| Page 2 of 3 < > |
In Rwanda, Suicides Haunt Search for Justice and Closure
Jeanviere Nzamwitakuze, 31, was widowed by one of 69 suspected perpetrators of genocide who have killed themselves rather than face the public in traditional courts.
(By Craig Timberg -- The Washington Post)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
The gacaca courts are expected to hear at least 100,000 cases. But officials say that number could reach 500,000 as the first round of defendants -- many of them former prisoners freed in exchange for pleading guilty -- implicate others in their testimony.
Gacaca officials, who began tracking the suicides in March after an initial round of cases in January and February last year, have documented the horrors: An elderly man drowned himself in Lake Kivu, on Rwanda's western border, on the day he was accused of killing several of his grandchildren. A 28-year-old man, the last surviving member of his family, killed himself after being accused of raping his Tutsi mother, according to gacaca officials.
"Sometimes we discover a situation we cannot understand ourselves," said the court's executive secretary, Domitilla Mukantaganzwa. "We are praying for our nation."
In Gashora, about 30 miles east of Kigali, Sylvester Ngiriyambonye, 56, returned home in 2003 after spending years in Rwanda's notoriously grim, crowded prisons for his role in the death of a Tutsi woman and her teenage daughter.
Two years later, a government official visited Gashora to begin organizing the gacaca court where, under the rules of Ngiriyambonye's guilty plea, he would have been forced to testify against other militia members. Instead, his widow said, he hanged himself from a tree.
In nearby Lirima, Charles Rubuga, 67, was accused last April of killing a man at a roadblock. He denied the charges over three days of gacaca hearings, family members said.
"He came back a changed man," said his widow, Angelina Ntibanoga, 65, who had been married to Rubuga for 45 years.
"All these years we've lived together, I have never assaulted anybody," she recalled him saying despondently. "I have never killed anybody. And now they have accused me of killing."
The next morning, she said, Rubuga walked several miles to the crocodile-infested Nyabarongo River, removed his clothes, laid down his machete and hurled himself in.
Whatever their alleged crimes during the genocide, those who have committed suicide have ripped an unexpected hole in the lives of the friends and family members left behind.
In Shyorongi, Jeanviere Nzamwitakuze, 31, married Mulinda the year after the genocide. She had heard rumors of his involvement but said she believed his account of being only a low-ranking militia member who never killed anybody.
Now she must tend to the family's crop of beans, corn and peas by herself, as well as raise their sons. His decision to leave them behind has caused her great sadness and turmoil, she said, though she maintained it was the pain of a boil on his leg that caused him to kill himself, not anguish over the accusations.
