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.
The Hirondelle News Agency reports that Kigali businessman Laurent Magambo was sentenced to life in prison after having been found guilty of rape during the 1994 genocide. The judgment was delivered by a gacaca court of Nyakabanda, which found that Magambo had raped a young Tutsi woman who was eight months pregnant.
A Quebec judge has sentenced Désiré Munyaneza, the first person charged under Canada’s war crimes legislation, to a life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years. Munyaneza “chose to kill, rape and pillage in the name of the supremacy of his ethnic group, reminding us that every time a man claims to belong to a superior race, a chosen people, humanity is in danger,” the judge wrote in a 12-page ruling.
On 30 September 2009, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1888, which demands that all parties to armed conflict take immediate action to protect civilians, including women and children, from all forms of sexual violence, and urges greater measures by States and U.N. entities to combat this scourge.
Jean-Baptiste Gatete, a former Director in the Rwandan Ministry of Women and Family Affairs, stood trial at the ICTR in October 2009 for his role in the Rwandan genocide. He is charged with genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, incitement to commit genocide and crimes against humanity. He is alleged to have presided over pogroms which took place in the Catholic churches of Kiziguro and Mukarange, where thousands of Tutsis were killed and women and girls were serially raped.
