Kigali — About 56,500 genocide suspects appeared before their respective area Gacaca courts to face trial, official reports from the Gacaca Secretariat indicate.

Domitilla Mukantaganzwa, the Gacaca Executive Secretary said Thursday, that over 60,000 files are ready for the courts, but 3,500 of them fall outside the jurisdiction of the community-based semi-traditional courts.

"From all the 118 Gacaca courts (at sector level) we used during the pilot phase, a total of 3,500 dossiers have been fowarded to the Prosecution at the provinces and Kigali city, because they constitute crimes in Category I, which are outside the mandate of Gacaca," she told a press conference at her offices in Remera. However, she did not give details on whether some the dossiers concern joint trials of suspects.

Gacaca trials kicked off Thursday in all the 118 courts after three years of intensive pre-trial stages, which involved recording the names of people who were in a particular area between 1990 and 1994, and collecting information on the mass killings. Other aspects included recording preliminary testimonies and identifying suspects and victims. The Gacaca proceedings started with trials of the 24,000 suspects, released under the Presidential Decree of 1st January 2003.

Mukantaganzwa said that only two pilot areas did not start the trials on Thursday due to varying challenges they faced during pre-trial phases. They are Segiem in Gikondo district in Kigali city, and areas in the former peace zones in Byumba province.

The trials commenced with Category II crimes, which cover cases of suspected killers who were not masterminds and face no rape charges. These are to be tried by the cell Gacaca courts that handles lighter crimes. The Executive Secretary said all Gacaca courts in the country would be fully carrying out trials by 2006.

Donor indifference

She could not give an overall prediction of how long the exercise would take, but said, "If all goes as planned, in five years we will have solved the biggest bulk of the cases". She refrained from divulging the amount of funds at disposal for Gacaca, saying the exercise is funded within the national budgetary limits.

"Gacaca is largely funded by the government through the budget, and I must say that we duly get the money on time just like any other sector," she said, adding that the governemnt was committed to undertake the proceedings with or without foreign support.

But whereas some people think the trials have come at a right time, there is pessimism about the effectiveness of the process largely due to apparent low involvement of the donors.

"It is unrealistic to assume that Gacaca will become successful with the governemnt footing all the costs. Donors should have a substantial role to play as the exercise requires a lot of money, which the government is not able to raise alone," said a diplomat based in Kigali.

At the moment, donor countries that give technical suppot to Gacaca include Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and Greece. What remains to be seen, however, is whether more donor countries and agencies will also faciliatate the trial process as Mukantaganzwa did not mention of any such pledges.

Being a Rwandan pre-colonial system of resolving communal disputes, reintroduced to handle the complex Genocide crimes, the traditional courts face critical examination by the international community, with some taking a neutral position as to whether the system is feasible.

Mukantaganzwa also warned government officials against influencing the decisions of the Gacaca arbiters (Inyangamugayo), who some observers say might be vulnerable to corruption and manipulation by implicated leaders as they are working without a wage.

"When you need an efficient and effective result from anything, you must do away with volunteerism. There must be all the precautions in place to counteract challenges such as bribery and frustration of (Gacaca) promoters," said one foreign observer.

Security is another big challenge to the proceedings, as reports from around the country indicate that survivors and witnesses continue to live in a state of fear reportedly because they live side by side with their former tormentors, most of whom were provisonally released two years ago. This has raised fears that a number of survivors might withhold testimonies during the trials.

However, it is said that the courts will also rely on the 87 percent of suspects who have so far confessed of crimes, to provide proof to backup testimonies of the fear-stricken Genocide survivors. An estimated 120,000 suspects are accused of participating in the 1994 Genocide.