Human Rights Reporting

Spring 2003 Student Work

Surviving The Rwandan Genocide, Fighting For The International Criminal Court

By Camellia Rodriguez-SackByrne

Rwanda Remembered
His eyes appear frozen, staring directly ahead as he cups the phone against one ear and listens with unwavering concentration. Tucked in the swivel chair with an elbow resting on the surface of his tidy desk, Alphonse looks out the bay windows in front of his cubicle. His gaze falls directly on the midsection of the towering, United Nations Headquarters building, but he appears to stare at something much further away. Colorful flags representing a collective, international community flicker in the wind while early morning tourists gather below, snapping photos of the oversized sculpture of a .45-calibre revolver with the barrel tied into a knot. The faded nameplate beside the sculpture reveals its title: "Non-violence." Back inside the office, empty desks and inactive computer screens surround Alphonse. In about an hour, his coworkers will join him at the Coalition for the International Criminal Court.

Suddenly, Alphonse's voice punctuates the drowsy quiet hanging over the room as he speaks rapidly into the phone in rhythmic, flawless French. He utters words like "justice," "immunity," and "permanence." He finishes the conversation with a few low, affirmative murmurs, hangs up the phone, and types vigorously, his hands dancing over the keyboard. Then he stares back out towards the U.N. building, where freshly waxed diplomats' cars pass through the main, security checkpoint.

Next to Alphonse, silver tacks stab into a large, photocopied map of Africa dotted with felt-tip markings. The map covers one entire side of Alphonse's cubicle. Nothing about his workspace or manicured appearance suggests that the slender man in the grey suit survived a genocide in Rwanda that killed over half a million people in 13 weeks in 1994. It is only when one notices the fervor apparent in his work to establish the ICC that one might start to see the characteristics of a determined survivor. But Alphonse once swore he would never re-enter the field of human rights after witnessing the international community stand aside while half his family along with three-fourths of the Tutsi population - about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus - were senselessly murdered. How can he possibly commit himself to promoting a world court that will prosecute the most egregious crimes against humanity?

Alphonse personifies the significance of the International Criminal Court for men and women who survive genocide campaigns. His narrative begins as a young man, 18 years of age, graduating from high school as a cynical, spirited teenager wanting to debate politics and question the government. He found a job at one of Rwanda's first human rights organizations, ARDHO, where Alphonse helped to run national programs on the radio and monitor prison conditions. He says, "At 18 years old it's really nothing, but you feel like you're doing something to keep the government in check. Living under a one-party system and seeing how people from one group are benefiting from the resources at the expense of the others was what was making me unhappy - I wanted to do something to establish the balance in my very small way."

Alphonse's parents expressed both concern and encouragement when they learned of his desire to pursue human rights. "My dad and I always had issues and I was a teenager rebelling, first against him, and then against the government. I think he really appreciated the work I was doing and he was a little bit worried that I was reckless in a sense that I was not taking seriously enough how dangerously things could go. My mother, on the other hand, was very supportive and said, 'yes!' - my mother was at my side even when I was at my worst. And she was worried too, like I was, but it was just that I was more defiant than worried. Those are realities you just cannot escape and my parents knew that."

His parents had reason to be concerned. For human rights advocates in Rwanda, every inquiry, investigation, and report meant risks. Tension easily mounted in a vulnerable society where political parties were just beginning to establish themselves after 30 years and human rights groups had only recently began to organize publicly. In an era of shaky democratization when a government was trying to demonstrate its ability to keep a country in check, criticism of local authority figures' conduct was not popular. Anyone who was seen as an opponent could be jailed, disappeared, or killed. For Alphonse and others at ARDHO who frequently sought the assistance of local authorities to provide names of the imprisoned and detained, work could be particularly risky.

Despite the danger, there was always one force that always seemed to guarantee their safety: the international community. Correspondence and the exchange of written, investigative projects created a mutual and respectful relationship between ARDHO and other human rights organizations and international bodies around the globe. The big names in human rights - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations - supported the work carried out by Alphonse and his colleagues.

"We had people who did not like us in the administration, but we also had those who defended us - we had the indirect support of the international community because we sent our reports to them. They provided us with security because nobody would touch them." With the belief that a watchful, international eye would offer protection in times of crisis, Alphonse continued to interview torture victims and talk to the police. He remembers, "My colleagues and I were very proud of the work that we were doing."

To simply say that Alphonse and his co-workers earned this sense of pride would greatly understate the emotion and personal context of their work as well as overlooking the lives they saved. For instance, Alphonse remembers defending a Tutsi man in jail for murder. Days before, five men invaded the client's home to kill him with a machete because he was an ethnic minority. The client was able to fend off four of the men and eventually overpowered the person holding the machete. In the scuffle, Alphonse's client killed his attacker. Local police arrested him and planned to execute the man, who had suddenly gone from victim to perpetrator. When the man's family came to ARDHO, asking Alphonse to help them defend their son, he realized that he personally knew both the defendant and the deceased.

The work required Alphonse to look past his familiarity with the men as he interviewed the perpetrator and witnesses. "Facts and feelings set aside, it was a clear case of self-defense. We compiled all the facts, had a file, went to the prosecutor and said, listen, the person you have here in jail is clearly guilty of killing somebody, but you have to look at the circumstances. Though it's not politically correct to defend someone who is from an ethnic minority, you have to look at the facts and disregard his ethnic background. They agreed with us and the person was released. Unfortunately, he was killed in the genocide in 1994."

The genocide that claimed the lives of whole families, communities, and villages was one that Alphonse and many others had seen coming for two years before it erupted.

Small-scale killings of political opponents and aggressive propaganda demonizing Tutsis offered two clear signals that the threat of large-scale attack could easily become a reality. Similarly, foreknowledge of the attack was no secret from the United Nations or the United States:

"It was basically clear that the regime was getting ready to exterminate all of its enemies, meaning the Tutsis before their affiliation with the rebels, and also the political opponents from the oppositional parties. We had written the same reports and sent them to the American Embassy, the French Embassy, the UN, and the UNHCHR (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights). People knew and we knew that everybody knew, so when the killings started in April 1994, we thought that, even though the reports had been ignored to some extent -- in the sense that the UN in Rwanda was requesting an increased number of troops and military hardware in order to protect people if something were to happen -- and those requests had been ignored, so we thought that when the killing started, maybe they would realize that this was serious. But it happened."

Before he could reflect on why the international community abandoned him and the rest of Rwanda, Alphonse had to consider a more immediate concern: how he would survive. Thousands were already dead after the first day of attacks by the Rwandan Armed Forces. People could neither stay nor flee since men armed with machine guns and machetes enforced roadblocks and mounted a door-to-door slaughter campaign. As corpses started to appear and rumors of continued murders circulated, Alphonse, his younger brother, and their cousin went into hiding.

On April 8, 1994 they joined a group of men in a secret location: a small room, about 12 feet by 15 feet, just outside of their hometown of Kigali. The room, packed with 13 young men, contained no windows and no back door. After only two days, a violent attack transformed the humble room into a scene of carnage.

"People armed with guns and grenades basically smashed in the door. There were two people who started shooting inside the room. Instinctively, I just fell on the floor, which saved me because I was not hit by a bullet. Everybody else was hit. Before the attackers left, they also threw a grenade inside to make sure that everybody was finished. Everybody died except for me."

With the entire left side of his body raw from the grenade explosion and dulled by numbness and shock, Alphonse sought protection and medical assistance in a nearby hospital. He spent four days in the company of local doctors, nurses, and other men and women with missing limbs from machete attacks and exposed flesh from grenade blasts. In the meantime, the United Nations voted to cut its forces from 2,500 to 250 following the torture and execution of 10 Belgian soldiers assigned to guard the moderate Hutu prime minister.

Although the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front had overtaken the hospital area, Alphonse and others in the hospital remained safe. In Alphonse's case, he was neither a rebel sympathizer nor did he belong to the political opposition of the fleeing government officials. However, he had befriended both parties in his human rights work and even before that, in school and in childhood interactions. He knew both rebel and government forces, Hutus and Tutsis, during the fighting.

As attacks continued, the hospital was forced to close. Alphonse, other patients, and hospital personnel were evacuated behind the frontlines a "safe" distance from the overwhelming number of rapes, machete hackings, and radio-assisted killing campaigns happening throughout Rwanda's capital and the townships nearby. While Alphonse fled to a camp where groups like Doctors Without Borders and the International Red Cross struggled to meet the needs of thousands of terrified and wounded people, U.N. Security Council members in New York debated the "Rwanda situation." After eight hours of debate, it decided to omit the term "genocide" from its resolution condemning the killings. Although the Council eventually voted to send a modest number of troops, mainly African states, to Rwanda, the United States and other Security Council members dithered over the cost of troop intervention. The financial debates once again prevented the quick deployment of an armed, international presence.

Nearly three months after the outbreak of the murder campaigns that claimed the lives of Alphonse's brother, cousin, colleagues from the ARDHO office, former classmates, and close friends, the United States finally decided to use the word "genocide" to name what had happened in Rwanda. By July 1994, the Hutu government had fled to Zaire. Tutsi people were still being killed in refugee camps where a cholera epidemic also afflicted the camp population. Reprisal executions of Hutu people began to erupt throughout Rwanda, and the RPF rebel forces started to establish an interim government in Kigali. For Alphonse, as a survivor of what the world now knows as the "Rwandan genocide," somber frustration sometimes competes with an unrelenting ability to embrace life. Alphonse remembers the scope of his experience, from the abandonment by the international community to the closure of the attacks with 800,000 dead, in a matter-of-fact reflection:

"After it happened, the UN decided to pull out its troops and that was because countries like the U.S. were opposed to increasing the number -- I don't know why. Is there a racial dimension to it? Is it because Rwanda has no strategic interest to the U.S.? I don't know. Anyway, the fact is nothing happened. Nobody intervened and probably nearly a million people died. So, in my small capacity as a human rights activist, that was a disappointment because my colleagues, my family members, my friends, and many people that I knew who were involved in politics were killed and nobody did anything. So that idea, the concept, that the international community and the big human rights organizations are with us and if something happens, somebody is going to intervene and stop it - all that was a fantasy because nobody did anything."

He does not shift in his chair. He does not cry. He does not look away from my mournful gaze. He speaks as someone who has reviewed the events of the genocide many times before, sometimes as a person directly involved in the horrific attacks and other times, as an onlooker who comments from afar, invoking political analysis to explain what happened when international intervention failed -- or, more correctly, was never attempted.

Deep scars mark the entire left side of Alphonse's body, a perpetual reminder of the brutal, armed attack on a day that claimed the lives of his brother, cousin, and eleven other unarmed men in hiding - a day like many others when the international community chose to do nothing. Disillusionment replaced the trust he had placed in the outside world. Individuals on the phone who discussed human rights reports with him turned out to be powerless pawns of a greater power; a force that could dismiss reports of "genocide" as quickly as it could evacuate American pet dogs and cats out of Rwanda. Alphonse was 22 years old; his brother was dead at 19.

Leaving Human Rights Work
As yet another new government began to function and people returned to their homes and jobs to make the most out of what was left, Alphonse also went back to his former place of work, ARDHO. A combination of curiosity to discover which of his colleagues survived the violence, a need to resume normal activities, and also for closure impelled Alphonse to revisit his human rights work. However, his responsibilities proved difficult. Not only were many of his former co-workers dead or missing, but the RPF-rebel controlled government also engaged in murders and executions that it justified as acts of retribution.

Alphonse could choose to side with the government and overlook its daily, illegal attacks on civilians and former combatants, or he could defend his principles of justice and human rights guarantees for all by rejecting the government's acts of revenge. The choice was simple for Alphonse and his colleagues, so they once again found themselves in life-threatening situations. Alphonse remembers, "Not many people were willing to criticize what the government was doing, so it was a risk we were taking. Many of my colleagues were put in jail and others disappeared at the hands of the new government."

By this point, international humanitarian and human rights organizations had flooded into Rwanda. Alphonse assisted a small group of researchers from Human Rights Watch and the UNHCHR prepare reports that documented the carnage and its chaotic aftermath. The team relied on Alphonse because he was one of the few people still alive who could speak the local languages of survivors. But witnessing the continued crimes committed under a corrupt government and finding himself in repeated danger finally pushed Alphonse to leave both Rwanda and his work in human rights. He recalls, "My contribution, I viewed that as too little and too late. Trying to find out how many people died as opposed to preventing them from dying in the first place is something I had problems with, so I decided to stop all affiliations with human rights groups."

In October 1995, a mentally exhausted man boarded a plane headed to America with the assistance of staff members at Human Rights Watch. Alphonse completed his final draft of the Human Rights Watch report on Rwanda in Washington D.C. and then left the field of human rights. Doubt, disillusionment, and skepticism about human rights work replaced his former optimistic outlook on justice and accountability. "The memories were always haunting me. It's good, but what can you possibly do? You wait until someone is in jail and then write a report?" From his time spent in Wisconsin studying English to his completion of a Bachelors degree in Political Science with a minor in African studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Alphonse resisted any involvement in human rights.

On top of his disappointment at the ineffectiveness of human rights work in Rwanda, Alphonse noticed the weakness of individual human rights efforts in the United States. Sitting across from me, eyeing the TV news vans lined up across the street to cover the latest developments on what officials call "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and many Americans simply call the war on Iraq, Alphonse stresses the limits of human rights work not just abroad, but also in the United States. The survivor of the Rwandan genocide encountered an apathetic America.

"When I came here, it was after the Oklahoma City bombing and (the trial of) O.J. Simpson. I don't see how you can be a human rights activist in the U.S. - I still don't. What influence can you have on such a powerful government? I had to adjust to living here and how things work here. I had to find my niche here because I am used do doing things which, in the end, can at least provoke a debate. You can scream whatever you want in the U.S. and nobody is going to listen to you, and even if they do, it's not going to have any effect. If you stand for something, at least know that people are listening to you … I don't have that feeling here. You have to be part of a larger group."

Promises of Justice
While anger and rejection overwhelm the betrayed, labors of love do not disappear so easily. Alphonse had abandoned his human rights work because lengthy reports detailing brutalities during and after violent conflicts seemed pointless. People still suffered and lives were still lost. The work reflected Michael Ignatieff's critical commentary on human rights endeavors as a combination of cheerleading from the sidelines and war reporting. For Alphonse, the goals of human rights advocacy appeared cloudy and ineffective. But what if a goal championed by a growing number of human rights activists and government representatives seemed as if it might have an impact on an indifferent world? What if it had not been tried before? What if one of the most innovative ideas in human rights happened to be emerging precisely when Alphonse claimed he would never return to that same field of empty promises and betrayal? Would he think twice about abandoning a labor of love for which he had risked his life on multiple occasions?

A fateful meeting during his senior year at the University of Pittsburgh would draw Alphonse back into a field that he swore "made him sick." Some members of a non-governmental organization, the World Federalist Movement, began to talk to Alphonse during the break period of a weekend conference. Among the many topics that the group representatives highlighted was the International Criminal Court. Alphonse immediately remembered the lack of efficiency and limited effectiveness of the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR), and responded to the idea of a world court with skepticism.

"ICC -- some international tribunal again? My resentment comes from how long it took to establish the ICTR - it took 2-3 years. You don't want evidence to disappear and witnesses to go crazy before you interview them because with these things, you have to get information when it's still fresh with people. I asked, what's the difference between this and the ICTR? They told me, well it's going to be permanent, it's going to try genocide; it's going to be a deterrent. So then I became involved in Pittsburgh."

The new idea of a world Court made sense to Alphonse. It was different - very different. If an international Court could permanently be in place to punish the most serious perpetrators of crime, this Rwandan survivor wanted to be part of the process to establish such a mechanism of accountability. The idea of an ICC offered an alternative to the slow, ad hoc tribunals of Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia. Alphonse saw the ICC as a force that could deter gross violations of human rights and other atrocities like those he witnessed and experienced in Rwanda.

Nevertheless, a permanent world court that would indict and punish individuals for committing some of the gravest offenses appeared to be a long way off. The idea was good, but looking back at the formation of other international bodies indicated that the ICC would not become a reality for years. Even with the odds against the quick establishment of an ICC, Alphonse embraced the challenge and re-immersed himself in human rights advocacy. According to Alphonse, "I thought it was going to be a long shot. Maybe a hundred years from now -- well okay, let's do it."

Less than a year later, the ICC received enough ratifications to become the first, independent world court to try individuals for atrocities.

Confronting the Rwandas of Tomorrow
His swivel chair wobbles back and forth as the tall, slender man glides across the bustling room. He passes stacks of what appear to be newspapers, an NGO quarterly publication, the ICC Monitor, sorted into uneven piles according to language -- French, Spanish, English, and Arabic. A few steps later, Alphonse stops at a colleague's desk and begins to discuss editorial suggestions for a report on their recent trip to Sierra Leone and Gambia. As he speaks, he points to written comments scattered throughout the thick, unstapled document. As the Africa Advisor for one of the most influential umbrella organizations in the establishment of the new, world Court, the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), Alphonse spends much of his time across the street at the U.N. building, in the small, cluttered CICC office, and on a plane to various African countries that have ratified the Rome Statute for the ICC. He says, "I believe this is going to make a difference."

Alphonse tries to ensure that the campaign for the ICC in Africa is as strategic as possible and that ratifying members are involved and informed on the latest progress toward the Court. His work to help countries ratify and implement ICC-related initiatives into their legal structures brings Alphonse into meetings ranging from members of simple, grassroots organizations staffed by five individuals, to senior government officials such as the vice president of Sierra Leone.

Two unique features of the ICC help explain Alphonse's strong dedication to a Court that many governments and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan praise as one of the most important advances in international law and justice. To begin with, the ICC promises to be a refreshing and necessary departure from the past international criminal tribunals like the one in Rwanda. For Alphonse, this difference is key.

"I have so many problems with the ICTR. I have problems with it because it was late in coming and I see it as a one-way justice-securing mechanism because it's for the winners. In Rwanda, although most people don't want it or don't want to admit it, you cannot bring about reconciliation and justice if you do not look at everything that has happened.

It (the ICTR) is very slow, it took a long to come, and it's basically operating in a context that is impossible. You have the people who are at the top of the genocide - the people who are the architects - who are getting life imprisonment if they are convicted, while the people who are low in rank, if I can say that, in Rwanda are being put to death every now and then. People on both sides, victims and people whose relatives are in jail, all have questions and one of the things it (the ICTR) was supposed to accomplish was reconciliation and I think if anything, it's going to make things worse."

As a permanent, independent world court, the ICC will indict and prosecute criminals with greater speed and more neutrality than the temporary, ad hoc courts established by the United Nations to hear crimes limited to specific regions. The many problems that plagued the Balkan and Rwandan tribunals provide valuable lessons for the youthful, promising Court. According to Alphonse, "The ICC is coming into existence after a few years of confusion and mismanagement of the ICTR and the ICTY and the people working on it, the advance team and the people in The Hague, have been following the experiences of the two other tribunals and they want to do everything to avoid it."

The ICC offers another opportunity to avert the atrocities that Alphonse witnessed in Rwanda. The Court promises to indict and prosecute not only war crimes and crimes against humanity, but also genocide. Stubborn resistance on the part of the United States and the United Nations to use the word "genocide" continues to elicit biting criticism from human rights advocates such as the recent recipient of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, Samantha Power. Alphonse remembers the controversy over the "g-word" as tense because of the word's legal and political implications. "If you use the term genocide, then you have to do something about it," says Alphonse. His words echo the U.N. Convention on Genocide, which officially recognized and condemned genocide in 1948 in time for the Nuremberg trials of Nazi criminals.

However, what if members of the ICC hesitate to identify crimes as acts of genocide because of the word's loaded nature? What if they forget or ignore the embarrassing and painful lessons resulting from past leaders' hesitation to label the destruction of three-fourths of a population as genocide? According to Alphonse, time will ultimately tell whether a world Court will call a crime by its proper name.

"We have to wait and see what happens. Any violations or any massacres or any situations that are going to meet the requirements to be defined as genocide, or war crimes, or as crimes against humanity are going to have to be called for what they are. I hope there is no hesitation in terms of defining things for what they are, because if there were then we would basically be back to where we were before."

And "before" is a grim place to be and a difficult memory to forget for a man who sits in his cubicle, facing the 39-story tall U.N. building that was the site of the critical U.S. Security Council vote to abandon Rwanda. Even making a new life in the country that initially refused to recognize the Rwandan genocide for what it was appears as if it would be overwhelming. How does a person like Alphonse keep not only his sanity, but also his contagious enthusiasm and light-hearted warmth, in a nation that betrayed his people? For Alphonse, it is the difference between the American people and the U.S. government. He explains:

"I think the American people are good people. I don't think that I would be able to live anywhere else but here, but not because of the organizations or because of the politicians, but because of the people. I think the American people are very understanding and they care what is happening in the world. Wherever I have been, wherever I have spoken, and everybody I have spoken with -- those people genuinely care and they would love to change things as they have been happening. But you also have the American institutions and the American politicians who have their own agenda. Everything has to be in terms of a strategic interest and an economic interest. For the American organizations, there has to be an interest behind it. If there is not, then people can go to hell - that's what it looks like. But the American people, I think they are outraged by the lack of responses and the lack of reaction by the administration. I don't know what they can do to put pressure on the administration, but I think the difference has to be made between the two."

But what about his personal memories of the Rwandan genocide? How does an observer of human butchery put on a suit in the morning and meet with diplomats? Alphonse explains another important distinction he constantly, often unconsciously, draws in his daily activities: the ability to remember as opposed allowing the memories to consume him.

"When you grow up in Rwanda like I did and you witness what I witnessed, you know that you do not have a choice but to take everything in stride and accept it. You think about it, but it does not really become your life because otherwise there is nothing else that you can do. It's a different way of processing things because when I look at my friends who have problems with their parents or are breaking up with their boyfriends and they are so depressed and they cannot eat, compared to what I went through where people try to kill you and then they don't kill you and then they kill your entire family, I think there is no comparison. I don't know how to explain it, but in a way you kind of try to -- I hate to use the term compartmentalize, but basically it's that you live your life because you don't have a choice. Life goes on. It does not take away the experience you went through, but you do not become a prisoner of your experiences either."

The arms of the cheap, plastic clock nudge slightly forward. The time is 8:30 a.m. and Alphonse must keep the conversation brief today so that he can catch a plane to Niger in a few hours. He shuffles through some papers while speaking, but then pauses.

"It's easy for me to be telling you this and that, but there are things that I don't understand either because they are so bad and so terrible and so horrendous. Even having lived it does not really mean that you understand it. As for what difference there is between 1994 and now, I am sure that if it would happen again, nothing would be done."

We speak for 20 minutes longer and then the interview ends.

Outside, branches sway violently in the wind, and a gray mist descends over the city.

On gloomy days the United Nations does not display its impressive, colorful assortment of international flags.

I recall walking past the United Nations on a blustery day with similar, shadowy clouds and rain sprinkles teasing umbrella-wielding pedestrians. A tour guide's explanation of the UN flag's symbolism came to mind. She said that the olive branches signify peace and the world map depicts the UN's zone of responsibility for peace and security. However, when the elements turn threatening, the United Nations keeps its flags furled and packed away.

The tape-recorder clicks off. In an office on East 44th street, a man closes a squeaking, wooden door. He walks outside, tightly cradling ICC-related documents close to his body, and contemplates what he will pack in a suitcase bound for Niger.

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