IV. BackgroundThe Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a politico-military movement made up largely of Tutsi, invaded Rwanda in 1990 with the declared aim of assuring the right to return of refugees, many of whom had been living in exile for a generation, and of ending the rule of President Juvenal Habyarimana. Like most government officials and the majority of Rwandans, Habyarimana was Hutu. After nearly three years of alternating combat and negotiations, the RPF and the Rwandan government signed a peace treaty in August 1993 but an agreed-upon transitional government was never put in place. In April 1994 after an airplane carrying President Habyarimana was shot down, combat resumed and the Rwandan government, assisted by tens of thousands of soldiers, militia, and ordinary citizens, carried out a genocide against Tutsi civilians, whom they treated as enemy combatants. In July 1994 the RPF took control of Rwanda and drove the government and its defeated army out of the country. During this period in Rwanda—as later in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—RPF soldiers committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, including massacres and summary executions of civilians. These crimes, documented by UN experts and by Rwandan and international human rights organizations, are less well known than the genocide which is widely recognized, including by judicial notice at the ICTR. Given the scale and nature of the genocide, international leaders as well as Rwandans demanded that the perpetrators be brought to justice. In November 1994, after a United Nations-appointed commission of experts found that genocide and war crimes had been committed, the United Nations Security Council established the ICTR to try these crimes. Since then Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and Rwanda have also prosecuted persons accused of genocide and war crimes. Other national judicial systems are currently investigating charges against persons resident in their jurisdictions. While the need for justice was felt more acutely within Rwanda than elsewhere, the government was ill-prepared to deliver it. The scale and complexity of the crimes would have overwhelmed even the best-equipped judicial system and that of Rwanda, feeble and poorly staffed before the war, had been further crippled by war-time losses. Officials had to get the system functioning again and at the same time begin the daunting task of prosecuting persons accused of genocide. From the establishment of the government in 1994 through to the time of this writing, mid-2008, genocide cases have demanded the greatest share of judicial and police resources, initially exclusively in the conventional sector and later in the gacaca jurisdictions (customary conflict-resolution processes adapted to address crimes linked to the genocide). |