Law and Reality RIGHTS Progress in Judicial Reform in Rwanda WATCH
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Rwanda HUMAN Law and Reality RIGHTS Progress in Judicial Reform in Rwanda WATCH Law and Reality Progress in Judicial Reform in Rwanda Copyright © 2008 Human Rights Watch All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 1-56432-366-8 Cover design by Rafael Jimenez Human Rights Watch 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor New York, NY 10118-3299 USA Tel: +1 212 290 4700, Fax: +1 212 736 1300 [email protected] Poststraße 4-5 10178 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49 30 2593 06-10, Fax: +49 30 2593 0629 [email protected] Avenue des Gaulois, 7 1040 Brussels, Belgium Tel: + 32 (2) 732 2009, Fax: + 32 (2) 732 0471 [email protected] 64-66 Rue de Lausanne 1202 Geneva, Switzerland Tel: +41 22 738 0481, Fax: +41 22 738 1791 [email protected] 2-12 Pentonville Road, 2nd Floor London N1 9HF, UK Tel: +44 20 7713 1995, Fax: +44 20 7713 1800 [email protected] 27 Rue de Lisbonne 75008 Paris, France Tel: +33 (1)43 59 55 35, Fax: +33 (1) 43 59 55 22 [email protected] 1630 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 500 Washington, DC 20009 USA Tel: +1 202 612 4321, Fax: +1 202 612 4333 [email protected] Web Site Address: http://www.hrw.org July 2008 1-56432-366-8 Law and Reality Progress in Judicial Reform in Rwanda I. Summary......................................................................................................................... 1 II. Methodology..................................................................................................................6 III. Recommendations......................................................................................................... 7 To the Rwandan government ...........................................................................................7 To the judicial system......................................................................................................7 To the Rwandan legislature............................................................................................. 8 To donors .......................................................................................................................8 IV. Background................................................................................................................. 10 V. Justice for the Genocide................................................................................................ 12 Practical Problems: Turning on the Lights ......................................................................12 Identifying and Prosecuting Perpetrators: the Issue of Scale..........................................13 The Legal Basis for Prosecution .....................................................................................14 Prosecution in Conventional Courts...............................................................................16 Gacaca: Popular or Political Justice? ..............................................................................17 “Justice is a Political Problem” ......................................................................................19 Reclassification by Administrative Decision...................................................................21 VI. Creating a Modern Professional Judicial System .......................................................... 23 Fewer Courts................................................................................................................. 24 Administrative Autonomy ............................................................................................. 26 More Highly Trained Personnel ......................................................................................27 Increased Efficiency...................................................................................................... 28 Greater Speed for Justice—but not for Genocide Cases ................................................. 29 Improved Protection for Human Rights...........................................................................31 VII. “Divisionism” and “Genocide Ideology” ..................................................................... 34 Imprecise Laws..............................................................................................................34 One Truth ..................................................................................................................... 36 The Campaign against “Divisionism” and “Genocide Ideology”.....................................37 Prosecutions of “Divisionism” and “Genocide Ideology” .............................................. 40 The New Law on “Genocide Ideology”............................................................................41 VIII. Independence of the Judiciary.................................................................................... 44 Law and Reality ............................................................................................................ 44 Limits on Administrative Autonomy ...............................................................................45 Misuse of Prosecutorial Power...................................................................................... 46 Interference in Judicial Cases......................................................................................... 51 Political Cases...............................................................................................................52 Genocide cases ............................................................................................................ 60 Other Cases.................................................................................................................. 64 Consequences of Trying to Remain Independent .......................................................... 66 Lack of Respect for Judicial Orders................................................................................ 67 IX. Challenges to Fair Trial Standards ............................................................................... 70 The Presumption of Innocence...................................................................................... 70 The Right to Present Witnesses......................................................................................73 The Right to Legal Counsel............................................................................................ 78 The Right to Humane conditions of Detention and Freedom from Torture ...................... 82 Protection from Double Jeopardy .................................................................................. 85 Monitoring Trials .......................................................................................................... 87 X. Equal Access to Justice: Prosecuting Crimes by RPA Soldiers ........................................89 Interface with Other Judicial Systems............................................................................ 94 XI. Future Plans for Justice................................................................................................96 XII. International Support .................................................................................................98 XIII. Acknowledgments................................................................................................... 100 XIV. Annex 1 - Number of Genocide Cases Judged.............................................................101 XV. Annex 2 - Analysis of RPA prosecutions by the Rwandan government for crimes committed in the year 1994 .............................................................................................103 I. Summary “We have beautiful laws, among the best in the world. But they are not obeyed.” — A Rwandan judge The Rwandan authorities have improved the delivery of justice in the last five years, a noteworthy achievement given the problems they faced. But the technical and formal improvements in laws and administrative structure have not been matched by gains in independence in the judiciary and assurance of rights to fair trial. The laws have changed considerably, the underlying political dynamics far less. So far, the political context has hindered the full realization of the potential of the reforms. When the government dominated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took power in Rwanda at the end of the 1994 genocide, it was confronted by the need to deliver justice for the horrible killings that had cost the lives of an estimated three-quarters of the Tutsi population. At the same time it saw the need to reform a judicial system, decrepit even before the onset of war and seriously damaged by the years of violence. From 1996 to 2002, the government brought some 7,000 persons to trial on charges of genocide and made some progress both in recruiting new staff and rebuilding the infrastructure of the judicial system. But as of 2001 more than a hundred thousand persons were still detained and the courts continued to operate much as they had in the past, slowly and inefficiently. The government sought to make faster progress in the judicial domain by undertaking two dramatic initiatives. It launched gacaca jurisdictions, a form of popular justice modeled on past customary conflict-resolution practices, to judge most cases of genocide. Hundreds of thousands of elected judges, chosen for their integrity rather than for their formal education, were authorized to deliver justice in the name of the local community. 1 Human Rights Watch July 2008 At the same time the government initiated a thorough reform of conventional justice, seeking to create a “modern” professional