Abstract: In this essay we are
going to assess the suitability of the International Criminal Tribunal of
Rwanda as a criminal justice response to the genocide of 1994 in which we will
considered some clarification of concept such as I C T and also the meaning of
Genocide and we will situate the essay on a theory in which frustrations
aggression theory will be adopted and then a brief look at the Rwanda genocide
and the suitability of the I C T to this genocide.
INTRODUCTION
As the smallest country in
Africa with the largest population, 7 million, Rwanda has had to overcome
famine, overpopulation, and, most recently, a massive genocide which reduced
their population by a huge amount. The country of Rwanda has had an interesting
history due to their two supposed ethnic groups, the Hutus, the majority, and
the Tutsis, who consist of about 15-18% of the population. The Tutsis were more
prominent in the royalty and hierarchy of the country but most of them were
still peasants. The Hutus were the farmers and the Tutsis ran the cattle.
During the time of European Colonization, the Belgians came to Rwanda and
decided to further the gap between the peaceful Hutus and Tutsis. The Belgians
saw the Tutsis as more like themselves; therefore, they took them under their
wing and educated them and brought them up to be the upper echelon of society.
The Europeans created tribal cards to differentiate between the two groups.
Believing that they were just furthering what the Tutsis had created, the
Belgians created a class system. Due to their presence, the Belgians made the
discrimination between the two groups greater and yet the Hutus and Tutsis were
still living together peacefully. The Hutus, having no power, accepted the role
of the oppressed.
In 1962, Rwanda gained their independence from Belgium. The Europeans, however,
left the country in a state of discord due to the majority of Hutus who were
able to gain back their power from the Tutsis, who were viewed as feudal
overlords. Soon the Party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement (PARMEHUTU) came
into power. The once oppressed Hutus decided to take revenge and many Tutsis
were killed. 200,000 Tutsi refugees fled to neighboring country to escape the
violence that was taking place in their country.
CLARIFICATION
OF TERMS
What is I C T: The
International Criminal Tribunal (commonly referred to as ICT), is a
permanent tribunal to
prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and
the crime of aggression, which are defined as violations of Common
Article Three and Additional Protocol II of the Geneva Conventions (dealing with war crimes committed during
internal conflicts).
What is Genocide: Genocide is a crime of destroying or conspiring to destroy a
group of people because of their ethnic, national, racial, or religious
identity. Genocide is a crime on a different scale to all other crimes against
humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group.
Genocide is therefore both the gravest and the greatest of the crimes against
humanity.
The United Nation’s Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined genocide as “Any of
the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the
group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births
within the group and Forcibly transferring children of the group to another
group (http://en.wikipedia.org).
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Frustration-aggression
theory seems to provide the best framework for this essay; and the
frustration-aggression theory is found in the works of John Dollard and his
associates in pioneering the work on the subject (Dollard et al., 1939). Political scientist who have employed this
approach as general bases for the explanation of political violence are among
others; James C. Davios, Ted Gurr, Ivo and Rosalind Feierabend, and Douglas BWY
(Midlarsky, 1975).
This theory presents the idea of
relative deprivation as a perceived disparity between value expectation and
value capabilities. Or lack of a need satisfaction defined as a gap between
aspiration and achievement (Midlarsky 1975). Simply put, when there is a gap
between the level of value expectation and the level of value attainment, due
to lack of capability to establish a congruence between both levels, tension builds
up due to the pressure of an unfulfilled aspiration or an unsatisfied urge or
need. This, when not arrested in time, leads to frustration. Frustration, when
it builds up, leads to the rising up of suppressed emotions of anger, which is
often directed against the party considered to be the source of deprivation of
satisfaction. This strong emotion finally finds an outlet through aggressive
and invariably violent disposition towards the environment. According to Akwen
(2011), the frustration Aggression theory state that Aggression is caused by
Frustration. When someone is prevented from reaching his target, he becomes
frustrated. This frustration can then turn into aggression when something
triggers it.
This theory is important for the
understanding of the Rwanda genocide, because Rwanda
was made up of two major ethnic group which are the Hutu and the Tutsi and the
Hutu majority seized power and reversed the roles, oppressing the Tutsis through
systematic discrimination and acts of violence, this made the Tutsis to be
deprived and feel they are being marginalize by the Hutu in which the revolve
and the outcome led to their civil war which is generally refers to the Rwandan
genocide of 1994.
THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE OF 1994
According to Gérard (2009) Rwanda is one of the smallest countries in Central Africa, with
just 7 million people, and is comprised of two main ethnic groups, the Hutu and
the Tutsi. Although the Hutus account for 90 percent of the population, in the
past, the Tutsi minority was considered the aristocracy of Rwanda and dominated
Hutu peasants for decades, especially while Rwanda was under Belgian colonial
rule.
Following independence from Belgium in 1962, the Hutu
majority seized power and reversed the roles, oppressing the Tutsis through
systematic discrimination and acts of violence. As a result, over 200,000
Tutsis fled to neighboring countries and formed a rebel guerrilla army, the
Rwandan Patriotic Front. In 1990, this rebel army invaded Rwanda and forced
Hutu President Juvenal Habyalimana into signing an accord which mandated that
the Hutus and Tutsis would share power.
According to Gérard (2009).Ethnic tensions in Rwanda were significantly heightened in October
1993 upon the assassination of Melchior Ndadaye, the first popularly elected
Hutu president of neighboring Burundi. A United Nations peacekeeping force of
2,500 multinational soldiers was then dispatched to Rwanda to preserve the
fragile cease-fire between the Hutu government and the Tutsi rebels. Peace was
threatened by Hutu extremists who were violently opposed to sharing any power
with the Tutsis. Among these extremists were those who desired nothing less
than the actual extermination of the Tutsis. It was later revealed they had
even drawn up lists of prominent Tutsis and moderate Hutu politicians to kill,
should the opportunity arise.
In April 1994, amid ever-increasing prospects of
violence, Rwandan President Habyalimana and Burundi's new President, Cyprien
Ntaryamira, held several peace meetings with Tutsi rebels. On April 6, while
returning from a meeting in Tanzania, a small jet carrying the two presidents
was shot down by ground-fired missiles as it approached Rwanda's airport at
Kigali. Immediately after their deaths, Rwanda plunged into political violence
as Hutu extremists began targeting prominent opposition figures who were on
their death-lists, including moderate Hutu politicians and Tutsi leaders. The
killings then spread throughout the countryside as Hutu militia, armed with
machetes, clubs, guns and grenades, began indiscriminately killing Tutsi
civilians. All individuals in Rwanda carried identification cards specifying
their ethnic background, a practice left over from colonial days. These 'tribal
cards' now meant the difference between life and death.
Amid the onslaught, the small U.N. peacekeeping force was
overwhelmed as terrified Tutsi families and moderate politicians sought
protection. Among the peacekeepers were ten soldiers from Belgium who were
captured by the Hutus, tortured and murdered. As a result, the United States,
France, Belgium, and Italy all began evacuating their own personnel from
Rwanda. However, no effort was made to evacuate Tutsi civilians or Hutu
moderates. Instead, they were left behind entirely at the mercy of the avenging
Hutu. Back at U.N headquarters in New York, the killings were initially
categorized as a breakdown in the cease-fire between the Tutsi and Hutu.
Throughout the massacre, both the U.N. and the U.S. carefully refrained from
labeling the killings as genocide, which would have necessitated some kind of
emergency intervention.
On April 21, the Red Cross estimated that hundreds of
thousands of Tutsi had already been massacred since April 6 - an extraordinary
rate of killing. The U.N. Security Council responded to the worsening crisis by
voting unanimously to abandon Rwanda. The remainders of U.N. peacekeeping
troops were pulled out, leaving behind a only tiny force of about 200 soldiers
for the entire country. The Hutu, now without opposition from the world
community, engaged in genocidal mania, clubbing and hacking to death
defenseless Tutsi families with machetes everywhere they were found. The
Rwandan state radio, controlled by Hutu extremists, further encouraged the
killings by broadcasting non-stop hate propaganda and even pinpointed the
locations of Tutsis in hiding. The killers were aided by members of the Hutu
professional class including journalists, doctors and educators, along with
unemployed Hutu youths and peasants who killed Tutsis just to steal their
property.
Many Tutsis took refuge in churches and mission
compounds. These places became the scenes of some of the worst massacres. In
one case, at Musha, 1,200 Tutsis who had sought refuge were killed beginning at
8 a.m. lasting until the evening. Hospitals also became prime targets as
wounded survivors were sought out then killed. In some local villages,
militiamen forced Hutus to kill their Tutsi neighbors or face a death sentence
for themselves and their entire families. They also forced Tutsis to kill
members of their own families.
By mid May, an estimated 500,000 Tutsis had been
slaughtered. Bodies were now commonly seen floating down the Kigara River into
Lake Victoria. Confronted with international TV news reports depicting
genocide, the U.N. Security Council voted to send up to 5,000 soldiers to
Rwanda. However, the Security Council failed to establish any timetable and
thus never sent the troops in time to stop the massacre. The killings only
ended after armed Tutsi rebels, invading from neighboring countries, managed to
defeat the Hutus and halt the genocide in July 1994. By then, over one-tenth of
the population, an estimated 800,000 persons, had been killed (Gérard, 2009).
HOW SUITABLE IS THE I C T OF
RWANDA IN RESPONSE TO GENOCITE OF 1994
In
November 1994 the Security Council of the United Nations adopted Resolution 955
creating the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The tribunal was
authorized to prosecute individuals responsible for genocide and other serious
violations of humanitarian law during the 1994 civil war in Rwanda. Another
express purpose of the tribunal is to encourage the process of national
reconciliation in Rwanda and the maintenance of peace in the region.
In the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan
genocide, both the international community and the government of Rwanda have
placed substantial emphasis on the prosecution of alleged perpetrators, in part
because they hope that justice will promote social reconstruction. With trials
at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) based in Arusha, Tanzania,
in national courts in Belgium and Switzerland, in classical courts in Rwanda
and in an innovative, local judicial system, gacaca, the Rwandan
genocide has received greater judicial attention than any other case of mass
atrocity in recent history. Because of the military defeat of the regime that
carried out the genocide and the willingness of many countries to support
judicial processes, a very substantial number of the alleged perpetrators have
been apprehended and are awaiting trial. Hence, Rwanda might provide an
excellent case for determining whether trials do in fact contribute to
reconciliation.
The resolution creating the ICTR
mandated two purposes for the tribunal. First, the Security Council determined
that the crimes committed in Rwanda "constitute a threat to international
peace and security" and "that the establishment of an international
tribunal … will contribute to ensuring that such violations are halted and
effectively redressed." By holding trials, the international community
would make clear that, whatever the intentions of individual states; the world
community of states would not allow the authors of such gross violations of
human rights to go unpunished. Second, the resolution called upon the ICTR to
help bring peace and reconciliation to Rwanda. This mandate differs from that
of the ICTY, where the contributions to peace and reconciliation were discussed
in Security Council debates but not specifically included in the resolution
that established the tribunal.
Having created the ICTR, the
Security Council did little to ensure its successful operation. The tribunal
was made an organ of the United Nations whose bureaucracy was not only heavy
and slow-moving but also unfamiliar with the demands of judicial operations.
The U.N. failed initially to give the tribunal a regular appropriation and
obliged it to function on the basis of short-term allocations, which meant that
it could only hire staff on three-month contracts. As a result, the tribunal
had trouble attracting candidates to work under such demanding conditions in a
country still recovering from war. Recruitment followed UN procedures, meaning
they were lengthy but not necessarily suited to choosing the most appropriate
candidate. Posts often took more than a year to fill, and many candidates were
hired, even for posts of great responsibility, without ever being interviewed.
Many prosecutors came from academia or human rights organizations with little
or no experience with criminal prosecutions. Similarly, investigators, drawn largely
from police forces from around the world, had no experience investigating
crimes of such magnitude. Virtually none of the tribunal’s staff, at least in
the early years, knew anything about the history and culture of Rwanda.
The first trial started in October
1996. In May 1998 former Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda pleaded guilty to
multiple charges of genocide and crimes against humanity and was sentenced to
life imprisonment. Jean-Paul Akayesu, who was tried and found guilty of
genocide and crimes against humanity, was also sentenced to life imprisonment.
Another man, Omar Serushago, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for similar
crimes. These convictions marked the first instances of an international court
finding individuals guilty of the crime of genocide. (http://en.wikipedia.org).
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the consequences
in terms of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda are not disastrous,
because to the extent the chambers refuse transfer, they retain jurisdiction
and will conduct the trials themselves. For some judges, this means many more
months of hardship, living away from home and far from their families. For
others, it provides a welcome additional period of time as a senior United
Nations official, as for the international campaign to confront impunity, the
results are more dramatic and unacceptable. This is because the transfer
decisions had a direct impact upon the willingness of state to cooperate in
extra-diction towards Rwanda. A significant number of genocide suspects remain
at large sheltered from prosecution, as an indirect and certainly unintended
consequence of the decision by the International Criminal Tribunal.
REFERENCES
Akwen,
G. T. (2011). Theories of International Relations (An introductory text),
U S A: Lambert Academic
Publishing.
Dollard,
J et al (1939). Frustration and
Aggression, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Midlarsky,
M (1975). On War: Political Violence in the International System, New York:
Random House.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Tribunal_for_Rwanda.
Retrieve on the 10th of May, 2013.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide.
Retrieve on the 10th of May, 2013.
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