On March 6, 2010, Augustin Mugemanyi, the former administrative and financial director of the Rwandan Prosecutor’s Office, will be tried on appeal before a Gacaca court in Kigali. He is to answer charges of rape and other sexual abuses during the 1994 genocide.
On 1 March 2010, the Assize Court of Brussels agreed to a new trial for Rwanda’s former Interhamwe leader, Ephrem Nkezabera, who was sentenced in absentia to 30 years’ imprisonment in December 2009. At that trial, the Assize Court had unanimously sentenced Nkezabera for war crimes, including murder and rape. It was the first time in Belgian judicial history that rape was considered a war crime.
In March 2010, Ildephonse Nizeyimana again pleaded ‘not guilty’ to charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and rape. Nizeyimana was second-in-command of the Non-commissioned Officers School in the southern town of Butare at the time of the 1994 genocide. Allegedly, Nizeyimana permitted men under his command to rape Tutsi girls and women as part of a genocidal project.
To honor the resilience of millions of women survivors of war around the world, Women for Women International is hosting a global campaign called ‘Join me on the Bridge’ on International Women’s Day: March 8, 2010.
The Hirondelle News Agency reports that Ibuka, the umbrella organization of genocide survivors in Rwanda, documented the murder of twenty-six genocide survivors in 2009 in Rwanda. Among those murdered are nine women and several children.
Recognizing the numerous difficulties faced by survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide — particularly orphans, widows and victims of sexual violence, many of whom had contracted HIV or since died of AIDS — the General Assembly adopted a resolution requesting the Secretary-General to encourage relevant U.N. agencies, funds and programmes to provide assistance in the areas of education, medical care, skills training and microcredit programmes aimed at promoting self-sufficiency.
Eve Ensler writes a searing piece about the continuing atrocities of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she has been visiting the month of December. She concludes, “Over twelve years, this war, this brutally inconceivable violence has raged on. Almost six million dead. Almost 500 thousand raped. You tell the story of horror and atrocity one too many times and then you realize nothing is changing and that the world goes on getting its minerals, supporting its luxuries and the death, massacres, rapes and tortures of millions do not matter.”
In “Gacaca Courts Wind Up Proceedings,” the Hirondelle News Agency reports that gacaca courts, which were created in 2001 to prosecute the bulk of Rwanda’s genocide suspects, are expected to wind up their proceedings by the end of February 2010. 1,461 cases have yet to be concluded by the courts.
The Hirondelle News Agency reports that the Assize Court of Brussels unanimously sentenced Ephrem Nkezabera, dubbed the ‘genocide banker’, to 30 years in prison for war crimes including murder and rape during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
On 24 November 2009, the Prosecution opened its case against Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui at the International Criminal Court. Both men stand accused of crimes of sexual violence. The trial is the second before the ICC and, along with the trial of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, the second concerning the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
