We had two trips to the local federal prison to visit and speak to genocidaires. The first trip ended unsatisfactorily when it became obvious that, even though the CLNG had told the prison we were coming, the Warden clearly had no idea we going to be there, and he was not ready for us. Nonetheless, in true Rwandan style, wanting to be friendly, he offered to answer some questions for us. Our time there was interesting, but I felt that the Warden was not comfortable. On hearing we were English, he insisted on speaking English to us, when it would have been better for him to speak French and then have Shyrna translate for the non-french speakers.
We learned one interesting fact about Rwanda jurisprudence: people who perform abortions go to jail in Rwanda, and so do women who get abortions, and so do people who help women get abortions. We made arrangements to come back another day.
On the bus on our way back to the St Paul from the prison, which was literally around the corner from us, down one of the arms off the traffic circle, we spent a long time talking about the abortion/jail issue. We also discussed the fact that sex workers are imprisoned in Rwanda, if they get caught. (Lucky for our neighbour at the St. Paul that his “date” was free to see him one night. That’s another reason I wanted to leave the St. Paul: one night with my neighbour and his “date” was enough for me. I thought he had a girlfriend, but several of our group saw her arrive, and said she was clearly a working girl. They said she was pretty. I didn’t see her. I just heard her. At 3:00 in the morning. ) Tall Tina said that sometimes women who are trafficked into the sex trade are doubly victimized: once when they get sold into the sex trade, and the second time if they get arrested for being a prostitute.
Rich and Shyrna made a special side trip to the CLNG to arrange another visit to the prison. I wasn’t really keen on going back, and neither were most of the people I talked to, but we did go back, and now I am glad we did. In fact, I am sorry that we didn’t have more time to spend with the genocidaires. I wanted to ask how they could do what they did.
When we arrived at the prison the second time, the rules were the same as they were the first time: no photos, no cell phones etc. We walked from the parking where we left the bus to the Warden’s office area, but instead of meeting in his office like we did the last time, we went to a large meeting room. In the room were set up about forty or so chairs. Chairs for us on one side, chairs for the genocidaires set up at right angles to us.
After waiting about an hour, which cheesed me off, the genocidaires came into the room. There was a mix of men and women and a mix of pink and orange prison uniforms. Orange uniforms are for prisoners who have been through the court system and are serving their sentences. Pink uniforms are for those people whose cases are still before the courts. The uniforms were neat and clean. They were all nicely ironed: the pants had front creases in them. If you are wondering why there are genocidaires whose cases are still before the courts sixteen years after the fact, it could be because some of them have only just been indicted, but it could also be that because there were over 100,000 genocidaires indicted, that it has taken this long to get some of them to trial. It has been estimated that about 1 in 7 adult Hutus were involved in the killings in one way or another. That’s a lot of killers. Many of them have left the country. Some are arrested when they try to return. Rwanda is actively involved in trying to extradite some of the killers who fled to Europe.
I am not sure what I was expecting when the genocidaires arrived. They seemed to be a mix of utterly regular-looking people. No one had “Genocidal Killer” written on their forehead. If I had bumped into any one of them on the street, there would have been nothing to indicate what they did in 1994. But their Tutsi neighbours had bumped into them on the street in 1994, had been killed by them, and that is how these people found themselves in prison.
First, the genocidaires introduced themselves. Again, there was a wide range of occupations and roles that they played. One man was a leader of a local prefecture. One or two men were from the Interahamwe. I was interested to hear what the Interahamwe people had to say, but sadly, we never got to hear them. Some of the people in my group were a little put out that only three people talked. They felt that these three hijacked the meeting to tell their own stories. I didn’t see it like that. There was no way we were going to hear twenty people speak in the hour which we were allotted. As it turns out, we were in the room with them for about three hours.
The first woman who spoke could have been anyone’s neighbour. She was a Hutu woman. She said she had been married to a Tutsi man and the man and her children were visiting relatives elsewhere in the country when the genocide started. Luckily they survived the genocide. I am not sure if the irony of that was lost on her. She claimed that she did what she did for survial. She said she did not kill anyone, although she did participate in harassing a woman at a roadblock until the woman could prove that she was Hutu. What would have happened had the woman not been able to prove she was a Hutu? She would have been killed of course. I can’t believe that there was only ever one woman who appeared at this roadblock. It is likely that many people were killed there, and that she was present. I did not believe her for a second. At the end of her talk, she asked for our forgiveness.
The second speaker was also a woman. She was petite, but robust. She said had been a journalist during the genocide and that she had worked at Radio Milles Collines (not to be confused with the Hotel des Milles Collines – many businesses in Rwanda make reference to the hills, which is understandable, considering they inform almost every aspect of life in Rwanda). I think the official name of the radio station was RTLN but it was called Radio Libre des Milles Collines. This is the radio station that exhorted Hutu to kill “inyenzi” which is Kinyarwanda for cockroaches, which was what the Hutu called the Tutsi in an effort to dehumanize them. She ended her talk by saying if there is a message that we could take away from this visit, it is that “we” (and who she means by “we” was not clear – was it the people in the room, the genocidaires in prisons all over the country, people who confessed at the gacaca (pronounced ga cha cha) courts, people who fled to Congo and refugee camps in Burundi and Tanzania and who have not been charged for their crimes, people who fled and are living in luxury in France, or just who the hell “we” is) are sorry for what we did, we have confessed our crimes, and we are asking for your forgiveness, the forgiveness of our victims and their families, and the forgiveness of people in the world. If she was speaking to me, she was speaking to the wrong person. By the time I visited the prison, I had already visited the Belgian Memorial, the Don Bosco school, I had spoken with the widows in the Nelson Mandella Village of Hope, I had been to Nyamata where thousands were killed, I had been to Ntarama where thousands were killed, I had been to Nyarubuye were tens of thousands were killed, I had been to Murambi where tens of thousands were killed and I had been to Bisesero, the site of the largest massacre of the genocide. I had spoken to widows at AVEGA in Kigali. I was in no mood for forgiveness. I’m still not in a forgiving mood.
The third speaker was a man who had been the head of a prefecture in Kigali, sort of like a city counselor.
After the three of them had spoken we were given a chance to ask some questions. The understanding was that all of them would have a chance to participate. As it was, only the three people who told their stories answered questions and everyone else was silent. I wanted to hear what the Interahamwe people had to say for themselves. I felt the answers that the three people who spoke gave were fairly self-serving. The journalist never said what she had done to end up in the jail. I found out purely by accident.
The journalist’s name was Valerie. I found this out while sitting in the departure lounge in Nairobi on our way back to England. Kate English, one of our friends on the trip, had purchased two books at the airport in Kigali. Had I known books were available at the airport, I would have purchased them. I was given an award last year that came with money to buy books. I could have spent some of it in Rwanda. One of the books she bought was called Hotel Rwanda: The Tutsi Genocide as Seen by Hollywood. The book debunks the myth of the movie “Hotel Rwanda” which paints Paul Rusesibagina as a hero, when in reality he was anything but a hero. I see him as a genocidaire, frankly. At any rate, Valerie is in this book. She gave a deputation to the author from prison. She claims she has first-hand knowledge of Paul Rusesibagina personally handing people over to the Interahamwe or giving names and locations to the Interahamwe. The book says that Valerie worked at RTLN during the genocide. I knew that, she said as much. The book also says that what she did at RTLN during the genocide was read the names and locations of Tutsis over the air so that they could be killed. That’s a far cry from being just a journalist who worked at the radio station. She claims she did not personally kill anyone but she absolutely belongs in jail: who knows how many people were killed because she gave directions about where to find them?
When our time was up, we thanked them for their time, they thanked us for coming to listen to their stories and then we all filed out and went our separate ways. It was all very jolly. When we left the room, we milled about outside for a few minutes. We watched prisoners coming and going. Some were playing checkers, some were working. When we came the week before, when the Warden wasn’t expecting us, it was visitor’s day, and we did see people, mostly women and children, coming to spend time with their relatives in prison.
The prison did not seem to be overly worried about security. They made a bigger deal about not taking photos or using cell phones than anything else. There was only one guard, unarmed, in the room with us during this time, and at one point his cell phone rang, and he got up and left us alone in the room with the genocidaires. Maybe we were supposed to see that they were just regular people seized with a frenzy after being built up to the genocide by Habiyarimana’s government, and that they were no longer a danger to us. Either way, I would have liked a little more security.
No comments:
Post a Comment