Rwanda

Ethnic tensions between the majority Hutu (85 percent) and the minority Tutsi (14 percent) in Rwanda precede the Belgian colonial period. But in 1994, escalating civil and political differences resulted in ethnic cleansing that reached massive proportions. Without a stable central government or any form of civilian authority, the Rwandan people today lack basic political and civil rights, and suffer gross human rights violations:

• As a result of the murder of President Juvenal Habyarimana of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND) in April 1994, Rwanda plunged into a bloody ethnic war.
  
  =>An estimated half a million people, mostly Tutsi, were massacred in one of the most terrifying, large-scale genocides in modern history.
  
  
• More than a year later, victims' relatives are still waiting for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
  
  =>Approximately 47,000 prisoners nationwide have been detained by the current government, many without a formal charge or trial, on suspicion that they participated in the 1994 genocide.
  
  =>About 100 prisoners a month are dying of diseases caused largely by the overcrowding in Rwanda's largest prison, which was built for 400 inmates but holds 7,000. Others have been held in secret detention centers, or have been subjected to torture.
  
  =>Some of these suspects have been falsely accused and are arbitrarily being held on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations.

• The human rights movement, seriously weakened by the loss of members during the genocide, is struggling to survive. The Rwandan judicial system has virtually collapsed, and does not have the capacity to investigate or try those suspected of gross human rights abuses.
  
  =>The Rwandan authorities have acknowledged that more than 20 percent of those detained are innocent, but that they lack the resources to examine individual cases.
  
  =>There are only about 12 prosecutors in the whole country, and only 36 criminal investigators (out of 360 previously employed).

• Recognizing its inability to cope with the enormous task of bringing justice to a country devastated by genocide and civil war, the Rwandese Transitional National Assembly has passed a law allowing foreign judicial experts to work in Rwanda.
  
  
• The new Rwandan government, backed by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), contains a broad-based coalition of Hutu and Tutsi. However, the alliance is fragile, and ethnic violence persists between the ruling RPF and Hutu opposition.

Sources:Human Rights Watch 1994 Country Report, Amnesty International's Rwanda: Crying out for Justice (April 1995)

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