Summary

　　This presentation considered how the relationships between victims and perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda have been built by dialogue for reparations of genocide highlighting the speaker’s oral surveys with people concerned to the genocide and the cases in the records of the Gacaca courts verified with her oral surveys. The presenter obtained the research permission from the Rwanda Ministry of Education to conduct oral surveys and obtained the research permission from National Commission for the Fight against Genocide to read records of the Gacaca courts.
The law of Gacaca courts provides that indictment be waived on condition that a victim and a perpetrator have come to an accord on reparations ordered by the court. By this provision, perpetrators had to directly negotiate with victims, obtain their agreement, and make reparations to the victims until the payment in full. Therefore, the dialogue for reparations has been established during this process. As victims and perpetrators have lived together as neighboring villagers in farm villages even since the time before the genocide, they are encouraged to have dialogues for reparations by living together as neighbors also after the genocide. The problem of reparations is not considered only as an issue between persons involved but also as that of the whole community and their families and neighboring habitants also participate in the dialogue to deal with it, so the relationship between the parties extends to over that among habitants of their community. Therefore, the presentation demonstrated the cases in that the introduction of dialogue for resolving the reparation issues resulted in building of relationship and trust among victims, perpetrators, their families, and their neighboring habitants.
　　Discussant Prof. Yukie Osa gave a comment to the presentation as follows. According to the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide is defined as a crime that takes place with the intent to destroy another group. Therefore, the crimes committed without the intent to destroy another group, such as a crime caused by jealous contempt arisen from pre-genocide relationship even which are committed during the genocide, the crimes committed among the same ethnic group, are classified into crimes against humanity. The discussant noted that the crimes judged in the Gacaca courts might have included not only crimes of genocide but also crimes against humanity in spite of the title of presentation, “The Gacaca courts that judged the crime of genocide in Rwanda.”
　　The presenter summarized information she collected in the field in response to the comments and argued as follows. The law of the Gacaca courts stipulates the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity according to the Geneva Convention and Convention on the Non-Applicability of the Statutory Limitation to War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. However, these crimes were actually not judged separately. The reason seems that the courts adopted the trial method as easy as possible for members of a local community who participated in the Gacaca courts as judges or staffs without any qualification for the legal profession such as the bench, the bar, or the prosecution. The Gacaca courts determined sentences in accord with crime types which the perpetrators had committed (murder, rape, violence, theft, property damage, etc.), and ignored if the perpetrators had the intent to destroy another group. It seems that crimes and sentences would have been more fractionalized if the courts had distinguished the crime of genocide from crimes against humanity.
　　This report mentioned only a part of the comments gave by the discussant and the replies of the presenter. However, there were various questions and ideas from the floor, which will greatly contribute to the development of the presenter’s research.