AFTER PRISON, TOUGH LIFE FOR RWANDA GENOCIDE KILLERS (MAGAZINE)
Gitabi, September 2nd, 2005 (FH) - No relative of Eugene Barayagwiza's victims lives here any more. Most were killed in the 1994 genocide. A few survivors fled and never returned. Actually, no genocide survivor lives on this steep hill slope in the western Rwanda province of Kibuye today.
This should have made Barayagwiza's return home on Monday more manageable. In addition, his own relatives live only a stone’s throw away from his house and they pay regular visits. With nothing for him to return to, they have also been providing a little financial support.
But a combination of relics of a genocide that claimed close to a million people’s lives and widespread poverty has cut short any celebration of his new found freedom.
Barayagwiza, 49, was one of the leaders of militias in his home village during the 1994 genocide. Owing to his confession and pledge to become a good citizen, the subsistence farmer became one of the 20,000 or so genocide killers, suspects, elderly detainees and minors who last Monday walked back to their towns and villages across Rwanda, after years in jail. The ex-prisoners will still undergo trial before local genocide courts.
"I'm afraid of what it will be like meeting relatives of Stanislas", Barayagwiza says quietly as if to keep the conversation out of the earshot of about half a dozen children playing in the tiny compound of his two-roomed grass thatched hut. "I have some plans on how to go about it and we have been taught about that process but I still can't keep the worries out of my mind", he adds.
Stanislas Sentunganya is the neighbour Barayagwiza killed during the genocide. "Militias were chasing him, he was wounded", says Barayagwiza. "Then I hit him with a hoe in his head", he adds while fumbling with a big white rosary swaying around his neck. "Of course he died immediately", he says when asked about the fate of the man he describes as being in his early 20s.
No one in the immediate family of Sentunganya is known to be alive today. But an aunt of his lives in a village not so far from Barayagwiza's.
"I have to go and ask her for forgiveness for the terrible thing I did to their family", says Barayagwiza.
His current plan involves seeking out respected elders in his village to accompany him to see Sentunganya's aunt. "This is how we were taught to do this by our teachers in the rehabilitation camps", he says.
"But you see, this method may not work in real life", he says. "What do you do when someone refuses to forgive you?" he adds. For now, Barayagwiza has no Plan B.
This week's provisional release of perpetrators of the 1994 genocide is not the first of its kind. A similar number were released in 2003.
Observers say that, contrary to instructions from authorities, it took months for many of those released to meet families of their victims.
"This part makes life for us more difficult here than in jail", says Felicien Shema, 41, a confessed ex-militia member in Kibuye town, 30 km from Budaha.
"You plan doing it and then new fears come up, new details. Then you keep postponing", he adds. "When you finally do it, you are never sure if you have been forgiven or not".
Even if he were assured of forgiveness today, Shema still has difficulties coping with life after prison.
"The advantage of being outside prison is that you wake up in your home. But then you also suddenly have enormous responsibilities that you wake up to", says Shema. "Your wife wants money for food. You can't escape from that"
"At least you get free food in prison", he jokes.
Before their release, the prisoners are given brief lessons in managing small income generating projects and are encouraged to create their own jobs.
But for most, farming is the only vocation they have. Scarcity of land in Africa's most densely populated country and lack of basic farm implements conspire to put even that option out of reach for some.
Confessed killer Barayagwiza can't raise 1,300Frw (US$2.5) to buy a hoe and till the little land around his hut.
That means that mid-morning on a Monday, all Barayagwiza has done is chat with his uncle and watch children running around his compound. He hopes a local leader may join them later.
GG
© Hirondelle News Agency
_______________________________________________________________
Hirondelle Foundation Hirondelle News Agency
Lausanne, Switzerland Arusha, Tanzania
Tel: +41 21 647 28 05 Tel: +255 741 51 08 94
Email: info@hirondelle.org Email: hirondelle@habari.co.tz
Hirondelle audio products are available in English, French, Swahili and Kinyarwanda.
www.hirondelle.org
This project is funded by the European Community, Norway and Luxembourg.
This may come a little bit late but i feel so tauched by the testimonies therein. I lost a lot of family members in the genocide including my dear father who lived in Kigali Kimironko and i have relatives to support as a result.
However, these testimonies made me put myself in sheos of the those who really regret and are ready to change.
The big challenge is that due to weight of problems that the GOR has to address, apart from solidality camps and trainings that these guys recieve while still in camps there may be no other measures to treat them psychologically.
It is a pity and i really think other organs like the civil society and international community should step in to do something as soon as posible. The effects range from individaul suffering to societal effects in the near future.
I am worried that they resort to killing victims due to the guilty consciousness and that is a psychological effect. They go mad or even turn in psychopaths.
But also that kind of feeling leads domestic violence due anger which affects their childrena and partners. In the long run this will result into a moral decayed society which may also lead to another type of violence thus continued conflicts.
The effects are many in addition commiting more crimes in quest for return to prisons where they feel more confertable (research has to be conducted on this though)
What am driving at is to request for a quick intervention by any organ. Also requesting the accamia to look in this issue and avoid effects of such circumstances.
Posted by: Justine UVUZA at July 10, 2006 09:56 AMJustine, thanks so much for your contribution here. I really admire and appreciate your capacity to be empathetic and concerned about the state of people-- your fellow countrymen-- who have committed terrible acts.
I believe if rwanda is to heal as a society then people with your caring outlook are the ones who will do it, and I hope the international community as a whole gives you great support. Are you working with any programs there in rwanda that you think ared doing good work in this field of social healing?
Posted by: Helena Cobban at August 22, 2006 10:28 PM
Comments