2% of the total number of victims since 1995.
These murders have not only targeted victims, but also witnesses and judges (Inyangamugayo) and members of the semi-traditional Gacaca courts. The Gacaca courts are not presided by professional judges by members of high integrity within the community.
The study indicates that some 64 of the 167 recorded victims were reportedly poisoned and whereas some 103 others were killed by using either firearms, traditional weapons, strangulation or were burnt to death.
According to Dieudonne Kayitare, Head of Legal Department, however, the figure was lower than the reality. “Many of the survivors die in circumstances that are extremely mysterious circumstances and sometime unreported,’’ he told Hirondelle Agency.
According to a woman, a member of the Association of Widows of the Genocide (AVEGA), “leniency, close to general amnesty, announced by the policy in regards to the authors of the genocide, stimulates the latter to continue to kill us. They know that after all there will be pardon… as if we are livestock at an abattoir”.
SRE/PB/MM/SC