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7. Reconciliation, Justice, and Amplified Silence
- University of Wisconsin Press
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194 Mov ing for ward in the wake of the gen o cide re quired Rwan dans to face ma te rial, emo tional, and so cial re al ities un known in liv ing mem ory. Women in par tic u lar were forced to (re)in vent a world that ac com mo dated their unique circum stances—wid ows be reft of male kin and chil dren, girls with lim ited (or no) mar riage pros pects, fe male heads of house hold with full eco nomic re spon sibil ity but lim ited ex pe ri ence nego tiat ing the pub lic sphere. In post gen o cide Rwanda, women had to learn self-reliance in a con text of dire ma te rial circum stances. In many cases, they faced a dou ble bur den of mar gi nal iza tion, first as girls, wives, or wid ows and sec ond as eth ni cized tar gets of vi o lence whether be fore, dur ing, or after the gen o cide. The prac tices of state build ing in the New Rwanda con trib uted sig nifi cantly to the con struc tion of post gen o cide sub jec tiv ities and con scribed the agency of or di nary women. In part, these state-building prac tices fos tered rec on cil i a tion. Yet cer tain as pects of the RPF-led state-building prac tices hin dered rec on cil i a tion. By em pha siz ing na tional unity as the core of 7 Rec on cil i a tion, Jus tice, and Am plified Si lence Reconciliation, Justice, and Amplified Silence 195 rec on cil i a tion, the state ex cluded cer tain Rwandans’ (i.e., Hutu) ex pe ri ences of war and gen o cide. The am plified si lence re sult ing from this sit u a tion was an ob sta cle to “mean ing ful,” as de fined by or di nary women, rec on cil i a tion. As dis cussed in the pre vi ous chap ter, or di nary women and women’s as so ci a tions have found their own paths to rec on cil i a tion through the mu tual shar ing of in di vid ual nar ra tives of suffer ing. In this chap ter I dis cuss the larg est govern ment in itia tive to pro mote rec on cil i a tion to date: the use of so-called tra di tional ga caca courts to try over one mil lion cases of gen o cide crimes. The ga caca courts had a pro found effect on or di nary women’s lives. In the short term, the ga caca pro cess dis rupted women’s efforts to re es tab lish nor mal so cial re la tions in local com mu nities and de stroyed the prog ress women’s as so ci a tions had made to ward rec on cil i a tion. In the long term, ga caca de livered jus tice for some and es tab lished at least a par tial truth about what hap pened dur ing the gen o cide in local com mu nities. How ever, since the ga caca courts did not have ju ris dic tion over crimes per pe trated by RPA sol diers, many Rwan dan men and women felt they were de nied jus tice. The “quest to es tab lish ‘the truth’” of the gen o cide through ga caca was “circum scribed by po lit i cal con sid er a tions” that lim ited who was heard, what in for ma tion was re ported, and what the final ver dict was (Hin ton 2010, 14). Since the ga caca courts did not have le git i macy in the eyes of the pop u la tion, they were often viewed as an other im po si tion of the cen tral govern ment on local com mu nities and as an other venue in which local power con flicts worked them selves out while ap pear ing to con form to cen tral govern ment pol i cies. The Search for Jus tice The RPF-led govern ment adopted a stance of max i mal pros e cu tion vis-à-vis the gen o...