Rwandan genocide: Trial in France pushes for accountability

KIGALI: April 6, 1994, was a tragic turning point in the history of Rwanda. That evening, Juvenal Habyarimana, the president of the central African country, was flying back from neighboring Tanzania when his plane was shot down by surface-to-air missiles as it came in to land in the capital, Kigali. All those on board perished; they also included the president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira. The perpetrators of the attack have never been identified. However, the incident is seen as the catalyst for what became a three-month genocide, in which it is estimated that 500,000 to 1 million people were killed.

President Habyarimana was from Rwanda’s Hutu ethnic majority. The Tutsi minority were accused of carrying out the assassination, and the mass murder of Tutsis and moderate Hutus accused of colluding with them began shortly afterward. On Tuesday, a gynaecologist accused of facilitating mass murder in the southern Rwandan province of Butare, known today as Huye, will go on trial in Paris. This is the seventh trial relating to the Rwandan genocide that is taking place in France. The plaintiffs describe it as a case with symbolic significance.

The killings in Butare did not begin until about two weeks after the president’s assassination. It is estimated that more than 200,000 people were then murdered. The accused, Sosthene Munyemana, now 68, is a Hutu who lived in Butare at the time and was a practicing gynaecologist at the university hospital.

By his own account, he fled Rwanda in mid-June 1994, heading first to the Democratic Republic of Congo and then to France. Munyemana, a father of three, has lived there with his family ever since. He has worked as a gynaecologist in the Saint-Cyr hospital in the southwestern city of Villeneuve-sur-Lot since 2001.

The doctor now stands accused of complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity. He is alleged to have participated in both the preparation and the active commission of these crimes. Along with other prominent local people, he is said to have signed a letter supporting the interim government that systematically orchestrated the genocide.

Munyemana is said to have been elected to a crisis committee that set up roadblocks in order to track down Tutsis. He is also accused of locking people in inhuman conditions in local government offices to which he had the key, and of assisting with their transportation.

Munyemana’s lawyer, Jean-Yves Dupeux, rejects these accusations. The open letter, he says, was dated April 16, at a time when massacres had not yet taken place in Butare. “My client thought the interim government could be a bulwark against the looming civil war,” Dupeux told DW. Furthermore, he claims that, though Munyemana did participate in the meeting on April 17, 1994, he was not elected to any official position, and that the purpose of the committee was to try to prevent massacres. Dupeux said the final charge was based on a misunderstanding. According to him, his client received the keys to a local government office on April 23 so he could hide people there to prevent them from being killed. The mayor’s office then sent a van to pick them up.

“And, when the van arrived, [Munyemana] held the door open so the people could leave and get into the van,” Dupeux said. “This happened on four occasions. It’s true that apparently most of these people, who have not been identified, were killed, but my client knows nothing about this.”