Forma estructural de la Compañía de Transporte de Taxis Convencional

In most of the country, the genocide was stopped by the RPF, which seized power and took control of the country. For years the Hutu had been told that these inkotanyi planned to kill all Hutu, and it was unlikely that they would change their plans after seeing what the Hutu had done to the Tutsi. Stirred up by

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Emmanuel, interviewed in Mudasomwa communal prison, 30 January 2003. 28

parts the old regime and its extremist media, millions of people decided to flee Rwanda and head for the camps in neighbouring countries. Alongside the refugees came many people who had planned to kill and/or had taken part in the genocide, but also countless persons who had not been involved in the atrocities. The latter group served as a protection buffer for the rest.

RPF crimes and the idea of a “double genocide”

By bringing the genocide to a halt, the RPF did what the rest of the world had failed to do. However, there is a lot of controversy about the way the inkotanyi

stopped the genocide and how they acted afterwards. Their takeover of power went hand in hand with violence against the Hutu. In some cases this violence targeted individuals, but there were also small-scale massacres of the Hutu population. Sometimes the victims were suspected of having committed crimes during the genocide, but all too often they were innocent of those crimes. Some of the killings took place on Rwandan soil but many others were killed in the former Zaire, where RPF raids into refugee camps cost many lives.29 Inside Rwanda, especially in the northern and northwestern provinces, where the RPF entered the country, where the old regime had its strongest power base and where

the interahamwe undertook many insurgencies from Congo, the RPF is known to

have repeatedly violated human rights. Although it is a politically very sensitive issue, most interviewees who have relatives in that area made these killings by

the inkotanyi a prime subject of the interviews. They continuously returned to the

fact that their group lost many people as well. Whether it was about gacaca, reconciliation or the peace process, the process can only be a success if the executioners of their families are held accountable.

In this respect, some people talk about a “double genocide”, meaning that after the genocide against the Tutsi, a second one took place against the Hutu. Prisoners are particularly keen to say that they have calculated that more Hutu than Tutsi were killed. One refusing prisoner stated for example:

“In this country, they remember their brethren. Mornings and evenings. However, they do not allow the other part to remember their brethren who died. But, when I calculate and make percentages, I find that the number of Hutu that were killed is larger than the number of Tutsi killed. Then, why don’t they allow us to bury our dead honestly? Instead, they mixed our people’s bodies with theirs, saying that it is only theirs who died so that maybe foreign countries think that it is only the Tutsi who were killed and that there are no Hutu who were killed.”30

29

For documentation, see: Human Rights Watch, Rwanda: Deliver justice for victims on both sides;

African rights, Rwanda: The insurgency in the Northwest; Prunier, The Rwanda crisis, 305-11; Amnesty International, Rwanda, reports of killings and abductions.

30

Maurice, interviewed in Gikongoro Central Prison, 28 January 2003. This prisoner refers to a widespread belief that bodies of murdered Hutu were brought to the massacre site of Murambi and portrayed as being Tutsi victims. In this way, the murders of Hutu were covered up, and the murders

Serious sources dismiss claims of a “double genocide” or claims that more Hutu were killed than Tutsi. The RPF crimes did take place but they were usually unorganised and relatively limited in number.31 However, the “double genocide” ideology has become a powerful source of discontent among segments of the population. In my opinion, the way the present regime addresses this issue only strengthens the power of the idea of a double genocide. As this prisoner cited here indicates, one is not allowed to talk about Hutu that were murdered during the stopping of the genocide and thereafter. By keeping this issue out of the public debate, it can easily be turned into a myth that is far more dangerous than being open about the reality of what happened.

Hutu victims in Gikongoro

Although Gikongoro Province was not as severely hit by this second cycle of violence as the northern part of the country, it nevertheless played a large role in people’s lives. Gikongoro was, together with other southeastern provinces, relatively spared because it fell under the zone turquoise, a zone that the French had invaded at the end of July 1994 to create an area of security under their control.32 French soldiers stayed until the end of August, thereby preventing the RPF from taking over the southeast of Rwanda during the period of their greatest fury. Nevertheless, the Hutu of Gikongoro suffered in the aftermath of the genocide; people died or lost family members in the camps of the former Zaire, including a small number of people from Gatovu and Vumwe. There is uncertainty about what exactly happened in the former Zaire, but interviewees that had fled to the camps all claimed that the RPF soldiers killed a large number of people there.

In April 1995, a huge massacre took place in the town of Kibeho, some 20 kilometres from Nkumbere. During the genocide, the parish of Kibeho and its school saw one of the worst bloodbaths of the genocide. Afterwards, a camp consisting of around 100,000 internally displaced persons was set up. In April 1995, the authorities decided to close down the camp because it had a negative impact on the region’s security situation. The closure, however, was executed

of Tutsi were exaggerated, which would lead to more international pity for the Tutsi. One prisoner even told me that he had been forced to dig up the bodies of murdered Hutu near the closed-down refugee camp of Kibeho, and bring them to Murambi where they were buried together with the Tutsi victims of the massacre there.

31

Prunier, The Rwanda crisis, 106. 32

The zone turquoise is certainly not without controversy, partly because the installation was very late, but also because the French government had always maintained friendly relations with the old regime and unfriendly ones with the Anglophone RPF. And indeed, the zone turquoise was used by many prominent organisers of the genocide as a safe way out of the country, thereby escaping prosecution. For a detailed account on the zone turquoise, see Prunier, The Rwanda crisis, 281-311.

with machine guns and grenades, killing approximately 2,000 to 8,000 people.33 In Nkumbere, one could hear the sounds of the explosions and see its smoke. Many interviewees cited this bloodbath as proof that their group too had been the target of violence. They demand that, for true justice and reconciliation, the perpetrators must be held accountable as well.

Hutu complain about individual acts of vengeance. In Gatovu, I came across three such cases. As with the genocide, these incidents carry enormous consequences for the social relations in the community and have without doubt affected the operation of gacaca. Contrary to the sensitive issue of killings by the

inkotanyi, these episodes are discussed openly in Gatovu. In the first incident,

Gatovu’s only male survivor, Jean Paul, plays a key role. According to many inhabitants of the cell, including his only remaining sister, he killed two men after the genocide. The men, called Silas and Michel, were the brothers of two people he had imprisoned for the murder of his family. The president of the gacaca court, who was normally careful about revealing sensitive events in Gatovu’s history, explained to me:

“I know that story very well. It was at night, and Silas was sleeping in his house when Jean Paul came with a group of men. They called Silas, and took him to the bridge towards Gasarenda. The next morning his body was found in the tea plantation.

Question: has Jean Paul been in prison for that?

Answer: No he has not. Everybody knows, but I think they are afraid of accusing him since he is a survivor and the councillor, so he can easily have you arrested.”34

Other villagers told exactly the same story about the murder of Silas. Silas’ brother Michel was accordingly killed the same night, in the same way. The second case of revenge took place against a former soldier who came from Gatovu. After the genocide he had fled to Congo but returned in 1996. One day, he had gone to Gasarenda to have a beer with some friends. Suddenly, a couple of soldiers came into the bistro where he was sitting and shot him. According to the people of Gatovu, it was the survivors who had given the order to kill this man. Although there is no way that they can prove this, the fact that the finger of blame is pointed immediately at the survivors is characteristic of the relationship between the groups. The third case is about the child of the former cell-leader, who suddenly disappeared after the genocide and never returned. Also in this case there is no proof of involvement of any survivor, but again people are convinced that they masterminded the kidnapping.

In addition to these acts of revenge, Hutu suffered because of the waves of arrests after the genocide and after the return of refugees from Congo in 1996. Everywhere in Rwanda this wave of arrests led to an explosion in the prison

33

Gérard Getrey, Kibeho, ou la face cachée de la tragédie Rwandaise (Paris, 1998), 56; Pottier, Re- imagining Rwanda, 44

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population. The vast majority of arrests were made by or at the request of survivors. In the first years after the genocide, the pointing of a finger by a survivor was enough to lock someone up for years. Especially in the district of Mudasomwa, where the mayor is a survivor and the chief of police a Tutsi repatriate from Congo, survivors had as great deal of power. In this way, many criminals were arrested, but also people who had nothing to do with the genocide ended up behind bars. It was a time that offered the possibility to settle old scores, or to regain wealth by demanding money for not imprisoning or releasing people. According to one prisoner:

“After the war, when the RPF seized power, there was a problem: survivors could imprison just anybody. When you were having a simple quarrel, the survivors used this situation to have you imprisoned, thinking that you would be killed immediately. Besides, at that time, the genocide survivors thought that every Hutu had killed. So they imprisoned anybody they wanted to.”35

These four kinds of events should, again, not be seen as a “double genocide”, this time targeted at the Hutu. Genocide means the execution of a pre-determined plan to exterminate a certain population group. This clearly was the case in the first 100 days after 6 April, but not after that. There was no plan here and the scale was too small to use such a term. However, terrible things did happen. And people who lost loved ones during the genocide or suffered losses in different kinds of crimes long for acknowledgement of their suffering. Failure to do so shapes an additional imbalance within communities. Especially during gacaca, where one is only allowed to speak about the first category of crimes, this imbalance is given expression. By making gacaca exclusively the domain of discussion about crimes against Tutsi, others lose any sense of ownership that gacaca hoped to offer the population. Here one risks transforming the perception of gacaca as a form of popular justice into a kind of victory justice. As we will see, in both Vumwe and Gatovu there are clear, but different, signs that the majority indeed see gacaca that way.

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