Fair Trials For Rwanda
For a real international justice
www.fairtrialsforrwanda.org
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For the first time since its adoption in December 1948, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide found its practical application with the genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsi from April to July 1994.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), with its sit in Arusha, Tanzania, was established by the United Nations Security Council in 1994 with the specific mandate of trying those responsible for the genocide. This is the vital and indispensable mission of the tribunal, not only for the victims but also for the conscience of a world that stood by as more than a million Tutsi were exterminated in barely 100 days of unrivalled butchery. On 16 November 2009, the Tribunal’s Appeals Chamber invalidated an earlier conviction by the Trial Chamber of Protais Zigiranyirazo, one of the principal instigators of the genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsi. The decision, on a technicality, by Judge Theodor Meron of the Appeals Chamber ordering Mr. Zigiranyirazo’s immediate release represents an unforgivable insult to the memory of the Tutsi victims and survivors already seriously disillusioned with the tribunal’s slow and dysfunctional justice. Fair Trials For Rwanda / www.fairtrialsforrwanda.org, a citizens’ initiative website, would like to request you to sign the petition and the letter, which we are addressing to the ICTR Prosecutor demanding that the above decision be appealed for the Tribunal’s review. Fair Trials For Rwanda / www.fairtrialsforrwanda.org also intends to collate and publish examples of the Tribunal’s numerous failures with a view to mobilising opinion for a real international justice.