January 16, 2005
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One million Rwandans to face killing charges in village courts
Andrew Meldrum in Pretoria
Saturday January 15, 2005
The Guardian
One million Rwandans - an eighth of the country's population - are expected to be tried for alleged participation in the 1994 genocide, an official said yesterday.
Rwanda today is dotted with sites like this one, a school near Gikongoro in southwestern Rwanda, where thousands of Tutsi were slaughtered in 1994.
Domitilla Mukantaganzwa, executive secretary of the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions, said the trials, which will be conducted in traditional gacaca village courts, could start next month.
The new estimate of one million indicates the vast scale of the task of bringing to justice those suspected of participating in the killings of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus massacred in Rwanda between April and June 1994.
There are 80,000 people languishing in jail and it is believed many could die before their cases are heard at the current slow pace.
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Rwandan children suffer lasting impact
NEW YORK (April 6, 2004) —By the end of the genocide in 1994, 95,000 children had been orphaned.
"The children of Rwanda witnessed unspeakable violence. Thousands were victims of horrific brutality and rape. Many were forced to commit atrocities."
Rwanda is home to one of the world's largest proportions of child-headed households, with an estimated 101,000 children living in 42,000 households. These children are on-their-own either because their parents were killed in the genocide, have died from AIDS, or have been imprisoned for genocide-related crimes.
Two thousand women, many of whom were survivors of rape, were tested for HIV during the five years following the 1994 genocide. Of them 80 percent were found to be HIV positive, and many were not sexually active prior to the genocide.
By 2001, an estimated 264,000 children had lost one or both parents to AIDS, representing 43 percent of all orphans. This figure is expected to grow to over 350,000 by 2010.
More than 400,000 children are out of school.
Rwanda has one of the world's worst child mortality rates - 1 in 5 Rwandan children die before their fifth birthday.
Comments (3)
that is the power of tribal wars...
The horrible things that go on on a daily basis get lost by the unusual things that happen once in a lifetime... It's good to bring things to light... even if they are bad things, so that people will take notice and hopefully not just sit on their derriere's and say "Oh my!"
i never thought about the wars in africa until i started getting children from Liberia with scars on their face and scars on their souls- never having been to school, not trusting anyone, scared of the dark..... and now... a couple of those same kids run one of the worst gangs in town and while i've never been scared of kid, their eyes were dead long before i encountered them.
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