AFRICA 10 years after genocide, Rwanda is still recovering

The world did nothing as 500,000 people were slaughtered.
GASHA, Rwanda (AP) -- During the genocide, Ismail Muhakwa marched through his hilltop village with a machete, hunting down his Tutsi neighbors. His first victim was a young man trying to cross a river into Burundi.
"We killed him on the spot ... using clubs and knives," Muhakwa recalls.
Today, as he awaits trial before his fellow villagers, he meekly goes from family to family, asking them to forgive him and believe that he, like his country, has changed.
The soft-spoken farmer is just one example of how Rwanda is still recovering, 10 years after it was ripped apart by genocide and left an abiding stain on the world's conscience.
10th anniversary
Wednesday is the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the systematic slaughter unleashed by the Hutu majority on more than 500,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.
The genocide drew unusual apologies from President Clinton and the United Nations for failing to intervene. Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general whose U.N. peacekeepers had to stand by helplessly as the slaughter unfolded, went into a suicidal depression. The violence spilled into neighboring Congo where it stoked two civil wars.
The slaughter wrecked this former Belgian colony and left many wondering how the two communities -- 8.2 million people jammed together in a Maryland-sized country -- could ever live in peace.
Made progress
Rwanda has made more progress than most could have imagined, refusing, in the words of Tutsi President Paul Kagame, "to be held hostage" by grief and mistrust.
But even as Hutus and Tutsis farm the terraced hillsides together, growing potatoes, bananas and beans, Tutsis remain wary of their Hutu neighbors, who in turn say they have been cut out of power by Kagame.
Although Rwandans like Muhakwa are building bridges to the victims' families, others are intimidating and attacking survivors to keep them from testifying.
"There are many cases of poisoning, killing, harassment and attacks on genocide survivors," said Benoir Kaboyi, the executive secretary of IBUKA, an association of genocide survivors. "The problem is in all corners of the country."
The genocide ended when Kagame's Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front toppled the Hutu extremists. Tutsis now largely control the government, economy and army.
Won election
The country's relative peace and prosperity gave Kagame, a U.S.-trained officer, a handy victory in last year's first post-genocide election.
But in the election campaign, reports piled up of police threatening opposition supporters, and the government-run media demonized Kagame's Hutu challenger.
The government's authoritarian bent, and the constitutional ban on any word or deed deemed to promote ethnicity, stifles the growth of democracy, critics say.
"My response to those people is maybe we have to agree on the definition of what they call democracy," Kagame said. "I have lost track of what a standard definition of democracy is."
Still, the government has worked hard to promote reconciliation, most notably through an unusual experiment in community justice.
Last year, with 115,000 jailed genocide suspects awaiting trial, the government decided those who confessed and named others who took part in the bloodbath would be released and tried by their neighbors in traditional community courts known as gacaca.
The gacaca (pronounced ga-CHA-cha) have the power to impose life imprisonment. But repentant offenders like Muhakwa, if they can persuade the judges that they have owned up to all their crimes, can expect a substantially reduced sentence, part of it in community service.