More than 500 judges in Rwanda have been sacked giving room to the appointment of 223 new ones and an effort to improve performance of judicial that had been crippled for long by 1994 genocide cases mainly number in thousands.
The sacked judges are alleged to have lacked professional qualifications and were appointed hastily following the 1994 genocide that killed over 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.
The slaughter was orchestrated by extremist Hutu government over a period of 100 days. Lawyers, judicial workers and professionals in thousands were killed. The Hutu government was then in power.
The newly appointed judges took oath on Tuesday.
Justice Ministry secretary general Johnston Busingye said, “We want to give a new image to the system – it is about professionalism, supporting the judiciary to become a credible and performing institution.. We want to improve on transparency, speed of trials and weed out corruption.”
Rwandans voted on July 12 to elect people to mediation committees, locally called as “Abunzi” or “United” which will be responsible in resolving minor civil and criminal complaints. This will at least minimize the workload of conventional courts.
The Abunzi committees were common in Rwanda but were abolished under the Belgian colonial rule before the independence in 1960.
The revival of such committees will ease burden on conventional courts, but the units will not deal with genocide cases.
Currently conventional courts are pending with cases of more than 80,000 genocide suspects.
The maximum sentence handed down by the traditional courts is life term.
