Thousands of Rwandans accused of participating in genocide have been offered a ”final chance” to be released from prison if they confess their guilt and ask for forgiveness before a deadline next month.
A large proportion of Rwanda’s Hutu majority were drawn into the mass murder and, a decade after the killing was brought to a halt, prisons in the tiny Central African state are still overflowing with about 90 000 alleged ”genocidaires”.
Rwanda’s government, founded by the rebel movement that ended the genocide, has long encouraged suspected killers to confess in return for lighter sentences such as community service.
Last year about 25 000 suspects were freed and returned to their communities after attending ”solidarity camps” to reintegrate them into society.
In an interview this week the country’s Prosecutor General, Jean de Dieu Mucyo, said the government was launching a final campaign to urge thousands of prisoners to confess before a deadline of March 15.
Mucyo said: ”We have given people enough time, this is their last chance.”
Individuals accused of organising, instigating or taking a particularly zealous role in the genocide — those known as category one defendants —will not be eligible for the amnesty. Those who are freed could still face the gacaca justice system, where defendants are judged by their peers in village courts.
The traditional system was restored by the government to uncover what happened from witnesses to the genocide and to promote reconciliation by encouraging perpetrators to confess and make atonement.
Once released there is usually no option but for alleged perpetrators and survivors of the genocide to live side by side, and the gacaca system is seen as crucial to repairing the social fabric.
The prosecutor said: ”It will be up to the population to decide what people have done or not done.”
Rwanda has been grappling with the question of justice since 1994, when the extremist government, known by its slogan ”Hutu Power”, masterminded the slaughter of 800 000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates in about 100 days.
The Rwandan government is planning memorial services across the country on April 7, the 10th anniversary of the day the killing began. — Â