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Sunday 13 April 2014

[RwandaLibre] New York Times: Following Orders in Rwanda

 

Op-Ed Contributor
Following Orders in Rwanda
April 4, 2014

ADA, Ohio -- I met my client Pierre in a southern Rwandan prison in
1998. "The authorities ordered us to kill Tutsis," he explained. It
was, he was sure, a defense that could lighten his sentence.

He had pleaded guilty to killing about half a dozen Tutsis in Rwanda's
genocide four years before. The new Tutsi-led government was now
trying perpetrators. And I, a young survivor just back from exile, had
been drafted to be his lawyer.

"Bari badutegetse kwica abatutsi" were his words in Kinyarwanda, our
language. He assumed the judge would understand them as he did.

Pierre was wrong. The judge eventually gave him a life sentence. But
as I listened to him, I realized he had opened a door for me onto one
of Rwanda's deepest mysteries: why so many ordinary people had
followed orders to kill their neighbors. It struck me that Pierre
probably would have killed me, too, had he found me hiding in bushes
as I fled the murderous Hutu Interahamwe militias 20 years ago this
month.

Eleanor Taylor

The key to understanding him lay in a culture in which orders from
above, even if evil, are followed because they are confused with the
law itself.

In Rwanda, neighbors did not kill neighbors in the first days of the
three-month slaughter; that pattern developed only after officials
decided that the presidential guards and Interahamwe were not killing
fast enough. So the officials organized meetings and took to a
hate-spewing radio station to call on citizens to kill fellow
citizens; this edict then went down a chain of authority so thoroughly
that intimate murder, and deep societal trauma, became common.

One of the worst calamities I know of was in my own family: The Hutu
husband of a Tutsi cousin of mine -- presumably fearing for his own
life -- followed an order from armed militiamen to kill her in front of
their children. The act was so unspeakable that when Tutsi rebels
finally stopped the genocide, another cousin, seeking vengeance,
killed the father in front of the same children. I cannot imagine what
scars those now-grown children carry.

As for myself, I was fortunate. I was able to flee the capital,
Kigali, for Rwanda's western border, where I swam a mile or so in the
middle of the night across the tip of Lake Kivu to the Democratic
Republic of Congo.

In 1998, I returned to help Rwanda rebuild. With fewer than 50 members
of the bar there and 140,000 genocide suspects awaiting trial, I was
required to defend clients like Pierre. As a Catholic taught by nuns,
I had imagined Pierre as a literal devil, with horns, tail and red
eyes. But when we met, he was clean, well shaved, with a normal human
face and a strong sense that he was guiltless. It was hard to believe.
I asked him what he meant by "bari badutegetse kwica abatutsi." And he
revealed Rwandan culture's tragic flaw.

You can hear it in our maxims. "Intero nyirurugo ateye, niyo wikiriza"
means "the tune the head of the household begins is what everyone in
the house sings." "Umwera uturutse ibukuru bucya wakwiriye hose" means
that orders from above spread quickly, in the form of rules. "Order"
and "law" translate the same: "itegeko." A "law-giver," an
"order-giver" and an "authority" are each an "umutegetsi."

This culture of unquestioning deference existed before the genocide.
Its role in 1994 has been noted before. What is less noticed is that
it persists today -- in less lethal form, but not without dangers for
the future.

To be sure, this time it is helping Rwanda pursue positive goals.
Before 1994, Rwandans were told they were Hutus and Tutsis, mortal
enemies. Today, official policy dictates that there are no Hutus or
Tutsis; everyone is a Rwandan. Rwandans have memorized this slogan
well; they repeat the mantra even in the remotest parts of the
country. But its acceptance springs from the same vulnerability as the
complicity in genocide did: the instinct to obey rather than to
choose, when told how to think or act.

Reconciliation has proceeded in similar fashion. Under the
transitional justice system known as gacaca, introduced to speed up
genocide trials and promote truthful confessions, forgiveness and
reconciliation, a gacaca judge would ask a survivor if she really
forgave the murderer of her children and she would say: "The
government forgave them. What can I do? I also forgave him."

Advocates of enforcing these reconciliatory attitudes say the strategy
has helped the strong-handed government of President Paul Kagame
improve security, build a dynamic economy, improve public health and
reduce corruption.

Sustaining these achievements is another matter. To do that, the
government now must focus on changing the culture of obedience, for
two reasons: so that the instinct to follow leaders blindly never
again leaves evil unchallenged, and to nurture habits of individual
thought that are essential to growth and freedom in any modern
society. Rwandans need steps to create a true rule of law, rather than
compliance: education that emphasizes critical thought, not obedience;
reliance on strong legal and legislative institutions rather than
strong personalities who give edicts from the top.

The government must invite initiatives from the bottom, tolerate
vigorous public debate and remain within the rule of law.

Before 1994, officials often told the public that when the president
says "I wish" or "I recommend," he means "I order." Low-level
officials still do that, and they must stop. Rwandans have to learn it
is all right to question their leaders, and mandatory to refuse to
cooperate with evil.

Nobody should ever tell some other lawyer, as Pierre told me, that
killing Tutsis was within the law simply because someone in power
ordered it.

Jean-Marie Kamatali, a former dean of the National University of
Rwanda School of Law, is an assistant professor at the Ohio Northern
University Pettit College of Law.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/05/opinion/following-orders-in-rwanda.html?_r=1&referrer=

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“Uwigize agatebo ayora ivi”. Ubutegetsi bukugira agatebo ukariyora uko bukeye n’uko bwije.

"Ce dont j’ai le plus peur, c’est des gens qui croient que, du jour au lendemain, on peut prendre une société, lui tordre le cou et en faire une autre."

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

“I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile."

KOMEZA USOME AMAKURU N'IBITEKEREZO BYA VUBA BYAGUCITSE:

RECOMMENCE

RECOMMENCE

1.Kumenya Amakuru n’amateka atabogamye ndetse n’Ibishobora Kukugiraho Ingaruka ni Uburenganzira Bwawe.

2.Kwisanzura mu Gutanga Ibitekerezo, Kurwanya Ubusumbane, Akarengane n’Ibindi Byose Bikubangamiye ni Uburenganzira Bwawe.