Rwandan community courts slow to bring justice

Once a week, the inhabitants of this tiny, mountaintop village meet in a small clearing next to a carefully cultivated potato and bean field. Women comfort babies under the shelter of brightly colored umbrellas. Old men holding the smoothly carved sticks of a village elder huddle under a nearby tree.

When 100 people have arrived, trickling in from their fields in the nearby hills, a lanky man with a soft voice rises from his wooden bench and opens a small box containing a list of names. He solemnly begins a prayer for those who were killed during Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

"God has brought rain to remind us of those who died in the genocide," he says, looking at the threatening skies. "We are here in their memory."

Court is in session.

The people of Gasharu have been meeting in this unsheltered field once a week for more than three months, attempting to compile a record of what happened during those terrible 100 days when an estimated 800,000 to 1 million Rwandan Tutsis and their Hutu supporters were slaughtered. It is the first step in a process expected to last three years, during which time those accused of genocide will be tried by newly revived village courts, called gacacas for the grass clearings in which they are held.

But questions remain whether these trials, whose success is based on people's willingness to speak openly about what happened, can bring justice.

Earlier this year, gacaca (pronounced ga-CHA-cha) courts were initiated to relieve Rwanda's overburdened justice system. Twenty-six pilot courts out of an expected 11,000 have begun hearing testimony. In this first phase, the courts are collecting evidence and compiling lists of the victims and the accused. With strong incentives for prisoners to confess (their sentences are halved), government officials are hoping that the vast majority of the accused, including the more than 100,000 languishing in Rwanda's overcrowded prisons, will voluntarily tell their stories. This crucial information about what happened in 1994 can be used to try the still unrepentant.

But Rwandans are wary of digging up the past. As yet, the outflow of information has not been as abundant as the government had hoped. Terezia Uwimana, a Hutu grandmother with snow-white hair and small whiskers poking from her chin, says that everyone knows what happened in 1994. But like many here, she has left the difficult accusations to others, testifying only about the theft of some cattle by Tutsis. Many of the courts have struggled with low participation. And Tutsis have been reluctant to testify for fear they will be victimized again.

So far, the courts have operated with a town-hall meeting format. A panel of 15 judges listens to testimony by community members or prisoners who have chosen to confess. The judges, many of whom are only semiliterate, often ask the speaker to stop or speak more slowly.

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