VZCZCXYZ0016
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHLGB #1090/01 3171420
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 131420Z NOV 06
FM AMEMBASSY KIGALI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3446
INFO RUEHJB/AMEMBASSY BUJUMBURA 1576
RUEHDR/AMEMBASSY DAR ES SALAAM 0778
RUEHKM/AMEMBASSY KAMPALA 1482
RUEHKI/AMEMBASSY KINSHASA 0142
RUEHNR/AMEMBASSY NAIROBI 0663
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 0162

UNCLAS KIGALI 001090 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM RW
SUBJECT: GACACA: SOME JUSTICE, LITTLE RECONCILIATION, IN 
ONE SMALL CORNER OF RWANDA 
 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary.  On November 7, former energy minister 
Bonaventure Niyibizi traveled to his birthplace in western 
Rwanda to attend the gacaca trial of four men accused of the 
murder of his mother in the 1994 genocide.  Some measure of 
justice occurred -- four men offered partial confessions and 
offered pro forma apologizes for the crime.  But none took 
real responsibility for the murder, and Niyisbizi faces 
threats and hostility when he visits his family's homestead. 
A full accounting of those involved in the murder appears 
unlikely, and little reconciliation has occurred in the tiny 
hillside hamlet.  Rwanda's post-colonial history of episodic 
political upheaval, as well as class, ethnicity and simple 
social envy, inform the terrible events of 12 years before in 
a small rural locale.  End summary. 
¶2.  (SBU) On November 7, Bonaventure Niyibizi drove to his 
birthplace in mile-high western Rwanda to confront four men 
charged with the murder of his elderly mother at the height 
of the genocide in April 1994.  Approaching the village for 
the hearing that morning, Niyibizi pointed to a nearby hill. 
"That's where we hid when I was six years old," he said.  In 
the turmoil of independence in the early 1960s, he said, a 
Belgian priest armed with a pistol had led Hutu villagers 
armed with machetes on a hunt for Tutsis.  Niyibizi, his 
mother, and his brothers and sisters had barely escaped.  On 
another hillock, Niyibizi pointed out the family compound, 
where he had begun to construct a new home in 2004.  "We have 
rebuilt seven times since independence," he said.  "Seven 
times our home has been destroyed."  Not a stone was left 
from the home his mother occupied in 1994, he pointed out. 
¶3.  (SBU) Local residents arrived at the morning's gacaca 
session on foot, trooping in from the surrounding hillocks, a 
heavy rain pouring down.  Niyibizi drove in from Kigali in a 
late-model Toyota 4WD.  Previously a minister in the Kagame 
government, he was now a successful banker.  No one in the 
village came close to him in terms of social prominence or 
economic success.  In 1994, he was a senior advisor at USAID, 
with a good income and steady employment.  "They wanted money 
from my mother," he said.  "They assumed she had lots of 
money in the house." 
¶4.  (SBU) Niyibizi had let ten years go by before he returned 
to his mother's compound.  "I just couldn't face going back," 
he said.  But in 2004 he decided to rebuild.  "I wanted 
somewhere to bring my children, I wanted to come home." 
Things went well at first, he said, but then he began to 
receive threats.  "Not many were very welcoming," he said. 
"The message was that I should stay away."  His visit that 
day for the gacaca session was his first trip back in over a 
year. 
¶5.  (SBU) At the trial, each of the four men "confessed" to 
either accidental or peripheral participation in the crime 
(each had been previously implicated; confessions can qualify 
defendants for reduced sentences).  Each offered emotionless 
and insincere apologies to the Niyibizi family.  Although 
everyone present was free to contribute to the gacaca session 
(a modified form of traditional justice, with relaxed 
evidentiary standards), few in the spare and chilly 
government office, packed with local residents who had lived 
together for decades, commented on the men's role in the 
mother's death or events in the hamlet 12 years ago.  Said 
Niyibizi in a whispered aside to polchief: "Many know exactly 
what happened, and some of them helped.  They are friends and 
relatives; they won't speak." 
¶6.  (SBU) The gacaca judges, visibly incredulous at the men's 
unconvincing confessions, postponed their decision to review 
previous written statements and seek additional testimony. 
"You call that a confession?" said the gacaca president to 
one of the men. "What are you apologizing for?"  Niyibizi 
then made extensive remarks on the three-day torture and 
killing of his seventy-two year old Tutsi mother to the 
silent assembly of villagers.  The four men appended their 
thumbprints to written records of their confessions, and the 
nine gacaca judges, wearing their sashes of office over their 
simple village clothing, filed out from the improvised 
courtroom. 
¶7.  (SBU) After the gacaca hearing had ended, Niyibizi 
stopped at the small house he had begun to construct on the 
neighboring hillside.  Nothing had been disturbed since his 
last visit a year before -- the walls and roof were intact, 
and the small yard well-tended.  A few workmen had collected 
at the gate, in expectation of his visit, and he began to 
discuss with them what needed to be done to finish the house. 
 "Maybe I will start the work again," he said to polchief. 
"Maybe I will start coming back." 
¶8.  (SBU) Comment.  Surveys of Rwandans suggest generally 
broad support for gacaca, although different elements of the 
population express differing fears.  Some Hutu rural 
 
populations fear wholesale imprisonments; some Tutsi 
survivors (those present during the genocide) worry the truth 
will never be known in full, and some face physical threats. 
The head of Ibuka, the survivors' umbrella organization, told 
polchief recently, "Perhaps 30 or 40 percent of the truth 
will be known through gacaca.  It,s not enough, but it,s 
better than no justice at all in all these cases." 
¶9.  (SBU) Detailed surveys of dozens of gacaca trials by 
Lawyers Without Borders show many gacaca courts striving as 
best they can to reach the truth and make appropriate 
judgments.  Individual courts do err, but others reach just 
determinations and impose reasonable punishments.  The task 
is monumental, with upwards of 700,000 potential defendants 
to be judged.  Individual justice and completely accurate 
accounting of all crimes is a goal and hope that cannot be 
fully realized -- there are limits to the capacity of any 
human institution, particularly in poor and under-resourced 
Rwanda. In this case, the murder of Bonaventure Niyibizi's 
mother may never be fully explained.  Social envy, pure 
criminality, ethnic extremism, all played their part in her 
death.  What will be more important, ultimately, is some 
measure of acceptance and reconciliation in this remote 
hillside community.  End comment. 
 
ARIETTI