Chimes of Freedom

My friend Sylvie, who has been on major wildlife safaris since last year, has arrived in Arusha and we ran into the Aussie couple I met in Dar es Salaam a week ago. They had attended the Rwanda war crimes tribunal. I had heard about those and today seemed a good day to go. It was a highly interesting to see the judges, defense and prosecution. I swear, the one observer looked just like John Grisham...

The witness was someone who had spent a lot of time in prison already. I can't really describe the feeling when someone tells a court: "Yes, I have killed." It's haunting. But the witness is hoping that the instigator of the crimes will be convicted (forgot the name, but some kind of priest, of all people). The defense is trying the opposite and the witness was doing everything to derail them. Simple Yes/No questions would draw a long response that was either claiming he already answered the question before or that his previous statements given in courts in Rwanda were incomplete due to lack of food. In fact, at some point he told the defense that he (a Mzungu, as was the judge, btw) had forgotten something, despite all the food he gets to eat...

The defense lawyer seemed as bit disorganized and some of his questions I didn't know how we wanted to prove anything. But the prosecutor was not much better. At some point he mentioned something about witnesses being contacted on the 28th of May, 2007. The, only moments later, he tried to repeat the statement. Even I could still remember the date, but he didn't. So he was looking through his notes for a good dozen seconds before finally continuing. The judge asked him if there was anything new, not quite clear why the statement was repeated. The prosecutor tried to explain it a third time, prompting the judge to stop him with an impatiently "Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes!"


The language was a mix. The prosecutor spoke French, the defense and judge english, the witness in his native language. We were seated behind a glass window, seeing everyone but the witness (he was hidden by curtains). We had headphones. Channel 0 had the original, channel 1 the engl. translation when necessary.
It's hard to believe the trials started shortly after the genocides, in Nov 1994!

Justice is slow, but eventually it will prevail. I found out yesterday that Roseville's (California) city council has approved removal of "Bikes prohibited" signs at a couple of underpasses. They were up there in violation of California traffic code.

Get up, stand up!
Get up for your right!
Get up, stand up, don't give up to fight!