Rwanda Story Part II

This is the second piece of the story that my friend Gaudin has emailed to me. His account as a young boy during the war and genocide of 1994 begins below in the post "Darfur and Rwanda". To follow up on that post, the Republican Senators' appeal seems to have borne fruit already, as Colin Powell is now planning a visit to the Sudan, where he will hopefully be able to apply enough pressure to stop the bleeding.

Here is Gaudin's letter:

Dear friend, morning, are u ok? thanks alot, the yesterday i told you about my life in short and today i am going to tell you about the day on that i started the suffering for the first time. As i did tell you before, it was on sunday the day of prayers, on my way home, i saw many people being beaten by the soldiers me too i was told to sit down to be beaten, so i did as i was told they did this by telling me that i have to agree that i smoke the hemp. This was their way to find the cause of leading us to the commune office telling that we are bad people. So i denied then i was beaten very much and if you really remember i showed you the scars in my arms because i was very tied. Then i passed the night tied and being beaten on monday morning i was led to the dungeon to put me into the cell in 1995. For this reason i could not to eat any thing. My mother knew that i went to pray, but she didn't know what happened to me. I passed about one week without taking any thing. i was about to die, so after my mother knew where i was put she came and at the first sight she wept and because i could not hold any thing like the food she saw how i was beaten. She returned home and the second time she came with butter to smear on my body as a cure, for i could not find any means to go to the hospital. The Red Cross workers used to enter our jail but the soldiers hid me so as not to be seen by those Red Cross workers in order to report. So i passed 4 months in this bad stuation. in this time I was very suffered. Many people with me there were killed but God almighty kept me safe. Then after these 4 months I was led to another prison in Nyanza, the ancient royal palace, where i passed 4 years without beind asked why i am jailed. Then i was shown bad things there they used to give me the thoad to put in my teeth as torture saying i am still young i can beget so remember i am minor indeed but the law doesn't permit the young boys in this age to be put to jail, but they did, so i was put to the bowls to breathe the smell of urine and excrement so as to be harmed. Ok my dear friend, i passed many days without anything to eat as it was far from home. It was very difficult to find what to eat. You know in jail there are many sodomites who sodomise young people some times they have sex with them by force and by bribing them with food. In these bad days so not to eat and not to be. In this day in order to find something to eat it was very difficult but God was around because i entered the jail as a Christian. God helped so much i did not break his law by the stomach, remember DANIEL IN BABYLONIAN EMPIRE (Daniel chapter 2). So after this bad situation where i slept with a corpse, that is to say dead people, so as to make me suffer, i was asked by the living people saying i killed them. This is to make file so it was lie but because i was child who the law defends UNICEF said they have to set us free. They said we have to show the cards in church to justify that we are children i gave it that says i was under 14 years. Then they gave me transfer from Nyanza to Butare again. know you visited it last time. OK arriving there they did not set me free, but they went with me on my village to look for people to charge me. They found nothing then they did not set me free but after this time the file was in vain so after 3 years they set me free. From 1995 until 2003 (in this year i met you) i was set free by the president's communique! So i was put in jail being innocent and under 14 years so i will tell you about my life after my liberation and abouy the truth of the war, ok? MY LIBERATION, OK CIAO BROTHER BE CARE AND COOL .

Note: I think Gaudin was freed through the new "Gachacha" Court system. The Rwandese government realized in 2002 or so that they had a 200 year backlog of cases, and needed to speed it up. So they introduced a new system, by which lower-level suspects, like Gaudin, could be quickly dealt with. They were taken to their home villages, and villagers who knew them could accuse them of crimes. Before this they were asked to confess what they had done, and knowing they would be confronted by those who had been there was an added incentive to confess. If they confessed to minor crimes, and those were confirmed (and nothing more uncovered) by the Gachacha village court, then the villagers would have the chance to forgive the suspect and let him come back into society. This is the #1 most civilized, socially advanced, godly, and redemptive legal system I think I've ever seen. We're counting on this measure and similar ones to knit Rwanda back together.