International

Africa’s failure to bring Genocide suspects to book is a betrayal to Rwanda

2023-06-21 05:12:00

More than one million people were mercilessly slaughtered during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Not even one UN member state severed diplomatic ties with Rwanda and expelled Rwandan ambassadors when the then government in Kigali was overseeing the mass murder of innocent people.

Today, some of the thousands of perpetrators have served their sentences, others are still in jail, while others fled the country and found safe haven in other countries, especially on the African continent.

Rwanda’s Genocide Fugitives Tracking Unit (GFTU) indicates that there are over 1,100 Genocide fugitives in almost 33 countries.

Half of these criminals are in African countries.

According to the GFTU, 408 are in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 277 in Uganda, 63 in Malawi, 52 in Tanzania, 47 in France, 42 in Congo Brazzaville, 10 in Cameroon, seven in Gabon, while South Africa hosts five, and Ivory Coast, three. Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Ghana, and Benin, also host two, each.

Other hosts are Kenya where 35 Genocide suspects are believed to reside, Zambia and Burundi harbor 15, each, Mozambique hosts 13, and 11 are in the Central African Republic.

To date, no single African country has tried any Rwandan genocide suspects on its soil.

The June 11 deportation of genocide suspect Théoneste Niyongira, also known as Kanyoni, from Malawi, and the May 24 arrest of Fulgence Kayishema, in South Africa, are commendable but more needs to be done. African countries aught to take the lead in fighting impunity when the cases involved are about genocide and crimes against humanity.

The government of Rwanda on several occasions expressed its concern about African countries which have done so little, or nothing, to bring the suspects to book despite the fact that in some of these countries laws punishing genocide crimes were initiated.

Among the key aims of the African Union is to encourage international cooperation, something that African countries are failing at when it comes to bringing génocidaires to book and allowing Genocide victims to see justice being served.

On several occasions, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), has criticized states for their lack of cooperation to locate and arrest Genocide fugitives. The Mechanism’s requests are ignored despite the availability of overwhelming evidence about their whereabouts.

In some countries, authorities are known to go as far as asking for bribes to be able to conduct investigations on Genocide suspects who are peacefully living in their countries.

Three decades after the 1994 genocide, African nations still need to be reminded that it is not too late for them to act on the hundreds of indictments that are gathering dust in offices of their judicial organs.

As fellow Africans they must set the pace for countries on other continents in terms of bringing to book fugitives who are responsible for the death of over a million people in 1994.