Mambo!

Almost a month has passed since I first arrived in the Arusha airport and was whisked away to the town center in a UN van full of interns and armed guards carrying AK-47s. I have quickly become accustomed to the lizards in my shower and bumpy dirt roads, and am even picking up Swahili, although it took longer to grow used to my restricted mobility and independence due to how dangerous Arusha has become.
.
Work has been busy on the Karemera case. Last week I was able to sit in court, this time on the other side of the soundproof viewing window, beside the bench in full robe. It turned out to be quite an interesting day to sit in on, as Peter Robinson made his return to raise the contempt issue, and Colonel Théoneste Bagosora appeared to begin his much awaited testimony as defense witness. Bagasora was the former directeur du cabinet in Rwanda's Ministry of Defense in June 1992 and, as the highest authority in the Defense Ministry after the assassination of President Habyarimana, was a key figure in the orchestration of the 1994 massacres in Rwanda. According to Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire, former Force Commander of the UN Assistance Mission to Rwanda, Bagosora was the “kingpin” behind the genocide, a Hutu extremist who "controlled - as well as anyone could - the genocidal militia." It was Bagosora who introduced Dallaire to the militia leaders in Rwanda, after which Dallaire famously wrote that he had “shaken hands with the devil,” in his book “Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.” Bagosora was convicted by the ICTR in 2008 for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and sentenced to life imprisonment. His case is currently on appeal. Sitting directly in front of Bagosora, just a few feet away, I made eye contact with “either the coldest fish in Africa or the ghost of Machiavelli,” as he was described by Dallaire, a large man impeccably dressed with a nearly expressionless face. I listened to his version of the buildup to the genocide, which he claimed was spontaneous, in line with his defense team’s argument that the Prosecution in his trial failed to prove that the killings were organized and therefore constituted genocide. He spoke in terms of RPF invasion and civil war, and blamed President Kagame for the assassination of President Habyarimana and for the subsequent RPF breach of the Arusha Accords. Reading defense witness transcripts and hearing testimonies like that of Bagosora, the story of Rwanda becomes less clear to me than I had thought it was.
.
Before I began my internship, I saw the Rwandan genocide in terms of black and white. Black and white because defining events as crimes works to establish and enforce international legal boundaries, and enables the international community to explain its own failure to stop violations of the crimes prohibited. Black and white because laws reflect the desire to establish a rational causal narrative in the aftermath of gross violence, and trials set out to create such an account to interpret, explain and record the atrocities, and yet must greatly simplify, favoring some voices over others and reducing and repackaging testimony, in order to achieve justice. Black and white because the prosecution of individuals, individual reductionism, can narrow the field of focus, limiting the wider blame and de-contextualizing the crime from its political and institutional roots. However, the more work that I do here at the ICTR, the more transcripts and testimonies that I am exposed to, the more I begin to see what occurred in Rwanda in a million different shades of gray. Gray because I cannot ignore how the naming of the crime of genocide and the prosecution of individuals in criminal trials recreates the past in a sense. Gray because historical narratives are not merely discovered but are at least partially constructed, a process reflective of power and interests and socio-political demands.
.
Within these shades of gray, I remember an article I read by Nigel Eltringham, “Debating the Rwandan Genocide,” which cites Roger Smith’s five-part typology and offers an overview of the key motives propagated by perpetrators of genocide, several of which are often-times at work in any given case. According to Smith, genocide may be retributive, monopolistic, utilitarian, institutional, and/or ideological. Just last week I listened to an attorney working in the OTP recount his recent trip to Rwanda; he met a genocide survivor who was raped by so many men that at one point it no longer made sense to her to count. She told him that her child, now about 16 years old, has one thousand fathers. Faced with countless stories like this, it would be tempting to dismiss the violence in Rwanda as the result of pure evil if I were not also faced with stories that speak of compliance with orders to rape and kill out of fear for life and the life of families and loved ones. I find Smith’s categories helpful as I delve further into the Rwandan crisis to understand what happened there any why. Using Smith’s archetypes, the case of Rwanda can be seen to embody elements that were retributive, with the Hutu seeking revenge when their superior role was threatened by the Tutsi, a group seen to have historically subjugated them. It was monopolistic and institutional; the ruling elite was intent on maintaining political hegemony through the slaughter of Tutsi as a group. It was also utilitarian if interpreted as Gerard Prunier has as “among other things, a fight for good jobs, administrative control and economic advantage.” Thus in the Rwandan context, it is important to remember that there was a clear pragmatic component, that also mixed with the ideological or transcendental element which was the focus on racial purity. It is these pragmatic elements and the socio-political context, as with all crimes, which make criminal law and the prosecution of individuals so much more complex. With attention to these various elements, I attempt to reconcile the two sides of the Rwandan story I am faced with here.
.
Aside from my work at the ICTR, I get to see a little more of Tanzania each weekend. Last Friday I attended a fundraising event at the Tanzania Millennium Hand Foundation- Tamhiha. Tamiha Foundation is an NGO which provides shelter for widows, most of whom are HIV positive, and orphans. Within the framework of the millennium goals, its twin aims are to train the widows in job skills and microfinance, and to find sponsors for the children’s primary education. During the event, I toured the foundation grounds and orphanage, visited with the women and children, and watched traditional African dance performances. It costs only $ 30 to maintain one child for one month at the orphanage, and sponsoring a child’s primary education is only about $ 600 per year, yet the Tamiha Foundation struggles to find funding.
http://www.tamiha.org/

.
On Saturday I went on a day Safari. I was picked up at 7 am in a Landrover and began the drive to Nrongoro with a Nigerian lawyer who works at Shearman and Sterling LLP in NYC and is here for three months as part of a pro-bono program that the firm runs with the OTP. The Nrongoro Conservation Area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site about 112 miles outside of Arusha, initially created by the British in 1951. The Nrongoro Crater is a vast volcanic crater that formed between 2-3 million years ago, home to most of the animal species common to East Africa. After our drive through the forest and descent into the edenic crater, we were able to see lions, cheetahs, wildebeests, hippopotamuses, zebras, buffalos, ostriches, flamingos, rhinos, warthogs, Thomson gazelles, and baboons.



.
On our way back down the crater slope, we stopped by a Maasai village composed of a circle of 12 huts with a market in the middle and a kindergarten nearby. The Maasai is a pastoralist tribe that migrated to Kenya and Tanzania from Northern Africa between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, during which time they acquired their reputation as fierce warriors. The Maasai lived in the Nrongoro area until they were evicted by the British in the 1950s, but have since been permitted by the Tanzanian government to live and graze cattle there. Maasai society is patriarchal and centers around cattle, the primary source of sustenance and symbol of status and wealth. The tribe is one of Africa’s most well-known, as they have claimed rights to game reserves frequented by tourists in parts of Kenya and Tanzania, and are regarded as photogenic by travelers due in part to the intricate jewelry, Shúkà sheets, and bright colors they are known to wear. The particular Maasai village that we visited has embraced cultural tourism as a means of revenue generation. The chief greeted us in English, which he learned during his five years studying in Moshi and Arusha, and introduced us to his village, encouraging us to join in adumu or aigus, the welcome and jumping dances and song. He then ushered us inside his small home, which was made of wood, sticks, and grass and covered in cow dung for waterproofing. The homes are small, but the families eat, sleep and shelter small cattle there. I was surprised at his openness to questions from us as he described family and marriage customs in the tribe. Men are allowed to marry multiple wives, and marriages and bride-prices are arranged by the parents on both sides. The chief took us to the village market, where each family sells jewelry and crafts. He also took us to the kindergarten to observe instruction, which was given in Maa, Swahili, and English.


.
This is a busy week at the ICTR as Bagosora continues his testimony, and I am eager to get downstairs to court to listen in on his cross-examination.
.
Until soon,
.
Kimber

For more Rwanda in the news: http://www.economist.com/node/16439016?story_id=16439016&fsrc=nlw|wwp|06-24-2010|politics_this_week