Jailed Rwandan Youths Await Judgment Day

Habyarimana, 13, longs for the taste of juicy tomatoes. But here in the children’s wing of Gikondo prison, his home since he was 10, such delicacies are rare. Instead, all he gets are beans, porridge and ugali--a sticky mixture of cornmeal flour and water.

Still, in many ways, Habyarimana is fortunate, especially considering why he is here.

“They say I committed genocide, but I didn’t,” said the youth, who blames his fate on a neighbor’s wrongful fingering of him as one of the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered.

Habyarimana may soon get his day in court along with 2,400 other minors, including nearly 100 girls, accused of genocide-related crimes. Rwandan officials say the first trials for the young accused are expected to begin in weeks--maybe as soon as the end of the month.

“I think we are now set,” said Deputy Justice Minister Gerard Gahima. “Court cases will be starting any time now. Questioning has begun. Judges were appointed, and they’ve received the necessary training.”

The carnage in this Central African nation started in April 1994 after Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprian Ntayamira died in a suspicious plane crash. Today, Rwanda is still struggling to prosecute about 110,000 suspects for genocide-related crimes. Many are being detained in severely overcrowded jails without adequate sanitation, food, water or health care.

Hundreds of suspects still have not even been formally charged. According to U.N. statistics, since the adult trials began in December, fewer than 50 have been completed and only 156 defendants have been judged; 61 people have been convicted and sentenced to death.

One U.N. official estimated that if the Rwandan wheels of justice spin at their present rate, it would take 342 years to deal with the cases of those suspects now jailed.

But Rwandan officials are unapologetic. “The main challenge is the numbers involved, the fact that there are so many people involved in committing atrocities,” Gahima said. “Investigating this matter takes time, takes resources, all of which we are short of.”

Advocates hope to ensure that the trials of the young are made a priority as tribunals here use up the precious money and other resources at their disposal to decide the fates of the accused.

Under the law here, Rwandans become legally responsible for their criminal conduct at age 14; if they are younger than 14, children are not supposed to be jailed or criminally prosecuted.

But scores of youngsters have been detained here because they cannot show proof of their age, lack legal counsel or simply because local officials have decided that they must be held to ensure their presence to testify in other genocide-related cases.

The United Nations Children’s Fund, though, is pushing for the release of those youths who have been unjustly jailed. UNICEF officials have urged the Rwandans to send all but a few of the now-imprisoned young to another kind of facility, called re-education centers.

Authorities note that no child now imprisoned has been formally accused of having planned or organized the genocide. Some have been charged with murder. The vast majority of cases involve otherwise serious crimes against people--incidents such as rape--and property crimes.

While some children are being held because their testimony is necessary to build cases against parents or relatives, “until the files are actually completed, and a complete judicial dossier on each individual case has been put together, then it will not be known exactly which category they fall into,” said Steven Allen, a UNICEF representative based here in Rwanda’s capital. “As they start with the juvenile trials, we hope it will become clear that most of the 2,400 will not justify the courts’ time.”

UNICEF is funding a task force of 40 investigators who are concentrating on cases involving the young, seeking first to verify the ages of the accused and to seek swift freedom for those whose age should keep them out of jail. The agency is also helping to train Rwandan judges and prosecutors in the intricacies of juvenile justice, especially in protecting children’s rights.

At one such seminar recently at a law training center in the town of Nyanza--a 90-minute drive from Kigali--about 50 magistrates from across Rwanda struggled with the issue of when and why a child should be held accountable for his crime. They went through hypothetical cases: What if a child were 14 years and 1 day old at the time of his alleged crime? What if a father ordered his son to slaughter another child? What if a youngster’s only option was to kill or be killed?

Such thorny questions illustrate the difficulties Rwanda’s judicial system will face as it seeks to try young genocide suspects. Officials have set up special judicial courts for these youths, but Rwandan law says they must be handled under the same procedures for adults.

If convicted, however, the young face less severe punishment. Gahima said no child would be sentenced to death; the maximum prison term for an adolescent convicted of the most serious offense--murder--would be 10 years. And sentences could be reduced for defendants who, under a new government program, confess to their wrongs, Gahima said.

Still, child advocates are urging leniency. “Kids are kids; children are impressionable,” said Anne Martin, field office director for Save the Children U.S.A. in Rwanda. “If a 10-year-old happens to get caught up in the moment and happens to commit a crime, should we hold that against the child for the rest of his life? Given the context in which the crimes were committed, it’s very difficult to hold them responsible when they are in a society where you don’t disobey the authorities.”

But Rwandan officials reply that the genocide was so horrible, those who participated cannot go free simply because of their age.

“One cannot but pity these children--they were minors, and they were misled,” Gahima said. “On the other hand, because they are minors does not mean they should not go through some process of accountability by which they can have their guilt established so that they learn the lesson that what they did was unacceptable and intolerable. If anyone has to learn this lesson, it is these children, because they are the future.”

Sitting in the dusty, sun-soaked courtyard at Gikondo prison with 521 other idle and restless young men--393 of whom are being detained on genocide-related charges--Habyarimana has little hope for his future. He cannot read or write and feels that he has “already failed in life.”

Although Habyarimana says his parents are dead and he doesn’t know the whereabouts of his older brother and sister, he knows of other relatives locked up next door in the fetid adult section of the coffee-warehouse-turned-prison.

The teenager says he was staying with his grandfather in the Mbongo region of Kigali when accused by a neighbor of murdering another child.

Authorities seized and jailed him, and no one has come to visit him since, he says. He says he has grandparents but believes that they don’t know where he is.

Officials would rather see youths like him in a place like the Gitagata juvenile re-education center, about 20 miles south of Kigali.

There, 200 boys who were accused of genocide crimes but were too young to be prosecuted are being taught to read and write. They also are being educated in practical trades like carpentry.

More important, they are learning about the value of human life, far from the bad influences of the adult criminals with whom they were once imprisoned. Officials say half the youths in the center will be re-integrated into society and reunited with family members by the year’s end.

Augustin Ngirimbabazi, 15, for one, believes that the re-education centers are much better than prisons. He was brought to Gitagata last March from a prison in the northwestern city of Gisenyi, where he had been held since 1994. He had been jailed because he was accused at age 12 of killing another boy during the genocide. He admits that he committed the crime but insists he was just copying the actions of adults in his village.

He says he now is deeply sorry. “They teach us here not to do such things . . . that a human being is something high to respect,” said Ngirimbabazi, adding, “I would like to work with others now to help rebuild my country.”