Rwanda

by Christopher Watson, fourth year law student

This summer I was part of a group to go on the Tearfund/ Lawyers Christian Fellowship trip to Tanzania and Rwanda. I had previously mentioned my intention to go to a friend, knowing that she had already been to Africa. Wasting no time, I launched into telling her that it was part of a wider third world justice study. However, her matter of fact reply subdued me; "Oh, there is none."

Many different aspects come under the umbrella of third world justice. Having spent just a short while in Tanzania, it was obvious that poverty is a major issue. Houses were often wooden shacks. Our task was to complete a half finished dining hall/ kitchen - half-finished because it was only our arrival and the money we brought that allowed the job to continue. The Fundis (Swahili for workman) had no cement mixers or quick and easy to handle electric saws - just items which involved a lot of physical exertion. The community we visited in rural Rwanda used their hands and feet to build what turned out to be an impressive mud house.

After a day on the building site, we would sit round as a team and discuss the complex web of problems of the third world. Corruption, world economics, development and aid issues were all discussed. However, limited space allows me to comment only on what is at present closest to my heart - genocide and the society it leaves behind.

Rwanda is populated almost in full by two tribes, the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsi. In 1994, around one million people were slaughtered in four months, as Hutu extremists made a concerted to eradicate the Tutsi population. I remember walking out of the airport in the capital Kigali and being greeted by a city set in the hills. It seemed so ironic, so much was pleasant, yet it was only thoughts of genocide punching those parts of my brain made for enquiry and questioning. Did you participate in the genocide? Are you a victim? A widow? What happened to your family? Did you enjoy killing those people? Do you still cry?

Just a week earlier we had visited the ICTR - the UN International Tribunal in Tanzania which is responsible for prosecuting the key perpetrators of the genocide. As expected it oozes western standards - smart suits, nice building, big budget and noble ideals. I am very much in favour of idealism, but the ICTR process is excruciatingly slow. Just over forty arrests of key genocide suspects have been made, and those awaiting trial for genocide crimes inside Rwanda amounts to 125, 000. There is no doubt that the tribunal has made a significant contribution to international law jurisprudence and its ability to hold individuals accountable for their actions, but the issues of peace and justice extend deeper. Has justice been realised for the Rwandan people? Perpetrators of genocide and their victims, widows or those who have been raped still pass each other on the street corner. Moreover, killers in exile will return home, many in anticipation of finishing the job. Orphans will grow up and in the absence of effective justice. Revenge will be pursued. What will stop the cycle? Is a lasting peace really being built?

But there is much to be hopeful about. Churches and NGO's lead the way in reconciliation and we saw at first hand the enormous value of this work to a deeply scared people. A real sense of community is so often evident, building, planting and providing for one another. In some cases forgiveness, which for many of us is a lost art, is actually a reality.

My summer trip turned out to be a microscopic look beneath the surface of humanity, that there is actually something fundamentally wrong at its core. It was a concentrated evaluation and deepening of what I believe to be true. I remember being deeply troubled that a pastor could lead his 'flock' to be butchered by militiamen. But my faith reminded me that all of us are potentially capable of such acts. It was a hard pill to swallow.

One of the men we worked closely with in Rwanda asked us to go home and remind folk that people in Africa are real. They only seem not so, to those who don't understand.

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