Justice and Reconciliation after Genocide: The Search for Co-existence in Rwanda on Film
Refugee Rights News
June 2009
From April to July 1994, at least 800,000 people were killed in the genocide in Rwanda. The number of
people taking part in the killings has been estimated by state authorities at more than 761,000 persons, or
almost half the adult male Hutu population of Rwanda in 1994, though more conservative numbers are
estimated at upwards of 80,000. After the violence subsided, the Rwandan government was faced with
many challenges: rebuilding the country, establishing a historical record of the genocide, ensuring that
those who committed crimes were punished, showing to survivors and victims that justice was being done,
and reintegrating the vast number of perpetrators into their communities in such a way as to prevent
retributive violence.
In a series of four films, award-winning documentary filmmaker Anne Aghion, who arrived in Rwanda in
1999 and spent nearly a decade in the remote rural community of Gafumba, focuses on the aftermath of
the killings and the trauma inflicted on survivors. Aghion recounts the struggle of surviving Tutsis – and also
Hutus – and guilty Hutus to find common ground and to live side by side in the very communities where
atrocities were committed. In particular, she explores the Rwandan government’s challenge of organizing
efficient criminal prosecutions of large numbers of accused, implementing a legal system that delivers
justice to the victims and reintegrating perpetrators into their communities.
Aghion’s first film “Gacaca: Living Together Again in Rwanda” follows the first steps in one of the world’s
boldest experiments in accountability and reconciliation, the gacaca tribunals, or open-air community
hearings set up by the Rwandan government with citizen-judges trying their neighbours accused of
committing genocide. Her second film “In Rwanda We Say…The Family That Does Not Speak Dies” looks
at the impact of the return of one prisoner to his community before his trial, while her third film “The
Notebooks of Memory” focuses on tribunals of local citizen-judges weighing survivor accounts of the
massacres against the testimony of perpetrators. But it is in her fourth film “My Neighbor, My Killer” that
Aghion captures a human element in the complex process of reconciliation and sets out to find the answer
to the question “Could you ever forgive the people who slaughtered your family?”
The gacaca courts
In the aftermath of the genocide, the Rwandan government faced a huge challenge in arresting and trying
suspected perpetrators. Unprecedented numbers of arrests were made in the months following the end of
the mass killings. Upwards of 100,000 people accused of genocide, war crimes and related crimes against
humanity were arrested and crammed in prisons and communal jails. By 2000, roughly 120,000 alleged
genocidaires were in custody. Given that in the 10 years between December 1996 and December 2006,
Rwandan courts were able to try only about 10,000 suspects it was clear that it was going to be impossible
to deal with these large numbers through normal criminal prosecutions. In addition, resources were
extremely scarce to actually care for these numbers within the prison system. Gacaca was a response to
these realities and evolved from traditional or customary cultural communal law enforcement procedures.
Historically, gacaca was a community-based informal arbitration mechanism convened by the parties to a
civil dispute with its legitimacy founded upon the willing participation of all parties and the community. The
ultimate goal of the gacaca system was a settlement that was accepted by both parties to the dispute, and
the restoration of tranquillity within the community.
The current Rwandan gacaca court system was established in March 2001 and put into place in early 2002.
The gacaca trials include the collection of information relating to the genocide, categorization of persons
prosecuted for having committed genocide or having played a role in genocidal crimes, and the trial of
cases falling under its jurisdiction. Gacaca courts are authorized to try any cases except the accused
ringleaders of the genocide.
The official objective of the gacaca trials, according to the Rwandan government’s website of the National
Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions, is “the reconstruction of what happened during the genocide, the speeding
up of the legal proceedings by using as many courts as possible, and the reconciliation of all Rwandans
and building their unity.” Each gacaca team consists of nine judges, all of whom are elected from within
their communities. They have received basic judicial training, serve without pay and may impose sentences
up to 30 years’ imprisonment. There are approximately 250,000 popularly elected individuals in the role of“judge.” As the majority of survivors and witnesses are women, women’s participation has been an
important element of the gacaca system and the Rwandan government is now requiring that at least 30 per
cent of the judges be female in recognition of their role in the reconciliation process and to give them an
identity beyond that of victims.
Many have publicly criticised the gacaca process by accusing the system of falling short of international
legal standards and pointing out that the accused are often prohibited legal assistance. Survivors’ and
human rights groups have also documented cases of witness intimidation across the country, and there
have been reports of reprisal killings of those who testify. In addition, some refugees remaining in exile
have pointed to the courts as a barrier to return, claiming that they can easily be manipulated by community
members to settle personal vendettas or to eliminate competition for resources. They argue that it is difficult
to answer accusations, with the presumption, in their view, being that all Hutu are guilty.
My Neighbor, My Killer: A local and personal view
With more than 11,000 gacaca tribunals scattered around the
country Aghion concentrated her efforts on a single district. In
selecting the subjects for the film she followed a small group
of widows, mostly Hutus married to Tutsis, and the Hutu men
who killed these husbands and their children. The film has no
narration, and so the women and men in front of the camera
direct the film with a minimum of expository footage. By
focusing exclusively on the testimonies of her subjects,
Aghion does not provide a context for the gacaca tribunals,
something which would have given the unknowing viewer a better sense of what exactly is at stake in the
story playing out on screen. However, she takes the viewer right into the homes and minds of her subjects
to witness the emotions at play when perpetrators return to the communities they have killed in. Many,
though by no means all, will have served some kind of prison sentence before facing traumatised and
grieving survivors in a gacaca trial.
In “My Neighbor, My Killer” personal stories are told through the words of survivors giving testimony about
what happened to them and their families in 1994, how they deal with the present and where they see
themselves in the future. In one scene, “he," says a Hutu woman who'd been married to a Tutsi, pointing to
her blood relative without looking at him, "took my baby from my back, threw him down and clubbed his
head. He died instantly. He killed my seven children. I begged him to cut me, but he refused, saying I was
dead already." The man's response: "I did some things, but I did not kill her children," he avows. "But I was
wrong. I am sorry for what happened." The tribunal deliberates and rules: "He is guilty and sentenced to
eight years in prison. He has been in prison for nine years and has completed his sentence. He may go." The exchange occurs in variations, with the tribunal decreeing that both people move on with their lives.
And, they must.
The most poignant scene is certainly that of two Hutu women whose Tutsi husbands and children were
killed. Sitting in a bare dwelling they “talk about themselves as if they were already dead.” Their honest
dialogue reveals that nothing about this reconciliation process is simple. The events that led up to the
thousands being killed, detailed descriptions of the massacres themselves and harrowing stories how they
got away are intertwined with the occasional light-hearted moment. During one of the tapings of the two
women one of them says quietly “[t]hese whites ask the strangest questions.”
From listening to the conversations played out on the screen it becomes clear that many survivors do not
offer forgiveness but merely find a way to live in the same community as the men who killed their families.
The impact of the film
“My Neighbor, My Killer” was selected for screening at the Cannes Film Festival 2009 and though not many
filmmakers would have to deliberate for long to accept such an invitation, Aghion’s film was set to debut in
Rwanda as part of the 15th anniversary ceremonies marking the genocide. The Cannes invitation came with
the usual proviso that the film could not debut elsewhere, and regrettably for many, Aghion chose for the
film to be seen first by the worldwide media and an international audience rather than a Rwandan
audience. Her choice to premiere at Cannes seems to have paid off, however, with the film receiving a lot
of attention and favourable reviews from film-focused and the larger media alike.
The late Dr. Alison L. Des Forges, who was Senior Advisor to Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division and
devoted 40 years of her life to exposing human rights abuses and advocating to secure justice for people
throughout the Great Lakes region, especially Rwanda, said about Aghion’s work: “with extraordinary
sensitivity, Aghion takes us into the heart of the problem of reconciliation in a post-genocidal society – not
with wordy abstractions but with the earthy, real expressions of the people, victims and accused criminals,
who must try to live together. Those seeking to know whether reconciliation is possible in Rwanda must
look for their answer in this compelling expression of Rwandan voices.” The 2009 Human Rights Watch
Film Festival screenings in New York of “My Neighbor, My Killer” were dedicated to Dr. Des Forges.
Aghion collected an astounding archive of 350 hours of extraordinary footage which is of great historical
value to the trials in the tiny community of Gafumba. She is working to have this footage preserved and
make available to human rights and academic researchers, and possibly use it as the basis for a book.
At the New York film premiere of the film during the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Anne Aghion was
awarded the Néstor Almendros Award for “courage in filmmaking.”
“My Neighbor, My Killer,” by Anne Aghion, United States, 2009, 80 minutes, in French and Kinyarwanda
with English subtitles.