This month, Jacques Mungwarere is on trial in Ottawa for war crimes committed
in Rwanda in 1994.
Now 40, he faces four charges under Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War
Crimes Act, including murder, sexual violence and physical
and psychological aggression in an intentional campaign of
genocide.
Although the court does not offer
any details as to what the charges specifically relate to,
Mungwarere was living in Kibuye at the time of the Rwandan
genocide, a town where 2,000 Tutsi women and children were
locked in a church that was then bulldozed. It is believed
that a total of 800,000 people were killed over the course
of the 100 days of the Rwandan genocide.
If found guilty, he will be the second
person to be found guilty of war crimes in Canada. Désiré
Munyaneza, another Rwandan-Canadian, was the first. He was
convicted in 2009 on seven counts of genocide.
Twelve years ago, Canada passed the
Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, which allows
for the prosecution of people in Canada who are believed
to have committed war crimes overseas.
In Australia, however, nobody has
been convicted of war crimes since the post-World War II
trials of Japanese military personnel, which concluded in
1951. Apart from crimes committed during World War II, suspects
in Australia cannot be tried for war crimes committed before
2002, the year the Rome Statute of the International Criminal
Court came into force.
This means that those who could otherwise
be found guilty of war crimes, genocide or crimes against
humanity that occurred in Cambodia, Rwanda, the Balkans or
East Timor cannot be prosecuted in Australia.
Although the Department of Immigration
and Citizenship's War Crimes Screening Unit has previously
rejected more than 3,000 visa applications on the basis that
there was significant evidence to suggest culpability in
war crimes, there are still undoubtedly war criminals living
in Australia. There have been several high-profile, failed
attempts over the years to extradite alleged World War II
and Balkan war criminals, including Charles Zentai, Konrad
Kalejs and Dragan Vasiljkovic.
And it is likely there are other war
criminals living in Australia from the former Yugoslavia,
Cambodia, East Timor, Somalia and Rwanda, among others. One
problem is that, as Canada's well funded war crimes unit
has found, war criminals often enter the country as refugees.
They tend to come from conflict-torn regions where reliable
information can be hard to come by, and often plausibly lack
vital documents. Given the constraints, it is no wonder that
some slip through the net.
But when war criminals do manage to
get into the country, Australia hasn't historically done
very much to prosecute or extradite them. Indeed, Australia
has been described by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, an NGO
dedicated to pursuing Nazis, as "the only major Western country of refuge" for Nazi war criminals.
Australia has, however, been incredibly
supportive of international courts. According to a report
by the Lowy Institute, in 2008 alone, Australia gave $15.7
million to international courts and tribunals. But the Rome
Statute affirms that states have the first responsibility
and right to prosecute international crimes- the International
Criminal Court is only designed to take action where national
legal systems fail to do so. As a supporter of international
justice, Australia must do its bit to deny safe haven for
war criminals.
For this reason, the Government should
consider reform to allow the prosecution of war crimes, genocide
and crimes against humanity committed before 2002, as well
as looking at ways of making the extradition process more
effective. A dedicated war crimes unit should be created
within the AFP to investigate the scale of the problem in
Australia, and the government should strengthen ties with
the International Criminal Court and likeminded states to
improve information sharing on war crimes suspects.
Given Australia's slack track record
when it comes to dealing with war criminals, we need to make
more of an effort to ensure that justice is served on those
who commit these horrific crimes. abc.net.au
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