Recent Rwanda Documents: Part 2, 05/24/'95

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH / AFRICA
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APRIL 18, 1995
One Year After Genocide in Rwanda, Crisis Continues

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

Michael McClintock (212) 972-8400, x227 [w] Eric Gillet (331) 40 37 54 26 [w] Janet Fleischman (202) 371-6592, x114 [w]

One year after the genocide began in Rwanda, the crisis continues. Despite calls for justice inside and outside the country, no criminal trials, national or international, have taken place. The Rwandan government is now arresting some 1,500 persons a week, producing life-threatening overcrowding and appalling treatment in the prisons and fostering insecurity among the population at large. Assassinations and attempted assassinations, random violence, and the confiscation of property all heighten this insecurity as do incursions by armed groups loyal to the former government from Zaire and Tanzania. Because of the insecurity, more than two hundred thousand people huddle in displaced persons camps, reluctant to go home. The government plans to close the camps shortly.

In Rwanda: The Crisis Continues, released today, HRW/Africa and FIDH charge the international community with failure to enforce the arms embargo decreed by the U.N. Plane-loads of weapons and ammunition have arrived in Zaire to augment the supplies and fortify the morale of the authorities of the former government that are guilty of the genocide. Their troops, together with some from Hutu militia in Burundi, train in preparation for new attacks. Meanwhile, food supplies dwindle for the nearly two million Rwandans in refugee camps. Even if food stocks are replenished, water and fuel for cooking will be exhausted within six months in Tanzania, not long after that in parts of Zaire, and these supplies cannot be renewed. In neighboring Burundi, Hutu and Tutsi extremists push ever closer to full-scale war, which would set off large-scale population movements, including across the border of Rwanda, and thus further increase demands on the national government and the international community.

One year to the day after the start of the killing, the Rwandan government brought the first people accused of genocide to court, but their cases were adjourned the same day to permit further investigation. Hampered by lack of resources both human and material as well as by reluctance to confront the political ramifications of the trials, the government has taken months to present the first defendants to the courts. The judiciary is struggling to establish its independence in a country where such autonomy has never existed before. Meanwhile promises of international aid to the judicial system have, for the most part, remained unfulfilled, allowing international inertia to be taken as a model and a cover for Rwandan government inaction.

Other national court systems with Rwandan fugitives within their jurisdictions have done little better and with far less reason for delay. The Belgians and the Swiss appear furthest along in investigations, while the French have so far refused to deal with complaints of genocide. The Canadians chose to pursue the easier course of charging a major Rwandan figure with violating immigration law rather than prosecuting him for genocide. The South Africans have granted political asylum to a Rwandan embassy employee who was involved in buying arms for the former government. Tanzania has jailed a number of leaders in the refugee camps for incitement to riot and other crimes, but hesitates to accuse them of participating in the slaughter in Rwanda. Kenya, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and particularly Zaire have permitted authorities presumably guilty of genocide to settle within their boundaries without acting against them. On February 27, the Security Council "urged" rather than required states to arrest and detain such persons pending prosecution by the International Tribunal.

The International Tribunal, mandated on November 8, 1994, to examine cases of genocide and crimes against humanity in Rwanda, is still months away from its first indictments. Financial and bureaucratic obstacles have made it impossible to recruit adequate staff. Only five professionals are now assisting the prosecutor in examining the systematic slaughter that took between one half million and one million lives.

In the face of this continuing crisis, the U.N. peace-keeping force (UNAMIR) is now deployed at full-strength, but the U.N. human rights field operation is still short of staff. So starved of funds that it nearly folded in December, the human rights field office once again faces shortfalls that may require it to curtail the monitoring that contributes to security in some areas.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the government of Rwanda:

l. End overcrowding in the prisons immediately by transferring prisoners to other suitable facilities, by building new detention sites, and by repairing existing prisons in order to accommodate the prison population with due regard to international standards.

2. Prosecute promptly those officers and soldiers responsible for the deaths by suffocation of the detainees held at Muhima brigade. Order and enforce an end to all torture, beating and humiliation of detainees.

3. Set priorities for prosecuting the accused.

4. Return the power to release detainees to judges. End the use of commissions of liberation as presently composed. If administrative hearings are to be used to liberate detainees, establish the commissions by law, with clearly defined judicial powers and procedures, under the presidency of a judge.

5. Ensure that arrests are carried out according to due process, that the detained are kept in official prison facilities and that their detention is recorded in registers available to the public.

6. Ensure that the independence of the judiciary is protected in any changes made in the procedure for naming judges or for forming the magistrates' council. In choosing judges, competence must be the primary criterion and equal access for all persons, regardless of sex, religion, or ethnic group, must be assured.

7. Recruit and train civilian guards to staff both new detention sites and existing prisons. Use new judicial police inspectors and the increasing number of civilian police to make arrests. As trained civilians become available, end the practice of using soldiers to make arrests and to guard prisoners.

8. Use the media to make firm and repeated declarations about the independence of the judiciary and the importance of the rule of law. Make clear that detainees are innocent until proven guilty and that guilt can only be established through a free and fair judicial process.

9. If the limits on preventive detention are extended, restrict the change to the current emergency situation and fix a date for the expiration of the extension.

10. Investigate rapidly, effectively and in conjunction with U.N. police the assassination of Pierre- Claver Rwangabo, prefect of Butare, and those killed with him, and the attempted assassination of Edouard Mutsinzi.

11. End threats and illegal demands by RPA soldiers, abakada (RPA political officers), and other civilians associated with them. Bring to justice those accused of such exactions. 12. Adopt legislation needed to permit the use of foreign citizens in the Rwandan magistracy for a fixed term, on an emergency basis. 13. Implement the proposed program for increasing security and providing needed support to displaced persons to encourage their voluntary return home. 14. Provide separate detention sites or at least separate quarters for detaineees under the age of sixteen. 15. Adopt a law creating a bar association.

To the international community:

l. Press for the establishment of an independent and effective judiciary in Rwanda and link aid to progress in that direction. Provide immediate assistance for building new detention sites or repairing prisons to accommodate more inmates.

2. Enforce the arms embargo against the former Rwandan government.

3. Prosecute those accused of genocide within national courts and cooperate with the International Tribunal in its prosecutions, including arresting and delivering to the tribunal those indicted by it. 4. Provide adequate funds and p olitical support for the International Tribunal, the Human Rights Field Operation, and UNAMIR. Press for better administration of the U.N. Human Rights Field Office.

5. Provide lawyers to defend the accused and to observe trials.

Copies of Rwanda: The Crisis Continues, are available from the Publications Department, Human Rights Watch, 485 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6104 for $3.60 (domestic), $4.50 (international).

Human Rights Watch/Africa Human Rights Watch is a nongovernmental organization established in 1978 to monitor and promote the observance of internationally recognized human rights in Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and among the signatories of the Helsinki accords.

Federation Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme (FIDH) The International Federation of Human Rights is an international nongovernmental organization for the defense of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Created in 1922, it includes 89 national affiliates throughout the world.

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African Rights on RWANDA

"A Waste of Hope": The United Nations Human Rights Field Operation

In post-genocide Rwanda, the creation of the United Nations Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda (HRFOR) represented a moment of hope. It was the first concrete expression of international solidarity from a world that had looked on throughout the genocide. It represented a chance for an embattled and impoverished government facing the difficult but urgent task of delivering justice and reconstructing a country devastated beyond belief. It was an opportunity to assist a guerrilla army emerging from the brutality of a genocide, and facing a range of formidable problems. Finally, HRFOR represented a hope for people all over the world who expect more from the United nations in the field of human rights.

On paper, HRFOR has a model mandate: assisting the investigation into the genocide, monitoring ongoing respect for human rights, promoting confidence to facilitate the return of refugees and internally displaced people and helping to re-establish the basic institutions of a judiciary, police force and prison service.

The official pronouncements of HRFOR indicate that these objectives are all being achieved. The reality on the ground belies this rosy picture. As this report, based on first-hand information from the monitors themselves shows, HRFOR has failed dismally on every count.

A complex and sensitive human rights mission such as HRFOR required impartiality, professionalism and an integrated mandate: it has achieved none of these things. Rudderless, wasteful and incompetent, HRFOR has been, in the words of a staff member, "a systematic boycott of everything that could have made a positive contribution." Another monitor described the mission as "a waste of time, energy and money. But worst of all, it is a waste of hope."

It is impossible to understand the current situation in Rwanda, or to make a contribution to resolving some of the acute problems, without recognising the reality of the genocide, the huge crime that profoundly colours every individual and every event in Rwanda. Yet this is what HRFOR has attempted to do. Investigating the genocide was briefly on the agenda for the monitors, but now has been designated as the exclusive responsibility for the International Tribunal and the Rwandese judiciary. This pushes the monitors into an extremely partial, even partisan role: their mandate is essentially to try to prevent revenge attacks, and protect those who are the targets of such attacks--a role that most Rwandese perceive as highly political. The terms of reference handed down by the UN refer only to the needs of refugees and displaced persons. They make no mention of the most vulnerable groups of all--survivors of the genocide.

Normal procedures of human rights investigation, such as protecting the anonymity of witnesses and scrupulous checking of facts, are frequently ignored. This has endangered survivors as well as detainees.

Political partiality is increasingly characteristic of the HRFOR. Monitors have gone so far as to say that they understand their mandate to be "to nail the RPA." Increasingly, HRFOR is seen as a defence team for those accused of participating in the genocide, and as the main source of criticism for the record of the RPA.

Confidence-building between the government/army and mistrustful sections of the population is, in theory, a priority for HRFOR. But at all levels, relations between UN human rights monitors and their counterparts in government, the army and the gendarmerie are characterised by hostility and mutual incomprehension.

The Technical Co-operation Programme is one area in which HRFOR has striven to make progress. But the efforts of the staff members assigned to this task have been undermined by lack of support from other sections of the mission, and by the overly technical, and hence politically naive, approach of the Technical Co-operation staff themselves.

Rwanda's judicial institutions have been all-but destroyed. Instead of helping the country move towards a functioning legal system, HRFOR is impeding the government's own investigations by helping suspects to escape justice or refusing to hand them over to governmental authorities. Without speedy progress towards justice, the impulses towards indiscriminate revenge and the entrenched culture of impunity will make for an extremely explosive political situation.

Many of the monitors are young, inexperienced and unqualified. They were sent to Rwanda with virtually no training and preparation. The stories of how monitors were recruited and dispatched to Rwanda would make for comic fiction, were it not that the issues are so serious. In their testimonies, the monitors describe how they were completely unprepared for the task that confronted them.

HRFOR has so far proven to be a complete waste of resources, both human and financial. It represents a betrayal of the hopes of the Rwandese people and of the monitors themselves. The office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has appealed for funds to continue the mission. This will be a futile and counter-productive exercise unless HRFOR is thoroughly reformed. African Rights concludes with a set of recommendations that could enable HRFOR to play its wonted role as protector of human rights in Rwanda.

=========================================== This 63-page report can be ordered by sending $8.95 to

African Rights, 11 Marshalsea Road, London SE1 1EP, UK. Tel: 0171 717 1224, Fax: 0171 717 1240

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Message-Id: 199505241456.HAA22561@igc3.igc.apc.org
From: "Washington Office on Africa" woa@igc.apc.org
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 10:54:39 +0000
Subject: Recent Rwanda Documents: Part 2