Rwanda and the ICTR

Rwanda remains committed to supporting the ICTR; government representative


BY GEORGE KAGAME&
CHARLOTTE KINGSMAN


Arusha: The ICTR completion strategy, its mandate and the aloof nature that the UN has allowed France in regard to its role in the 1994 genocide have been critical to the relationship between the ICTR and the government of Rwanda.


This and a host of other issues is what Alloys Mutabingwa the government of Rwanda Special Representative at the ICTR discussed as he held a lively session recently with all the interns currently attached to the ICTR in Arusha.

Of particular interest to many Rwandans is the fact that Rwanda actually never ratified the ICTR after its creation by the UN in 1994. Mutabingwa said of Rwanda’s refusal to ratify the ICTR: “there were concerns from Rwanda that the UN did not adhere to at the time”.


Apparently, Rwanda never ratified the ICTR at its creation in 1994 after the government disagreed with the UN Security Council on certain requirements . Rwanda's conditions included setting up the ICTR in Kigali, where suspects could answer for their crimes in the proximity of their crime scenes.

Says Mutabingwa: "the ICTR did not correspond to a number of conditions posed by Rwanda.” He adds that by the time of its creation, Rwanda still held the maximum criminal sentence of death, which the international community disagreed with, and therefore a neutral country in which the death penalty was non-applicable was chosen.
That is how the ICTR ended up in Arusha Tanzania.


The Rwandan government also insisted on the attendance of civil parties in trial procedures and this principle is not popular in international law. Further still, Rwanda disagreed with the UN over the Issue of collecting evidence against suspects: its concern with this stemmed from the fact that some suspects after their possible acquittal by the ICTR, FRESH EVIDENCE could be obtained after such acquittals and the ICTR insisted that once a person has been freed once, there is no possibility of rearrest even if incriminating evidence was found in the future in a separate trial.
Because of such fundamental concerns by the Rwandan government at that time, Rwanda voted against the creation of the ICTR.

However, since its creation the Rwandan government has cooperated with the ICTR as a member of the UN and has also appeared in trial proceedings sometimes in the capacity of friend to court otherwise known as Amicus Currea.

Recently Rwanda has in fact been more cooperative with the ICTR, this in return has benefited Rwanda where the ICTR has contributed in the reconstruction and reforms currently the government is undertaking in judicial sector.

The reforms which began after the 2003 presidential elections won by Paul Kagame are mainly funded by the European Union and a consortium of other donors, however the Arusha based ICTR has offered technical assistance to Rwanda's judicial sector, and this has involved training of judges and internship opportunities for legal practitioners in the country.



Rwanda has also since scrapped the death penalty since March 2007, replacing it with life imprisonment, the government has also constructed a special state of the art prison facility in the southern provincial town of Butare. Such arrangements were seen by observers as pre-requisites for the ICTR to allow the transfer of genocide suspects to stand for trial in Rwanda as the prosecution side has requested and so far and failed on four attempts.


Rwanda has also persistently voiced its concerns about the ICTR, the government chief prosecutor Martin Ngoga is on record for dismissing the statements of the ICTR especially in its recent decisions denying the transfer of suspects to Rwanda. Ngoga has also dismissed the International Community and the ICTR's silence on the role of France in propagating circumstances that led to the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.


Ngoga has been particularly critical on the infamous indictments by first a French and later a Spanish judge when both European judges issued arrest warrants against some 40 leaders of the ruling party, the Rwanda Patriotic Front.
The ICTR has also been on record, trial chamber judges using Rwanda's reaction against the arrest warrants in all the four cases in which they have denied transfer to Rwanda of Genocide suspects to stand trial in the country.


This has in return led to observers questioning the fairness of the ICTR in its dispensation of justice, commenting on the issue Mutabingwa said: "the issue is not about fairness, there is fairness, the issue is about the degree of fairness: not all fairness is considered alike.


ICTR is more inclined on rights of the accused." He added that the standard of fairness of the ICTR is different from that of national jurisdictions and not just unique to Rwanda’s system saying that because the ICTR is the first of its kind, it has got no models to follow and so: "fairness is a relative term."


Commenting on why there's not been any formal complaint by the international community on the role of France in Rwanda's Genocide, Mutabingwa said thus far, there had not been a case against France as as a nation, because an individual must be responsible for a crime, and to this end, the ICTR has not yet not yet found a high profile French official guilty of any crime in Rwanda during the genocide.


Mutabingwa however said that Rwanda had carried out its own investigations on the role of France in the 1994 genocide. The government in 2007 created the Mucyo Commission which carried out investigations on the role of France in events leading to and during the genocide. The commission which was headed by Jean De Duie Mucyo has since presented its findings to the government but its contents are yet to be made public.


On the state of affairs of Rwanda's relationship with France currently Mutabingwa said the two former cohorts were first cordial referring to France's initial reaction to the victory of the RPF in 1994.


Diplomatic relations between the two have however been severed since the infamous Brugulierre warrants, Mutabngwa however said: "no diplomatic issues however does not mean there are no issues around the genocide but then the Bruguilierre affair closed the door on diplomatic issues, however, it does not mean that we are not speaking at all".


He added that affairs were however better with Rwanda's former colonail masters Belgium saying that the Belgian government has been a partner of Rwanda in its reconstruction proccess. The Belgian government is one of the leading donors to Rwanda’s Judicial Reforms which began in 2003.


In 2000, then Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt made a public apology to the people of Rwanda and regretted the 10 Belgian UN Peace Keepers who were brutally murdered along with Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the interim prime minister of Rwanda in 1994.


On the denial by the ICTR to transfer suspects to answer for their crimes from Rwanda, Mutabingwa said Rwanda has undergone "unprecedented reforms, the judicial sector has improved not from its destructive effects after the 1994, our mission is to replace impunity with Justice: zero tolerance, the system is now decentralized.”


He said that Rwanda's judicial standards were "optimum but the system was faster yet the ICTR is very high standard but extremely slow, Mutabingwa asked: “Is justice about standards? About time? Who is justice for? Academics (foreign judges wanted to raise the standards, focusing on standards)? Or for the people (faster justice)?"