By Arthur Asiimwe
Shirongi, Rwanda - Rwanda launched the biggest phase yet of a scheme to try up to a million people suspected of involvement in its 1994 genocide, opening hearings on Monday at traditional village courts around the country.
An eighth of the population are expected to be tried in the traditional "gacaca" hearings, which the government says are the only way of handling the vast numbers of people suspected of participating in the massacres of 800 000 people.
Preliminary hearings have already begun at some 751 gacaca courts as a pilot exercise, but on Monday the scheme was due to be extended to another 8 262 courts across the country, Rwandan government officials said.
In the tiny hillside settlement of Shirongi, villagers gathered at a sombre ceremony to point out which of their neighbours were responsible for the killings in their area.
Gacaca dispenses with the formalities of the normal court system, using venues like grassy knolls and relying on villagers' testimony to sort out those involved in the massacre by Hutu extremists of Tutsis and Hutu moderates.
But some villagers are unwilling to join in, wondering if the trials will really fulfil their promise of reconciliation. Claudine Uwase, 25, spent the morning tilling a garden set in a green valley overshadowed by mist-capped hills.
"I lost almost everyone in my family," Uwase said. "Do you think those courts will bring them back? I think they are just here to set free the perpetrators," she said.
"There were killings in these valleys and hills - I lost my father, mother, brothers and sisters," she said, wiping sweat from her face. "I think the gacaca courts will only bring me more trouble with my neighbours because the majority were killers but they are free now."
Last year, dozens of genocide survivors who had been due to testify in gacaca courts were attacked and more than 10 killed in the southwestern Gikongoro province by suspected participants in the genocide who are still at large.
Gacaca officials often find themselves alone, at times sitting for hours waiting for villagers to turn up for sessions.
In Gikondo, on the outskirts of the capital Kigali, 38-year-old Odette Basinga sat alone on the verandah of a house with crumbling walls, preferring to avoid gacaca proceedings attended by her neighbours.
She lost her husband, two children and parents during the genocide - some of them killed by people she knew.
Ringleaders of the killings, however, will be tried by conventional courts, while a UN tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania was set up in 1994 to try the top architects of the genocide.
Critics have said the investigative panels convened so far have often appeared to lack order, and rights group Amnesty International has said "gacaca may become a vehicle for summary and arbitrary justice".
Gacaca focuses on confession and apology to achieve reconciliation, with those who confess and plead guilty before a set date having their sentences reduced.
Some who confessed and asked for forgiveness have been set free, but Basinga was dubious about the sincerity of their repentance.
"None of these released people has come here and asked for forgiveness. I know some who killed my children and husband but if at least one could come and beg forgiveness and confess, I would pardon him," says Basinga.
Gacaca trials have been slow to get off the ground since the scheme was launched in 2002, partly because of sheer numbers of people involved in murder.
Officials say that the hearings begun on Monday will amount to pre-trial hearings to establish whether there is a case to answer. Proper trials might start in some areas next month, with full proceedings beginning in the rest of the country in 2006.