In the Tall Grass
went to see a documentary shown by UCLA African Studies. about the Gacaca -- the traditional forum of Rwandan community justice, which has been modified to process tens of thousands of war criminals. pronounced "ga-chach-a." basically, the genocide ended (or slowed, depending on your definition of genocide) in 1994. there were at least 700,000 murderers and war criminals to deal with, almost all of them Hutu. the government had been destroyed only a year earlier, in civil war. there was no possible way to arrest, hold, feed, or provide trials for them all. the government was barely able to keep order in the countryside. and not even a huge system like america's or russia's could handle an influx on 100,000 prisoners, nevermind 700,000. even if they could afford to imprison almost 10% of the population, how could a government with a million homeless refugees justify giving food and shelter to criminals?
so the new unity government sent teams out to talk to the people about "divisionism," the Kinyarwanda word for ethnic hatred, which threatened to boil over. all across the nation, in disparate communities, the people talked about Gacaca. Gacaca had faded away while the Hutu and Tutsi were enslaved by european colonists. the Rwandan independence movement in the 1960s focused on building a "modern" (i.e. european-style) judicial system, which would handle crime as well as the civil disputes which had formerly been the domain of local Gacaca. but the people did not forget their indigenous justice system. the new "post-ethnic" government, in 1994, listened, and reinstituted these community justice forums.
Gacaca has notable differences from a so-called "modern" judiciary. the goal of our judicial system is to protect individual rights and punish the guilty. there is no elevation of "truth" per se, only doubt. because of the law negotiation process, the result of a case (especially a settled case) is compromise, not truth. determining punishment is very central to the enterprise.
in contrast, the goal of the Gacaca is not to punish, but to find truth. truth is considered most valuable, and leniency is offered to those who tell the truth when confronted by a community at a Gacaca. whatever the crimes, if the person owns up to his/her guilt, and then asks for forgiveness, the punishment (even for something like murder) could be community service. the interethnic community of Hutu and Tutsi want reconcilation, not vengeance. it is common and useful, in their eyes, for the remorseful guilty person to stay and repair trust relationships little by little. but if the person denies guilt, and the adjudicators think he/she is lying, the crime of lying - perjury - is severely punished. the person may be ostracized by the community, as they all feel lied to. the person will be given a verdict of guilty, but for sentencing, he/she is sent to the national criminal system. in this case, their national system is the International War Crimes Tribunal. which at that point decides what punishment(s) are appropriate. the sentence is more likely to be death penalty than community service. so liars, proceed at your peril.
in the film, the members of the community elected a board of adjudicators. those elected are respected in the village/neighborhood, but have no educational background in law. they aren't paid, either, and they do not campaign for the seats. they are male and female, young and old, rich and poor. once elected, these adjudicators (i don't remember the rwandan word) receive a short training course on procedure - mainly to have a standard form of Gacaca, which used to vary according to province, tribal history, etc. as for how to actually decide guilt or innocence, this is not taught; they rely on their grounding in the moral tenets of their communities, which has been ratified by their neighbors' votes.
the people in the community gather around a table where the adjudicators sit. there is one person standing. this person acts as something of a host - he reads about the crime which has been brought to the attention of the Gacaca. he asks the seated community if any of them would like to talk about the crime. typically, the person victimized will walk forward and speak. in the Gacaca i saw, Joanita came forward. she explained how she saw her next-door neighbor Anastase kill her husband with a machete to the neck. she grabbed her children and immediately tried to escape. but the deth squad, including anastase, lead the 3 children away. Joanita said she saw anastase and others hit the children. She believed they had been dead for 12 years, but could not mourn accurately because she did not have their bodies to bury.
anastase, who had long been aware of what he is accused of, was sitting, listening. joanita, stoic, sat again. the host asked if anyone could corroborate Joanita's story. Joanita was one of only a few Tutsi who survived the genocide in that community of 1500 people. she no longer trusted any of her Hutu neighbors, and was worried no one would say anything. she believed somebody knew where her children's bodies were, but no one had told her.
but a Hutu woman did come forward. she said she heard Joanita's husband scream, then immediately called to her brother to run with her to see what was happening. Joanita's husband was dead, she saw. and the Hutus, including Anastase, had already seized the children by then. they immediately tried to recruit the neighbor's brother to assist with killing Joanita's children. The neighbor said that was all she knew, she didn't actually see the children dead.
because Anastase had been placed at the scene by two witnesses, the host asked him if he would like to say anything. Anastase admitted to being a member of that death squad, but denied actually swinging the machete that killed them. anastase said he had gone in first and advised the man to hide his national ID card, so the death squad wouldn't have proof of his ethnicity. but Anastase said the other men came in too quickly, found the ID card, and immediately killed him. Anastase concluded he didn't want anyone to die, he was really trying to save a life by hiding an ID card.
at this point, because it was late, the gacaca recessed so the farmers could finish their coffee harvest for the day. they met again the next afternoon. Joanita was invited to rebut the story of Anastase. She made a few detailed observations about that day, directly asking Anastase about contradictions in his testimony. anastase denied all guilt still. another, different woman comes forward. she says she knows something about what happened. she says a group of men led by Anastase were dragging the children down the road. She says one of the other men hit the oldest child with a nail-studded club. She said anastase carried a machete, which he admits to having taken from the hand of Joanita's husband. she followed from a distance and saw them take the bodies of the three children, and throw them into a shallow grave surrounded by banana trees. she said 2 of them were still alive as the death squad, including Anastase, filled in the dirt.
the people of the community listen intently, then talk to each other. when anastase again denied his guilt, and refused to even apologize for deing a member of the death squad, the people mutter their disapproval. looking around at people, many of whom are his close friends, Anastase felt deperate. he could tell they did not believe his version, and this was not a good sign for his future.
the story continued in the documentary, and continues still. Gacaca will not solve all the problems; it might not "solve" anything. but it at least has created a forum to speak of the unspeakable. Gacaca is a remarkable institution, which allows rwandans to come to terms, village by village, with an ugly ugly past. they get to more truth than a high-stakes, contentious courtroom ever could. community pressure becomes the policing force, which is a good thing to promote, as much of the genocide was enabled by those who looked the other way. many of the 700,000 genocidal murderers perform commuity service and have worked to rebuild the country, something they would never do if they had been imprisoned (or executed). and the survivors seem to be satisfied with what would be called light punishment. they feel better to receive an apology, and greatly desire a situation that gets them over the hurdle of Justice without resorting to vengeace and retribution.
america may still be a bit too "Eye for an eye" to try something like this. on the other hand, americans do not (en mass) go on killing sprees within their neighborhoods the way many of the Hutu did. for some things, we want blood; for others no.
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