fine to restore damaged property.

On February 13, 2007, some crops were uprooted from fields belonging to Josepha Mukarwego, who lives in an umudugudu called Rwezamenyo. Local residents saw the destruction of the crops as a vindictive action, probably related to Mukarwego’s testimony in gacaca. During the genocide, she had lost her six children, her husband, and her mother-in-law. Mukarwego was also involved at this time in a land dispute with her sister-in-law, also a survivor. It is unclear how much importance the land dispute had, if any, in the destruction of Mukarwego’s crops.⁶⁸

The local authorities and police officers based at Huye sector, one of them named Batera, convened a meeting of residents at the site of the damaged crops. Members of the Local Defense Force (LDF) ensured that residents attend the meeting. After some discussion, participants settled on 45,000 FRW as the value of the destroyed crops, and each household was told to pay 500 RWF.⁶⁹ 

As the meeting was in progress, several police officers identified by local people as based in Ngoma (formerly Butare town) arrived with two LDF members not resident in the sector. After surveying the damaged crops, the police officers ordered the men to lie down on the ground and told the LDF members who had come with them to cut stout branches from the nearby trees. According to one of the victims, a police officer rejected the first sticks brought by the LDF members, saying they were not stout enough. The LDF members beat the men on their backs and buttocks. Most people received between six and fifteen strokes, but three young men (including Antoine Mutabazenga, 21 years old, Jean-Bosco Gahamanyi, 22 years old, and Alphonse Nsabimana, 24 years old) were singled out for extra punishment. The resident elected to coordinate security in the umudugudu was told that he would be given 200 blows, which he was made to count out loud. But, according to some present at the time, he cried out after 73 blows, “I am finished, that’s all I can take”. The police then told him, “Take these [blows] for now, we will give you the others later.”⁷⁰ The police officers from Ngoma also threatened more drastic consequences for residents if they had to come back to Sovu for any similar case in the future.

As explained by officials, all Rwandans must take responsibility for the security of their neighbors, but in this case, it was not all residents of Sovu who were punished. The two male genocide survivors were not beaten. One did not lie down and another hurriedly left the meeting. Similarly all households in the umudugudu were included on the list recording payments of the fine, but according to one knowledgeable source, the survivor families would not be asked to actually pay the fine.

Sovu residents who bitterly resented both the beating and the attendant humiliation blame police officers from the nearby town for the punishment, but some also remarked that the incident undermined their respect for the local authorities.⁷¹ They see themselves as unjustly punished for a crime of which many—or perhaps even all—of those punished were innocent.

Those punished may extend their anger beyond officials to survivors who were the original victims of the attacks, seeing them eventually as the cause of the fines they must pay, the labor they must contribute, and the beatings they must take. Should this happen, the policy of collective punishment may actually increase the vulnerability and isolation of survivors. At least one senior official in the government recognized this risk. He told a Human Rights Watch researcher, “We must not create a victimized people. That would be disastrous for reconciliation.”⁷²