Rwandans from different walks of life have denounced the Human Rights Watch recent criticism of the country’s Gacaca traditional courts terming the courts a massive success story that ought to be modeled across board.
The report released on 31 May 2011 was titled “Justice Compromised: The Legacy of Rwanda’s community-based Gacaca Courts.”
“The Gacaca was conducted in our own traditional way regardless of the challenges it faced,” said Emmy Arsonval Maniriho, a student at the National University of Rwanda.
“Rwanda could not solve everything in a single day. The timing of HRW report is not appropriate as the government has promised to evaluate the Gacaca courts and review cases that did not go well,” said Maniriho.
A Remera resident, Steven Gatete said that the quoted cases were few in comparison to the over one million cases the traditional courts handled. “The 350 cases they quoted are a drop in the ocean,” he emphasised, terming the report “abusive and partial.”
“They are content to continue talking ill about our country without any basis,” Gatete lamented.
Rukira Wa Muhizi, 45, a resident of Huye district and a former judge with the Gacaca in Rwaniro and Simbi sectors of the district, said that Gacaca was a role model since it had provided rapid justice to genocide victims and lent a hand to families to easily locate genocide victims and accord them decent burials.
“Gacaca accorded everyone an equal platform and no one felt intimidated,” Muhizi observed.
“Why did HRW ignore the justice rendered by the courts,” he wondered.
He noted that the Gacaca courts had brought together families and managed to identify Genocide suspects wherever they were hiding, which the human rights watchdog completely overlooked in their report.
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