At least 35 Rwandans accused in local grassroots tribunals of participating in the country’s 1994 genocide have committed suicide in the past five months, officials said on Monday.
The suicides have all come within days of the accused persons being named as genocide perpetrators by witnesses appearing before Rwanda’s traditional gacaca courts, they said.
”There have been more than 35 suicides between January 15 and the end of May of people accused … during gacaca hearings,” said Augustin Nkusi, a gacaca official.
”They took their lives a day or a few days later after being accused,” he said. ”They were publicly accused during the gacaca hearings and I think they committed suicide out of guilt.”
The gacaca (pronounced ”gachacha”) tribunals were set up to ease the country’s overcrowded prisons, where about 85 000 inmates consist mostly of genocide suspects, and to hasten the process of justice.
They began trying suspects in March in tens of thousands of cases but opened preliminary hearings in January.
Based on a traditional village tribunal, the gacaca are mandated to try all genocide suspects with the exception of the key planners and major participants in the slaughter who are tried by conventional Rwanda courts or a United Nations-backed tribunal in Tanzania.
But shortly after trials began, thousands of Rwandans, mainly from the Hutu majority, fled the country to neighbouring Burundi, many fearing prosecution by the gacaca.
Last week, after being declared ”illegal immigrants,” those who fled were forcefully repatriated, prompting protests from the UN, the United States and international aid agencies.
The gacaca courts can hand down sentences ranging from community work to prison sentences of up to 30 years.
Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, which is blamed on Hutu extremists, claimed the lives of some 800 ‘000 people, mainly the minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. -Sapa-AFP