Open Court

In the village of Zivu, nearly everybody has turned out. Several hundred men and women, some carrying babies or minding children, many shading themselves under brightly colored umbrellas, are ranged across a grassy field. Eight people wearing sashes striped in yellow, blue and green — the national colors of Rwanda — sit behind a wooden table. There's a festive appearance to the proceedings that the words of Augustin Ntirushwamaboko belie. The 38-year-old farmer stands ramrod straight as he describes dragging a Tutsi man from the bushes in Zivu in 1994 and bludgeoning him to death. "When I hit him with the club, he didn't die," Ntirushwamaboko explains. "I had an ax. I hit him with the blunt side on his head."

Ntirushwamaboko is one of up to a million Hutu — one-eighth of this small central African country's population — who are expected to face trial for the 1994 genocide that wiped out an estimated 800,000 Tutsi, moderate Hutu and political opponents of the former regime. Spectators squatting on a termite mound lean forward as Ntirushwamaboko describes how he and a gang of others corralled and slaughtered a group of Tutsi near the house of his victim, a 29-year-old farmer named Gonzaga Twagiramungu. Among the dead was his victim's 1-year-old son. "I'm asking for forgiveness from all Rwandans and the government of Rwanda, but most importantly from God, who looks over us all," Ntirushwamaboko says.

Across the country, thousands of Rwandans are making similar pleas. Last Thursday, nearly 11 years since the genocide, the government launched a massive effort to bring reconciliation to the country, and the perpetrators to justice.

	Five years ago, if I saw him, and I had the means, I would have killed him — FEBRONIA MUKAMSONI

Over the next few years, trials for around 50,000 suspects accused of the most serious crimes — the planners and leaders of the genocide — will go through Rwanda's conventional criminal courts. But those accused of murder, violent assault, torture and looting will be tried in nearly 11,000 traditional gacaca courts like the one sitting in judgment on Ntirushwamaboko.

Gacaca (pronounced ga-cha-cha) proceedings, named for the Rwandan word for the grass on which they are traditionally held, employ "people of impeccable integrity" elected by villagers to serve as judge and jury. That means that in Zivu, and in thousands of other villages throughout Rwanda, a genocide carried out by ordinary people — the friends and neighbors of the victims — will be tried by ordinary people: the friends and neighbors of the accused. Witnesses, victims and the accused give sworn testimony in front of judges, who hand out sentences according to national guidelines. "The law will be applied to everybody," says Domitilla Mukantaganzwa, executive secretary of the National Jurisdiction for Gacaca Services.

Over the past 10 years, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, has completed trying just 23 cases of political leaders charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. By some estimates, it would take 100 years for Rwanda's regular court system to wade through the hundreds of thousands of other crimes — including murder, torture and looting. So the government opted to expedite the process by firing up the gacaca network. In so doing, they have selected a system that is as much about reconciliation as it is about punishment. If suspects confess, they receive lighter sentences and the tribunals use the information to prepare cases against alleged accomplices. Testimony is also used to educate Rwandans about the genocide; many people still don't have a clear idea of what happened, even in their own villages. "We want to reach reconciliation through justice," Mukantaganzwa says. "If [suspects] don't respect life out of love or out of respect for human rights, then they should respect it out of fear of punishment."