Ntarama, June 22nd, 2002 (FH)- Strewn among broken wooden chairs, below an old torn picture of a Catholic saint and another commemorating the 100 birthday of a missionary, in the grenade-holed Ntarama church, are some of about 5,000 annihilated skeletons of victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

"Here is my father, my mum, my brothers, my sisters, my cousins. Twelve members of my family lie here", says Pacifique Mbonigaba pointing at the ruined church. Mbonigaba himself is one of the few ethnic Tutsi survivors of this attack that he recalls took place on April 15th, 1994. "I lay among the dead pretending I was dead, that is how I survived", he says. One million Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus are estimated to have been killed in the 1994 genocide, according to an official census by the government of Rwanda.

Eight years after the genocide, Mbonigaba's only hope for justice is the recently inaugurated "gacaca" courts. Gacaca courts are a modernised version, so to say, of traditional Rwandan courts where a village elder summons the community to resolve disputes. Seating on gacaca (the Kinyawandan word for grass), community members play the roles of prosecutor, defender and judge. Whereas present day gacaca is based on written law, the key to its potential success will remain good faith rather than legal expertise.

Over 250,000 men and women have been elected as judges for 11,000 gacaca courts. The judges are supposed to be men and women of high moral integrity. Neither legal knowledge, nor for that matter literacy, were a precondition to their election. However the major concern in Rwanda itself is not whether or not these judges can competently interpret legal concepts but whether they will deliver fair judgments in a strongly ethnically divided country.

"These judges are human beings with relatives either among the victims or the accused", says Silas Rukumbuka, a shopkeeper in the Southern Rwanda town of Nyamata. "They are vulnerable to biased opinion", he adds.

Rukumbuka also highlights the fact that gacaca judges will be unsalaried volunteers with no career to risk in case of misconduct.

In the event that the judges manage to transcend their ethnic identities, it also remains to be seen, to put it bluntly, whether on one hand, Hutus can honestly testify against their own and on the other, whether Tutsis can accept the verdicts.

"I'm ready to forgive and leave peacefully again with them", says Mbonigaba mentioning names of three former neighbours that he accuses of killing 12 members of his family. "That is the spirit of a gacaca. And I'm sure no one will blame me for that", he adds emphatically. Two of the three men he accuses are in detention, awaiting their turn to stand before Mbonigaba and other residents of Ntarama and answer the charges. The third is still on the run.

Mbonigaba's own wife is a judge at the Ntarama gacaca court where the suspects will appear. "I will assist her as much as I can", says Mbonigaba.

He shrugs off any possibility of influencing his wife in her decisions.

Jean Baptiste Nzuwonemeye is a Hutu farmer in Nyamata. He says he is ready to testify against his brother who has been in detention since 1995 for killing two Tutsi women. "I saw him", he says, "I will provide all information needed by gacaca." Nzuwonemeye hopes that a gacaca court will pardon his brother or give him a light sentence.

One Hutu man who made a similar plan was murdered in Nyakabanda, a suburb of the capital city, a day after the election of gacaca judges in October last year. The man was reported to have always stated in public that should gacaca trials begin, "I will mention each one of you that participated in the genocide. If any of you knows anything against me, come up also and say it." His murderer or the motive of his murder is still unknown.

Across Rwanda, try-outs of the gacaca system have generated hope. Suspects of low category genocide crimes were driven in trucks to their communities, where local opinion was sought on the charges against them. Those identified as innocent were released. "I think we got honest and objective opinions during these exercises", says an official from the ministry of justice.

In post-genocide Rwanda public references to ethnic identity are more or less taboo. In private, however, or among people of the same ethnicity, ethnic sentiments are still high. "It might take generations to fully unite Rwandans", says shop keeper Rukumbuka. "But what we urgently need now is to put aside the differences at least for the sake of justice", he adds.

Since the 1996 re-opening of conventional Rwandan courts, 6,000 cases have been tried. Currently, about 110,000 genocide suspects remain in crowded Rwandan jails. Experts estimate that it would take up to 100 years to conclude genocide trials in conventional courts. The government estimates it will take about five years to finish the trials in gacaca courts.

The government is encouraging Rwandans to rekindle the old spirit of gacaca. As Rwandan minister of justice, Jean de Dieu Mucyo once said, "We know the system has some loopholes, but we clearly have no alternative."

Outside Ntarama church, a young Tutsi lady who had been eavesdropping the interview with Mbonigaba runs towards our vehicle as we drive away and shouts, "we shall not forgive them. They turned us into orphans."