Word: ntirushwamaboko
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...minding children, many shading themselves under brightly colored umbrellas, are ranged across a grassy field. Eight people wearing sashes striped in yellow, blue and green - the national colors of Rwanda - sit behind a wooden table. There's a festive appearance to the proceedings that the words of Augustin Ntirushwamaboko belie. The 38-year-old farmer stands ramrod straight as he describes dragging a Tutsi man from the bushes in Zivu in 1994 and bludgeoning him to death. "When I hit him with the club, he didn't die," Ntirushwamaboko explains. "I had an ax. I hit him with the blunt...
...suspects accused of the most serious crimes - the planners and leaders of the genocide - will go through Rwanda's conventional criminal courts. But those accused of murder, violent assault, torture and looting will be tried in nearly 11,000 traditional gacaca courts like the one sitting in judgment on Ntirushwamaboko. Gacaca (pronounced ga-cha-cha) proceedings, named for the Rwandan word for the grass on which they are traditionally held, employ "people of impeccable integrity" elected by villagers to serve as judge and jury. That means that in Zivu, and in thousands of other villages throughout Rwanda, a genocide carried...
...Ntirushwamaboko spent nine years in jail after his arrest for participating in the genocide, before becoming one of the first inmates to confess. He was rewarded with release nearly two years ago, pending trial. "I started realizing that what happened in this country was indeed terrible," he recalled after his trial, which lasted five hours. "The Bible says, 'Tell the truth, ask for forgiveness, and then start looking ahead and asking for eternal life.'" Ntirushwamaboko will be sentenced this week. He faces seven to 12 years, but the time served will be taken into account. As a reward for confessing...
...AUGUSTIN NTIRUSHWAMABOKO...
...Units from the conquering Tutsi rebel army have been accused of brutal revenge killings. The government worries that trying alleged rpf crimes alongside those of people like Ntirushwamaboko will bolster claims that the Tutsi, too, committed genocide. That troubles some outside observers. "If you give justice only to one group of people, I'm not sure that will have a reconciliatory effect," says Jean-Charles Paras, head of the Rwandan mission for Penal Reform International. "Quite the contrary, actually." Another flaw, say critics, is the reliance on confessions. In many cases, the perpetrators are the only living witnesses to their...
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