Special report: Rwanda: Tribunal revictimizes rape victims

Off Our Backs, Nov/Dec 2002 by Owen, Margaret

I am an international human rights lawyer focusing on widowhood issues in conflict resolution and reconstruction. I have just returned from a fact finding mission to Rwanda during which time I have gathered detailed evidence from Rwandan women testifiers of outrageous and disgusting breaches in the Tribunal Rules of conduct by judges and lawyers there in Arusha.

Many women have described to me a raft of appalling human rights abuses in the legal proceedings. They are not represented or assisted by lawyers and are at the mercy of unscrupulous and often obscene cross-examination by the defense. Nor have they been given any witness protection as the Rules of the Tribunal require. Thus these women, mostly widows of the genocide, are routinely subject, on their return to their villages, to intimidation, violence, and even death at the hands of the families of the accused; or those killers, still at large, who fear they too will denounced by the rape victims.

At the Tribunal, defense lawyers are being permitted to systematically degrade and discredit women already traumatized by genocide, rape and deliberate infection of the HIV/AIDS virus. For example, lawyers demand that a woman repeatedly name (unnecessarily and in extreme detail) sexual organs and how they were used. Medical documents sent to the Tribunal providing information on injuries sustained have been conveniently lost, else surely this line of examination could not be allowed. The court room is vast, alien and full of observers, officials and press, adding to the distress of these courageous women.

Furthermore, several women have reported that lawyers for the accused and judges have "mocked" and humiliated them through joining in the general laughter at their embarrassed responses, dismay and silence. Few of the Tribunal's interrogators are female.

Women witnesses told me of how they had been sexually molested by male officials of the court during the preparatory interviews There is only one female judge.

A number of women have paid with their lives for seeking justice and using their human right to stand up in court and testify, Some female witnesses have been murdered. The Judges take no action to prevent and punish the copying of confidential court transcripts back to the communities where the widows are still living among the killers.

The Tribunal Rules require confidentiality. There are even alleged killers among Tribunal staff. It is commonly agreed that corruption and nepotism is ride within the court system.

To add injustice to injury those accused of crimes against humanity, many with AIDS, are lodged in Arusha with adequate food and combined drugs therapy to keep them alive. Among them are the rapists who knowingly infected their victims with HIV AIDS. Their female tape victims am not givn similar support. Without the appropriate AIDS drugs, adequate shelter or food, they will die and the prosecutions will fail.

The advocacy group AVEGA (Widows of the Genocide of April 1994) are so disgusted with the manner in which the war Crimes tribunal is conducted that they have severed all cooperation with the Tribunal. They provide refuge for some of the widows who, having survived reprisals after testifying, have had to flee their home villages for their lives.

The U.N. must restore confidence in the InternationalTribunal by sacking the judges involved in these cases. Last week the U.N. Security Council resolved that eighteen "ad litem "judges will to be appointed in order to expedite the hundeds of pending cases.

The U.N. Security Council must aIso put pressure on the Government of Rwanda to fulfill its legal obligations for witness protection. It has a legal duty to apprehend, prosecute and detain those who, in gross contempt of court take reprisals (or threaten to) against the women survivors of the genocide who alone can testify to the appalling crimes.

The International Community must increase its aid to support the genocide survivors. mostly widows, on whose testimonies depends the successful prosecution of the genocide perpetrators. Aid must include combined therapy drugs, shelter and food. These basics are desperately needed now to keep them alive, not only to give the testimonies to the International Tribunal and to the "Gacaca." but so that the millions of orphans. the sick, the wounded, the traumatized and the elderly for whom they are the only support can also survive. There can be no reconstruction or peace without basic justice.

It is scandalous that a Tribunal set up by the U.N. itself should be guilty of this gross abuse of women's human rights. and add to the trauma already experienced.

by Margaret Owen

For more information, contact: Widows for Peace and Reconstructin, Lodon, England Email: Margieowen@aol.com