{"id":46270,"date":"2020-12-16T08:36:39","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T07:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/46270-icc-trust-fund-something-to-wipe-away-the-tears-of-victims.html"},"modified":"2020-12-16T08:36:39","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T07:36:39","slug":"icc-trust-fund-something-to-wipe-away-the-tears-of-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/46270-icc-trust-fund-something-to-wipe-away-the-tears-of-victims.html","title":{"rendered":"ICC Trust Fund: \"Something to wipe away the tears of victims\" (DRC)"},"content":{"rendered":"

ICC TRUST FUND SERIES - EPISODE 3<\/em><\/p>\n

The Germain Katanga trial stands as a concrete example of what reparations may mean at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Journalist Lisa Clifford was in the village of Bogoro back in 2017 when the ICC announced how it would compensate the Congolese victims of a massacre that took place there in 2003. Three years after ICC reparations were ordered she got back in touch with the victims.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I first met Sarah Babona in the schoolroom where her mother was murdered with a machete. I was making a documentary film about the man the International Criminal Court (ICC) accused of planning the massacre in which her parents and most of her family were brutally killed. Softly spoken and shy, Sarah looked straight into the camera and told the militia leader Germain Katanga he had ruined her life. She was just nine years old on February 24, 2003, and has never recovered from what she saw that day in the village of Bogoro.<\/p>\n

Bogoro, in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, has been cursed by the vast mineral wealth hidden beneath its black soil. Riches including gold, diamonds, coltan, timber and oil contributed to a bloody conflict from 1999 to 2003 involving local militias, the Congolese government, Rwanda and Uganda. Half a million people were displaced and more than 60,000 were killed.<\/p>\n

The war arrived in Bogoro when a Lendu and Ngiti militia led by Katanga attacked a rival Hema militia group based in the school. The villagers were murdered with guns and machetes, including Sarah\u2019s parents and 18 members of her family.<\/p>\n

Katanga\u2019s own lawyer described the massacre as a sin before God.<\/p>\n

The ICC promise, \u201ca drop in the ocean\u201d<\/h3>\n

More than two years passed before I saw Sarah again in March 2017. She\u2019d changed, no longer a skinny teenager but a young woman. Her smile was just as bright though. It was the day she had been waiting for since the ICC\u2019s white Land Cruisers had first rolled in to Bogoro many years before, and staff had dangled the prospect of reparations to help the shattered survivors recover some of what they\u2019d lost.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of villagers including Sarah\u2019s sister Ruth and her brother Tibasima crowded into a hall in the Ituri regional capital of Bunia to listen to an ICC judge in The Hague, The Netherlands, announce what they\u2019d be getting<\/a>. In the end it didn\u2019t sound like much: $250 for each of the 297 victims and the promise of housing and education assistance, income-generating activities and psychological rehabilitation.<\/p>\n

Listening to the judge, Tibasima Babona remembered his father Mattias, a respected pastor, and his mother Joice. I thought of them too \u2013 the wedding photos the family had shared with me for the film and their graves in a peaceful clearing near the village. Mattias was cut down in the hills behind Bogoro as he fled with some of his children and Joice in the school where she\u2019d gone to hide with her young daughters Sarah and Ruth.<\/p>\n

Outside, after the ICC had packed up its projector and the underwhelmed villagers digested the news, Tibasima described the reparations as \u201ca drop in the ocean. Something to wipe away the tears of the victims.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Reparation day in Bogoro (DRC) : disillusion after the ICC's decision<\/strong><\/p>\n