Aghion delves into the process of community-based justice and the context within which 'justice' is negotiated, which in the Gacaca courts has been observed as being lenient in the interests of reintegration, comments Dr. Phil Clark, Lecturer in Comparative and International Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies and panelist to the plenary after the screening.
The film revolves around testimonies of feelings towards the victims, the genocidaires and the Gacaca process. Aghion does well to illustrate the incredulous feat of the two living side by side again after the genocide. She captures the resignation felt by those left without children, husbands, siblings, parents... to live again alongside their perpetrators.
after months of lying low like beasts in the rain...
we must get along with them because they outnumber us....
why don't they come for me? I have no one to look after, I am already dead....
if I had to talk to him, I'd ask him 'how did you get a taste for it? Are you sated?'
what kinds of questions are these? I am a mother with no more children and they ask me how I feel? These white people ask very strange questions...
The plenary afterwards brought out issues of Gacaca's efficacy; it allowed lower-level perpetrators to be brought to trial (which is wanting from international criminal justice) and it allowed Rwandans to tell and verify their stories which in the process reintegrated the victims as well into post-genocide Rwandan society. But the constant telling and re-opening of wounds has also caused a lot of trauma. And sentences are more often decided to be community service instead of imprisonment. Clark relays how such an informal process has received criticism from human rights groups believing the legal justice system to be the only means by which justice should be decided.
And the other paneilsts Hassan Omar, Commissioner, KNCHR and Dr. Mzalendo Kibunjia, Chairman, National Cohesion and Integration Commission were brought to question Kenya's own justice and reconciliation process in the wake of the ICC trials and the run-up to the 2012 elections.
Can a local tribunal answer to the crimes of the post-election violence? And for whose justice will we be pursuing?
