Global Policy Forum

By Rodrique Ngowi

The last time Ismail Muhakwa was in the hills of southeastern Rwanda, he was part of a gang of Hutus armed with machetes and looking for Tutsis to kill.

Muhakwa and 1,253 other Hutus are back in the hills of Nyumba after release from the prisons where they spent years awaiting trial for their participation in Rwanda's 1994 genocide. As part of a government work program aimed at easing them back into society, they're now using axes and machetes to build a center where they will learn how to face their victims.

More than half a million people, mostly minority Tutsis, were killed in the 100-day slaughter organized by an extremist government of the Hutu majority. "Murderers are usually condemned and killed mercilessly, but we are being released to go and reconcile with victims of our brutality," said Muhakwa, 51. "It is just unbelievable."

As he spoke, he chopped away at a eucalyptus tree just 300 yards from a mass grave in which the bodies of more than 50,000 people were dumped after they were hacked to death. After a Jan. 1 presidential decree, more than 20,000 genocide suspects and former rebels who met the requirement of admitting their guilt - and having this accepted - have been set free.

In all some 40,000 detainees are expected to be released. The order does not cover suspected leaders and organizers of the genocide or those accused of rape. The move is expected to ease the massive overcrowding in Rwandan jails, where 115,000 genocide suspects account for more than 90 percent of Rwanda's prison population.

Freed suspects are sent to camps where they will spend two months learning about civics, national reconciliation and how to deal with land ownership and other problems that may have arisen during their extended absence. The program is aimed at preparing them to rejoin Rwandan society, said Fatuma Ndangiza, head of the commission running the program.

Suspects released under the arrangement remain accountable for their actions and will be tried by their neighbors in community courts known as "gacaca." The camps "will be an opportunity for suspects to decide whether they are prepared to face the community and admit their role in the genocide," said Ndangiza, who is also head of the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission.

Under the program, the former detainees and villagers will work together to dispel mistrust as they plant trees, build homes for the needy and challenge each other in soccer matches, Ndangiza said. Some detainees have refused to leave jail even after confessing and qualifying for conditional release. They dread facing the friends and relatives of their victims.

"I confessed to taking a woman and her child to an execution site and watching them being hacked to death by my neighbors before they were thrown into a pit," said Donata Uwimaye, 34, an inmate at the central prison in Gitarama, 40 miles northeast of Nyumba. "Afterward I went home for an afternoon nap."

Ndangiza said many suspects are still haunted by their roles in the country's genocide. "Unless we help perpetrators to deal with their trauma, it will be extremely difficult to promote reconciliation," Ndangiza said. "Trauma puts them on the defensive, and they refuse to accept that what they did is wrong; in those conditions, the seeds of reconciliation will not take root." The conditional release of the suspects has drawn sharp criticism from genocide survivor organizations and human rights groups, who argue that the suspects will either intimidate witnesses or disappear to escape justice.

Some of the 2,300 elderly and chronically ill suspects who were released in January have refused to go to their home villages and have settled elsewhere, Attorney General Gerard Gahima said. The biggest challenge will come when the suspects now in the camps finally return to their villages, the former detainees and authorities both say.

"Some of our wives have given birth to children by other men, some of our farms have been taken by well-off strangers and many of us do not know how difficult it would be to earn a living under the economic hardships we hear from friends and families," said Philbert Mdaheranwa, 46. "The future is very uncertain for us, but we shall face it."

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