Rwanda rape trials on the big screen

VICTOIRE MUKAMBANDA: I wanted to tell the story of what Akayesu did so that his crimes would become notorious in the eyes of the entire world.

PROSPER: I remember putting witnesses on the stand, and you leave at the end of the day just emotionally drained, and you say to yourself I have just now heard the worst that I’ve ever heard in my life. The next day, the next witness comes on, and they you say no, no, today is the worst, and it was like that throughout the entire process.

FELICIANO: How did Akayesu’s conviction and the concept of rape as a war crime, how did it change the game?

MITCHELL: It did a couple of very important things. It set the precedent. The whole reason why we can prosecute rape as a crime against humanity, crime of war and a crime of genocide is because of the Akayesu verdict. And the other thing it did, which was really interesting, is that it took gender out of it. And that’s incredibly important, because men are raped in conflict as well.

After a 20 month trial in Arusha, Tanzania, the Rwanda War Crimes Tribunal sentenced Akayesu to life in prison. In the years after his precedent-setting case, international tribunals showed greater resolve in recognising wartime rapes, such as in the tribunals that held Serbs accountable for their treatment of Bosnians in the former Yugoslavia. More recently, crimes of mass rape were prosecuted by tribunals following atrocities in Sierra Leone and in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But prosper believes even today, the global community could be more responsive in conflicts like South Sudan.

PROSPER: I think we’ve lost a bit of our footing, and I actually think that what happened is once the permanent international criminal court was created, people looked at that as, ‘oh, we’ve arrived.’ and the politicians around the world said, ‘we’ve done our job, there’s this court, we need now focus on these issues.’ It creates this gap, a gap of inaction. So I think the international community needs to wake up, governments need to wake up, and realise that their responsibility continues.

FELICIANO: A responsibility that international reporting keeps in the spotlight.

MITCHELL: Because the men and women of the press corps who covered what happened in Bosnia and also Rwanda and covered the sexual violence and wrote about it and put it on television and kept it in the public eye, that created interest on the part of the public, who then wrote letters to the tribunals saying, ‘we want you to prosecute this. We’re going to be watching.’ It goes all the way around to the fact that the public got involved and demanded that their leaders take this seriously, do something. So if it worked then, it can work now.

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source:PBS