A Rwandan presidential candidate vowed on Wednesday to grant a general amnesty to perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in the traumatised central African country.
”If I am elected, I will use clemency and declare a general amnesty, except for those who planned the genocide,” Jean-Nepomuscene Nayinzira said.
”For those who carried out the plan, nearly nine years after the fact, one must have recourse to amnesty,” said Nayinzira, one of three challengers to the incumbent Paul Kagame in polls on Monday.
”Justice on a case-by-case basis risks creating a lot of conflicts,” he said.
Nayinzira has held several ministerial portfolios since the genocide of 1994 when up to a million Tutsis and their Hutu sympathisers were slaughtered in a government-orchestrated orgy of bloodletting.
A Hutu moderate who is running as an independent, Nayinzira acknowledged that ”negotiation and dialogue” would have to precede a general amnesty, but said it would help reconcile the people.
Nearly 85 000 suspects remain incarcerated in Rwanda’s crowded prisons awaiting trial despite a remand program to release those who have confessed to their crimes and have already been held longer than the maximum term to which they could be sentenced.
Kagame, a Tutsi, is tipped to win Monday’s vote, which will be the first multi-party election since independence, and the first since the genocide.
His main challenger is opposition leader and former prime minister Faustin Twagiramungu.
The fourth candidate is Alivera Mkabaramba, the first Rwandan woman to run for president. — Sapa-AFP