Rwanda Kigali Plot

 Commemoration ceremony for the victims of the 1994 genocide at the Amahoro Stadium in Kigali, Rwanda, April 7, 2019

April 7, 1994, Rwanda remembers as one of the darkest chapters in its history. On this day, armed groups of Rwandan Hutu began mass extermination of another indigenous population of the country - representatives of the Tutsi ethnic minority. The reason was the downed plane of Rwandan President Juvenal Gabiariman, the leader of the Hutu extremist movement.

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In the 25 years that have passed since the tragedy, Rwanda, led by the "smart dictator", the incumbent President Paul Kagame, has totally changed for the better. At the same time, it still cannot be said that all murderers (and those who gave orders to kill) are punished. In addition, there is another important issue. How now to reconcile the victims of the genocide with those who have served their sentences for the murders and are now returning home to Rwanda?

The authorities, which led the country after the genocide and actually brought it back to life, have chosen the punishment of the guilty as their priority task. At first, they tried to imprison them, but the country's prisons were already overcrowded. In addition, international organizations such as Amnesty International strongly condemned the appalling conditions of detention of the perpetrators, where robbers lived alongside mass murderers.

Immediately after the genocide, the International Tribunal took on the perpetrators of the tragedy. By 2015, he had considered 61 cases and sentenced 95 organizers of the genocide. Not a single mortal, maximum life imprisonment. The court was also criticized for too slow consideration of cases. Although the majority of war criminals of various levels were punished deservedly, it still cannot be said that all the perpetrators received due punishment. Many of them emigrated without hindrance.

In the photo below, from left to right, four Rwandans accused of involvement in the genocide of the Tutsi people in the spring of 1994 in the city of Butare: the abbess of the Sowu monastery in southern Rwanda Consolata Mukangango (sister Gertrude), professor of physics at the National University of Rwanda Vincent Ntezimana, Julienne Mukabutera (sister Maria Kizito) and former minister Alphonse Higaniro. The sisters of the Benedictine monastery gave the Hutu groups several thousand people who tried to escape the massacre in the monastery (according to various estimates, from five to seven thousand people, about 600 were burned alive). Both men in the dock were accused of involvement in organizing the 1994 massacre of Tutsis. The Belgian co Rwanda Kigali Plot urt found all four guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. By law, Belgian criminal courts can try war crimes cases even if they were committed outside the country.

Consolata Mukangango, Vincent Ntezimana, Julienne Mukabutera and Alphonse Higaniro, Criminal Court, Brussels, Belgium, 8 June 2001

“Some former organizers of the genocide fled from Rwanda and disappeared into the DRC, Tanzania, Burundi, and prefer not to remember those events, living ordinary life,” explains Alexander Mishin, international expert, co-founder of the Center for African Studies.

Lower-level criminals were tried by other courts - local, non-professional, almost "amateur" - the so-called gachacha. At first, for a year and a half, they collected written eyewitness accounts of what they experienced and saw during the genocide. From 2001 to 2012, more than a million cases were considered, and several of the perpetrators were sentenced to death. If the convicts confessed to their crimes, their sentence was divided into two parts. The first is serving time in prison, the second is community service in the so-called TIG (Travaux d'Interet General) camps.

Journalist Brittany Fried describes his stay at the camps as follows: “When we arrived at Camp Magerare, we were greeted by 110 men and women dressed in the same blue clothes, singing vigorously in Kinyarwanda. The lyrics of that song went something like this: "We love our government, we support our police and our people." When I left Magerare, I could not stop thinking that these people did not feel ashamed and were not afraid to return to the community they caused so much pain. "

France's participation in the Rwandan genocide has caused serious tension between the countries. Rwandan President Paul Kagame once said: "The role of France in what happened in Rwanda is obvious." It is about the military support t

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