January 1, 2004
Ten years after the end of a genocide and war, the Rwandan government has created a veneer of stability by suppressing dissent and limiting the exercise of civil and political rights. It often cites the need to avoid another genocide as a supposed justification for such repressive measures. Victorious militarily in 1994, the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) also won elections ending a transition period in 2003, bolstering its margin of victory by fraud, arrests, intimidation, and appeals to ethnic fears and loyalties. A constitution adopted after a national referendum in June 2003 includes guarantees of civil and political rights but also incorporates provisions that sap their effectiveness. The new government faces the major problem of delivering justice for the genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
- The 2003 Constitution Gives and Takes Away
- Civil and Political Rights Abused
- Justice and Impunity
- A Favored Recipient of International Aid
The 2003 Constitution Gives and Takes Away
The June 2003 Constitution guarantees freedom of association, assembly, opinion, and press but also subjects these freedoms to ordinary legislation, making it possible for legislators to limit them and making it impossible for courts to defend them on constitutional grounds (article 34). Still suffering the consequences of the 1994 genocide, Rwandans understandably seek to end the ethnic hatreds and discriminatory behavior that preceded attempts to eliminate the Tutsi minority. But the Constitution goes too far in prohibiting "divisionism" in overly broad and vague terms (article 33). Similarly a legitimate concern with preventing negation of the genocide has been unjustifiably stretched in a constitutional measure criminalizing "[r]evisionism, negationism and trivialization of genocide" without defining those terms (article 13).
The Constitution permits multiple parties but prevents any effective local level political organization; it allows parties to create offices only at the national and provincial level (article 52). The Constitution says that parties "must constantly reflect the unity of the people of Rwanda" (article 54), a stipulation without further definition that could be used to eliminate political pluralism. The Constitution also entrenches a previously existing forum of political parties meant to ensure consensus and to fight divisionism (article 56). During the transition period, the RPF dominated the forum and used it to discipline and control members of other parties.
Civil and Political Rights Abused
In 2002 and 2003, the government used broad charges of divisionism to suppress three opposition parties (http://hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/rwanda0503bck.htm). Throughout the 2003 presidential campaign, the government, the press, and co-opted civil society members accused the leading opposition candidate of divisionism, suggesting that any vote for him was a vote in favor of resuming the genocide. During the parliamentary election campaigns, the RPF even used the charge of divisionism against its long-time ally the Liberal Party, charging that it appealed particularly to Tutsi genocide survivors dissatisfied with the government.
In recent years RPF authorities have reduced the number of "disappearances" and arbitrary arrests that marred their first years in power, but in April 2003, five persons, including a MDR member of parliament and a former vice-president of the Supreme Court, "disappeared" and have never been accounted for. In 2002 and at the time of the elections, members of the banned political parties were arrested and many of them held without charge, some for more than a year.
The government frequently invokes the role of the media in inciting the 1994 genocide as justification for restricting press freedom, leaving only one independent newspaper struggling to survive. The government news agency controls the sole radio and television station. Just before the elections, the government prevented non-governmental organizations from conducting civic education programs. When criticized by national and international human rights organizations, officials responded by accusing them of divisionism.
Justice and Impunity
In June 2002 Rwanda launched a system of state-run popular justice called gacaca to deal with most of the 100,000 genocide suspects who had spent years in pretrial detention. But by late 2003 only ten percent of some 11,000 gacaca courts had held pre-trial hearings and none had actually tried any suspects. Gacaca was supposed to reduce the prison population but persons confessing to guilt as part of the process have named tens of thousands of new suspects. Authorities estimate that 250,000 or more persons may yet be accused, a development that would completely overwhelm the judicial system. Some convicted persons are to serve half their sentence at home in a work-release program, but the details for its operation had not been set at the end of 2003.
Meant to involve everyone in the community, gacaca failed to attract widespread participation, in part because it was seen as one-sided justice: although mandated to try war crimes committed by RPF soldiers during the period of the genocide, gacaca courts have not been allowed by authorities to consider such cases. In early 2003 the president granted conditional release to some 24,000 persons who had confessed their guilt for genocidal crimes. Although those released are supposed to face trial at some point, few Rwandans believe that they will do so. The possibility that thousands of confessed criminals would never account for their crimes in public proceedings further undermined the legitimacy of gacaca in the eyes of some Rwandans.
Until the end of 2003 the Rwandan government hindered investigations of RPF crimes by the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and did little to investigate and prosecute its soldiers for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the genocide or subsequently. Unless the ICTR tries some of those accused, RPF soldiers will escape punishment for their crimes, reinforcing past patterns of impunity.
A Favored Recipient of International Aid
Burdened by guilt over their inaction during the genocide, many foreign donors have generously supported the Rwandan government—credited with having ended the genocide—while ordinarily overlooking its human rights abuses, whether at home or abroad. Rwanda made war twice on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where its soldiers committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity, and yet Rwanda generally encountered nothing worse than rhetorical condemnation from the international community. UN Security Council members issued only a mild reprimand when the matter of Rwandan obstruction of ICTR investigations (http://hrw.org/press/2003/08/rwanda080103ltr.htm) was brought before them. Documentation of illegal Rwandan exploitation of DRC resources by a U.N. panel in 2002 and 2003 elicited only mild criticism. Foreign leaders also generally applauded the 2003 elections even though observers, including those of the European Union, reported widespread abuses.
Related Material
More on Human Rights in Rwanda
Country Page
HRW World Report 2004
Report, January 26, 2004