Observers: Abuses by Rwandan military often unpunished

Two Rwandan army officers accused of disobeying orders stand trial before a military court

February 2, 1998
Web posted at: 4:50 p.m. EST (2150 GMT)

RUHENGERI, Rwanda (CNN) -- Government soldiers are to blame for many of Rwanda's human rights abuses, but only a handful are having to answer for their actions, human rights monitors say.

In an annual report released January 30, the U.S. State Department singled out Rwanda as a country with a record of serious human rights abuses.

"On a number of occasions, military operations which involved excessive use of force and other violations, haven't necessarily been addressed," said Jose Luis Herrero, a human rights official with the United Nations.

Herrero

Almost 3,000 people were killed in just two months in 1997 when government troops cracked down on insurgents returning from exile in the Congo.

The State Department report cites a massacre in which 29 soldiers were simply court-martialed for their involvement.

In another civilian massacre, the government charged five officers and one sergeant for failure to stop the mass killing. The battalion commander was sentenced to 44 months in jail while the others received 60-month sentences.

A Tutsi soldier was publicly executed while tied to this goal post in a soccer field

The State Department report says that the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) "committed thousands of killings, including individuals and families, in security sweeps, and in revenge for earlier killings by insurgent militias. The RPA response to insurgency was brutal."

The report also cites the Hutu insurgents for serious human rights abuses, including "many politically motivated killings, including the killing of Tutsi survivors of the genocide, Tutsi refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, expatriate human rights monitors, and aid workers."

The report said the militias were composed of members of the defeated army, the former Rwandan Armed Forces (Ex-FAR), and Interahamwe genocide gangs.

The army says that due to the ongoing insurgency between Hutu rebels and government troops dominated by ethnic Tutsis in the country, it is often hard to differentiate between civilians and combatants wearing civilian clothes.

Rwigamba

Lt. Col. Andrew Rwigamba, Rwanda's chief military prosecutor, says insurgents live and move within the general population, sometimes using civilians as shields.

The army says about 200 officers and men have been tried in the past three years for offenses including human rights abuses. A Tutsi soldier who admitted to murdering a local person recently was executed in a soccer stadium filled with spectators who came to watch.

The roots of the Rwandan conflict stem from divisions between the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi, who ruled Rwanda until the monarchy was overthrown in 1959.

Hundreds of thousands of Tutsis fled into exile after the monarchy was overthrown, but many returned after the Tutsi- led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took power in 1994. The RPF remains in power.

Related sites:

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• 1997 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
  • Rwanda

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