Judgement

Not too long ago the ICTR was abuzz with news that the judgement in the Kalimanzira Case was about to be delivered, so pretty much everyone headed down to Courtroom I for the verdict. Some other interns and I arrived early and so we had front row seats in the public gallery right in front of the defence table. The ICTR courtrooms are actually quite small and crappy and the public gallery is long and narrow and separated from the courtroom by glass windows although everyone in the gallery can see in and everyone in the courtroom can see out.

The highest penalty at the ICTR is life in prison, as the UN is anti-capital punishment. This is actually one of the reasons the international community refuses to hand the remaining cases over to the Rwandan government, as Rwanda still uses the death penalty. Life is reserved for those most responsible for planning and orchestrating the genocide and for those who planned but also executed with particular enthusiasm. Additionally, the ICTR created the precedent in international criminal law of including rape as a crime against humanity and a tool of genocide. Kalimanzira had been charged with genocide and conspiracy to commit genocide and as the judgement was read, it became apparent that he had not won his case. It actually wasn’t until the court asked him to rise and hear their verdict that I realized I had been sitting directly in front of Kalimanzira the whole time.

I don’t know what this says about me as a person, but as soon as I made this realization and the man stood to hear his sentence, I did not feel excitement, righteous satisfaction that justice was being done, or even interest. Instead I had goose bumps all over and felt an overwhelming desire to be anywhere other than that public gallery. I was embarrassed to be sitting watching the determination of this man’s fate become a public spectacle. It was like he was an animal in the zoo and all of the people at the ICTR with nothing better to do that day came to see the rare (or maybe not so rare) species called génocidaire.

More than anything else, I felt sorry for Kalimanzira. I am aware that Kalimanzira is responsible for the deaths of at least thousands of people, but all I could think of was the guilt I have felt in times when I did something I knew was wrong, and the pain of the ensuing consequences, and obviously I have never done anything nearly as bad as orchestrating the extermination of a people. Maybe I was just emotional that day, but I feel like having to live with all of that guilt on his conscience is far worse punishment than anything the UN or “international community,” represented I suppose in that moment by the small gathering of mainly Western interns in the public gallery, could ever mete out.

Don’t get me wrong; I chose to do an internship at the ICTR, and in the Office of the Prosecutor in particular, for a reason. And I believe in fighting impunity and seeking justice and sending a message and everything else the ICTR attempts, and often succeeds, at doing. I guess it was just the first time I realized that what happens at the tribunal is not just an academic exercise like a term paper or an exam question. The lives of hundreds of thousands of dead Rwandans, and hundreds of thousands more who are scarred emotionally and physically, and the rights of all human beings who deserve to live without fearing the consequences of their own ethnicity, are weighted against the lives and freedom of a handful of other human beings who did terrible things. Yet somehow, my gut reaction was still to feel bad for one of those very bad human beings.

Kalimanzira as the judgement was read

First Week

Morning comes early in Arusha, partly because they don’t have daylight savings so the sun rises at like 6 am, but also because dogs, roosters, cleaning ladies, and African dance radio don’t really grasp the concept of sleeping in. So despite the fact that I had prayed I would not awake in this place, that I was sick and hadn’t really slept in a over a week, and had no idea what to do with myself when I awoke, awake I did. The fact that I had promised to inform my parents that I was still alive was the only thing that pushed me to get out of bed rather than hiding under the covers and wishing I was dead (well that and the fact that I was still trying hard not to touch anything, including the covers).

I asked the hotel owner, let’s call him Mr. P, if I could get a taxi to town and he gave me a weird look and told me I could walk. He took me to the end of the road and gave me vague directions to get to the city centre. Considering the state of the roads outside Arusha it was more of a hike than a walk, but luckily I was wearing my trusty moccasins. This came back to bit me in the ass exactly 2 minutes later when I reached the main road and men began yelling “Muzungu!” (white person) “Hey Muzungu eye liiike youuuur shooooes!” and “Cowgirl!”. As became a regular occurrence whenever I walked anywhere alone, a random guy started walking along and talking to me all friendly-like and then proceeded to try to sell me things. This one in particular led me to an Internet café, where I realized later he got a commission and I got overcharged for him bringing me there. I sat on the computer sending frantic S.O.S. messages to my parents and sisters and forced “Hey how are you? I’m fine” emails to friends.

My self-appointed guide was waiting outside when I emerged about two hours later and “invited” me to his shop. I told him the sandals were nice at which point he told me they were 90,000 tsh (about 75 USD). Shocked, I put them down and attempted to leave while he began the painful process of bargaining down from a price that had been inflated about 10 times. I finally escaped, or thought I had, when he came running after me down the street, sandals in hand, and grabbed my wrist telling me I had money and he didn’t so how much was I going to pay for the sandals. I gave him 45,000 tsh which is still about 5 times what I should have paid and cried again.

Later on that day a white South African hunter named George found me like a stray dog on the side of the road and took me in, as in took me for lunch at the Arusha Hotel, which is very modern and like an oasis in dirty downtown Arusha. As he told me how he hunts elephants and performs vigilante arrests of poachers, I felt like I was living some sort of weird Blood Diamond Leo Dicaprio-Jennifer Connelly type scenario, minus the phoney accent. Despite our divergent interests, it was quite nice to have someone to talk to.

The first few days felt very long. I ventured out a bit during the day, but in the evenings stayed in my room and read. This was fairly unpleasant because the power would go off between 7 and 10 pm. Mr. P would show up at the door with a candle and I hated opening the door alone in my room in the dark. I seemed to be the only guest at the hotel besides a man who had come up from Dar es Salaam on business, and so I assumed this was the reason Mr. P was so attentive. I also assumed it was some sort of cultural norm to ask young women whether or not they were married, seeing as both the business man and Mr. P did this to me fairly early on. I began to become a bit concerned, however, when Mr. P began to insist that I make myself at home and offering me free wine because “I love you”. This concern became alarm as one night while eating dinner downstairs in the dark as usual, the business man informed me “I will miss you” as I was checking out the next morning to which I responded “I’m sure you won’t” and then made an awkward attempt to say something about going to bed at 8pm while heading for the door. The alarm became outright panic when I realized the doors from the dining room to my part of the guesthouse were locked and I was trapped with the business man and Mr. P moving around somewhere inside.

It turns out the doors were actually just stuck and the businessman called Mr. P who had to come hammer them open (literally, with a hammer), but I still ran to my room and locked myself in until the next morning when Mr. P was banging on my door asking to borrow my cell phone charger. Thankfully I checked out a few hours later. I think I might have left my track jacket there, but at this point I cut my losses.